How much does it cost to start a coworking marketplace?

How much does it cost to start a coworking marketplace?

by | Jan 24, 2020 | Blog, Coworking, Rental business ideas, rental business plan, Technology

Coworking spaces are quickly gaining momentum across the globe for a couple of years. The concept of shared office spaces has been in the market for a while, but its popularity has been rising in recent years with entrepreneurs and freelancers looking for dynamic and flexible workspaces. Coworking spaces have disrupted the traditional work environment and are emerging as a rapidly growing sector and are expected to continue in 2020 as well. According to Statista, there will be over 22,400 coworking spaces by the beginning of 2020.

Coworking spaces are shared office spaces that allow both individuals and businesses to share the office space and resources like desks, meeting rooms, and collaborative areas. With the rising demand for coworking spaces among people, more and more brands are entering into the coworking space marketplace business to make it easy for people to find and book coworking spaces. But how much does building an Airbnb for coworking cost?

If you are looking for different ways on how to start a coworking marketplace, you are at the right place. In this blog, we will discuss the cost to create a coworking marketplace, its business model, essential features, and other factors that influence the overall cost.

The business model

Basically, coworking space marketplaces work exactly like Airbnb. While Airbnb is a peer-peer marketplace that connects travelers and hosts, coworking space marketplaces connect shared office space providers and businesses looking for shared office space rentals.

Just like Airbnb, coworking management software is also made for a mass market that connects different markets- Coworking space owners and entrepreneurs or freelancers through customized user experiences. When it comes to the revenue strategy, the platform makes the money from the commission for hosting listings and renting from each booking. For example, Airbnb takes a hosting fee of 3% and a rental fee of 6%-12% for each booking. While the basic revenue model of a peer-peer coworking management software is the commission model, you can employ other monetization strategies like premium listing, in-app purchases, etc.

The Cost to set up a coworking marketplace

Coworking marketplaces are complex and require a lot of work. The overall cost of starting a coworking marketplace depends on a lot of factors. Of course, the functionalities of the platform affect the overall cost. The good news is that there are cost-effective alternatives when it comes to building coworking marketplaces.
Let’s explore the factors that affect the shared office space cost.

Core features and functionalities

When you want to launch a coworking marketplace, it is important to differentiate between the core features and additional features of the platform. The coworking platform has three types of users- The coworking space owners, the renters, and the admin. The most complex part of development is in implementing the features for the service providers. Here are the common features and functionalities you must implement in your coworking marketplace.

Registration

To start using your coworking platform, both users (excluding admin) have to register and sign in. The basic option is to allow users to register using email and password registration. You can also allow social media signup to make it more convenient for users. Once the registration is done, users must be able to log into the platform.

Set up user profiles

After signing in, users must be able to create user profiles with their personal information like name, mail id, passwords, etc.

Create listings

Coworking space owners must be able to list their shared office spaces in your platform with details like name, location, type, and images.

Powerful search

This is one of the important features of any coworking marketplace to help users find the right match. Your platform must have an advanced search system that allows users to search for coworking spaces based on location, availability, and various other factors.

Booking system

The advanced booking system of the coworking space marketplace will allow users to check the availability of coworking spaces for a particular time frame. After inputting the desired date, the user must be able to see a list of suitable coworking spaces with all essential details like descriptions, photos, reviews, etc. Once a user makes a booking, the service provider will receive a notification and can choose to accept or decline the booking.

Messaging system

An in-app messaging system is essential to facilitate communication between service providers and renters to discuss things regarding booking a coworking space. This is an important feature that allows establishing trust between users.

Online payment

If you are thinking about how to start a coworking marketplace business, this is one of the most important functions you must implement in your platform. Integrate a full-fledged online payment in your coworking space marketplace to make it easy for renters to pay for booked space and for service providers to receive payment for their rental services. The online payment system comes handy for users to make the payment on the go and for the admin to earn commissions from each transaction that happens in the marketplace.

Building a coworking platform

The most important part of launching a coworking business is to build a coworking marketplace. Building a coworking platform involves planning how to set up one. Do you want to build it from scratch or build the platform efficiently using a white label solution? These factors will play a major role in deciding the overall cost to set up a coworking marketplace.
Let’s cover the two alternatives and the cost involved.
• Building a coworking marketplace from scratch
• Building a coworking marketplace using a readymade script

Building a coworking marketplace from scratch

Creating a coworking marketplace from scratch is the most elaborate and costly method. The cost of starting a coworking marketplace depends on the unique requirements of your platform. There are a lot of aspects that influence the overall cost like the technical complexity, the number of platforms, the number of developers, standard or customized design, etc.
Each feature of your platform must be created and configured on both the client-side and server-side. The server-side tech stack is one of the significant and the most time-consuming part of the entire development process.

The overall cost to build an Airbnb for coworking space can range anywhere between $50,000-$100,000, or more depending on the average rate for a developer. Globally the price differs for an hour of developers and can range anywhere between $20-$500 per hour.

Building a coworking marketplace using a readymade script

Using a white label script to build your coworking marketplace is an efficient and cost-effective way to reduce the coworking space cost significantly. A readymade script is ready to deploy a program that helps to create a peer-peer rental marketplace with all the features and functionalities similar to Airbnb.

If you are thinking about how to start a coworking marketplace on a budget, a clone script saves you a lot of time, effort and yes, a significant amount of money as well. A good script comes with all features like powerful search, advanced filters, booking management system, communication system, online payment integration, multi-currency support, admin dashboard, and monetization features. And, all this will just cost you around $1000-$2000 alone with all the customizations you require.

Wrapping it up!

The trend of coworking space is increasing and is going to continue the same in 2020 as well. The cost of starting a coworking marketplace with a clone script is quite affordable when compared with the cost to build the marketplace from scratch. Building a peer-peer platform for your coworking space business is a better alternative as the work is already automated for you. You can customize it to incorporate any degree of personalization you require to make the final product unique.

Even with the high demand, there is a lack of an efficient coworking management software that connects two user groups to facilitate business between them. For the same reason, launching a coworking management software will always be a lucrative business.

8 innovative Rental Business approaches to scale your success

8 innovative Rental Business approaches to scale your success

by | Dec 20, 2019 | rental business plan

A scalable business can adapt to a larger workload without comprising performance or revenue. Not every business is poised to make it big. Some business gets started off without the right people, systems, or mindset in place. Trying to grow such business in the later stages is difficult. Hence it is very important to adopt the right business approaches, in the beginning, to scale your success in the future.

Here are 8 business approaches that you can add to your rental business plan to scale your success.

1. Get the basics right

Before you even worry about scaling your rental business in the long run, ensure that you get your basics down and your fundamentals are foolproof. According to this survey, the reason for over 74% of startup failures is premature scaling. To avoid such scenarios, make sure your core product line or service is the right market fit. Make gradual enhancements in your service line based on user feedback and data. Find out the marketing channels with the biggest ROI potential by testing with smaller budgets first. Additionally, it is also important to make sure you have the right resources to scale your business.

2. Integrate advanced search filters

Advanced search filers are essential when it comes to refining the results and finding relevant content easily. To make it more convenient for your users, integrate advanced filters that will help to eliminate undesirable results. This feature makes it easy for your users to search for products and services according to their preferences and process the bookings faster.

3. Research the competition

When entering the market and looking to get your services to the masses, you need to research the competition. You can use any viable method to conduct this research to scan the service offers, online platform, marketing strategies and other aspects of your competitor’s business.
This allows you to understand and uncover any critical business strategy. If it is proven and working great for your competitors of the same niche, it will work for you as well. The competition analysis can be tricky as there is a lot of data to sift through. Before you begin, state your goals and choose the right rental business plan accordingly. Looking at your competition from a 360-degree angle will help you determine where you need to invest your resources and money to stay competitive.

4. Empower your customers with exciting offers and discounts

Discounts and offers excite customers and help to attract new customers. Giving compelling discounts during seasonal times will help retain more customers in your rental marketplace. For example, Airbnb offers $15 off on guest referrals and $200 on host referrals. More discount attracts many users and results in an increased booking, brand identity, and sales. You can implement it through email campaigns to grow your rental business across the globe.

5. Leverage the power of AI

Artificial intelligence or AI is redefining our interaction with technology. AI can successfully automate many aspects of the rental business. It has the potential to disrupt every industry and rental businesses are no exception. With the help of machine learning, the search features in your platform can be enhanced to give better search results matching the user perspective. One of the biggest advantages in the rental market will be the ability to understand particular geography through exhaustive knowledge of locations. What makes one location similar or different from another and how you can utilize the benefits of each location. If you leverage the true potential of AI, it can ensure the best services in your niche. Some of the very early applications of AI in the rental market are the Internet of things and voice assistants.

6. Create customer loyalty programs

Loyalty programs are proven ways to increase sales. It will cost a business three times more money to get new customers than selling to existing customers. Building a customer loyalty program will help with retaining your existing customers and attract new customers as well. For example, Airbnb has its own loyalty programs called SuperHost and SuperGuest that offers membership benefits to its most loyal customers from both hosts and guest category.
Hosts with a 4.8 ratio or above, 10 or more stays, 90% response rate and zero cancellations will be eligible for the program that gives hosts more visibility on the site and early access to Airbnb’s new programs.

7. Form strategic partnerships

Strategic partnerships and collaborations with the right brands can truly a world of difference and positively impact your business growth. It allows you to reach a wide range of customers instantly. However, the key is to identify those partnerships. Look out for brands that offer services complementary to your own. Contact them and propose opportunities to collaborate together.
Finding partnerships is a powerful way to build your brand and provide credibility in the areas that you otherwise can’t. Each partnership must be a moment of development marking new business opportunities for both brands and the community that they have created.

8. Offer complementary services in the same application

If you are offering a particular rental service, providing other services that complement the same will be a great idea. For example, if you are running a bike rental marketplace and you offer additional services like renting out bike gears and accessories like helmet, jacket and other stuff useful for riders, it will tremendously help with your business growth. However, it is not necessary for the complimentary services to be in the same niche, it can be in a different segment as well.
Providing the functionality of booking complimentary services will help the booking process easy for your customers and will help with increasing customer satisfaction. You can also partner with businesses offering services complementary to yours as discussed in the above section so as to benefit your customers and increase your profits.

To scale your rental business, you need to have the right process, systems, resources, and business approaches. But scalability is more of a mindset. You need to think big to become big. I hope these business approaches gave you some ideas to innovate your rental marketplace. Long term success is possible through innovative rental business ideas, technologies, and great products and services. What are the business approaches you follow to create a scalable rental business? Share with us in the comment section below.