How a sharing economy helps entrepreneurs

Sharing economy is built on a number of different concepts, but all of them have a common ultimate goal - empowering citizens to utilise more open communication and to freely distribute knowledge for beneficial purposes.

Even though the idea of sharing economy exists for a very long time, the recent technology developments opened a new door for this economic approach. Sharing economy these days changes the way people perceive the production, consumption, and business as a whole. In fact, currently, sharing economy is one of the key drivers of the modern entrepreneurship.

First of all, sharing economy offers very low market entry barriers. Young entrepreneurs no longer need to struggle to find investors in order to get an initial capital for the launch of their businesses.

Sharing economy is all about innovation and fair exchange. Thus, anyone, who has a great idea that will make people’s lives easier, has a chance. Taxify was founded when people in Estonia were struggling with getting a cab. Some of the challenges that people were facing included the difficulty of finding a ride quickly, the absence of the choice of the car and price, inability to monitor and/or control the ride, the complexity of the order placement, and the lack of the payment options. Thus, Taxify was created as a solution to people’s problem.

What is more, sharing economy provides a great advantage for young businessmen. Nowadays, a lot of people struggle to find a proper work-life balance. Many employees are facing time restrictions at work since they have a strict work schedule. However, a freelancer chooses the convenient time for work, thus enjoying the flexibility, which is so important for millennials. Yet, the demand for flexible work schedule is not only limited to millennials. The study by PwC (2013)  reveals that freelancing is also favoured by those, who lack specific skills or/and prefer not to have a time-consuming job in order to enjoy other passions.

READ: Online taxi firms launch advance booking option

Following on sharing economy entrepreneurship benefits, we can’t leave one fact without attention - sharing economy is one of the key innovation drivers. Prior to the popularity of the sharing economy, some people were unable or unmotivated to bring their ideas to life. However, nowadays we witness a growing number of peer economy-based firms. The new vision of the sharing economy helps small businesses to grow sustainably, where both sides of the market are enjoying healthy benefits.

How to make money using sharing economy concepts?

One of the techniques is stemming from the name of the economical approach - share. You can share anything that you think is idle or utilised inefficiently. For instance, if you work in the office, maybe your office area has some free square metres to offer as a workspace for freelancers? Or, maybe your office building has some parking places that are always empty?  I suggest making use of everything that is underutilised or is needed occasionally. You can look into anything that you think might be useful for other people, and make money from that.

Sharing is not only limited to products, as you remember. Thus, sharing a website might be a great idea, if you have one. People these days usually turn to a computer when it comes to promotion of their service/products/firm. Therefore, you can offer them a place on your website and get money for this.

Look into freelancers. Another useful tip on how to make money using sharing economy concepts is to act smart when it comes to expenses. For example, if your company is still small, it probably does not need full-time specialists. These can include marketing staff, IT people, accountants, etc. Instead, you can enjoy the help of freelancers. These people will help you set up the necessary things and you can also hire them as full-time employees in the long-term, thus cutting down on the recruitment expenses.

Save on equipment. Following the same logic, as we did in the last point, your firm might not need some equipment permanently. Hence, it is very useful to consider renting some equipment on and off.

In case you believe that you might need a particular piece of equipment for a longer period, you can also try and work with other company to buy the equipment together, if you both need it.

All in all, it is worth to highlight that the sharing economy these days grows at a very high speed. Every day, someone is getting inspired by the examples of sharing economy-based businesses, and new amazing ideas are being born. It might seem hard to start a new business right now, yet the sharing economy has no limits! There is only one rule - your idea needs to reflect people’s needs.