Hey Bike Owners: Spinlister Can Make You Up To $100 A Week

It’s been about a month and a half since peer-to-peer bike rental service Spinlister launched in San Francisco and New York. Since then, the New York-based startup has been busy trying to attract bike owners to list their bikes and improve its inventory, while also trying to improve the overall experience of using its site.

Despite only being available in two cities and for six weeks, the startup has already attracted a fair amount of interest from listers and renters. It has an inventory of about 400 from bikes from individuals, and more than 2,000 from bike rental shops listed. And it’s seen rental interest from all over the world, with renters from six of the seven continents. (Antarctica is the only holdout.)

That’s translating into cash for those who list bikes that otherwise weren’t getting ridden. In the first six weeks, 25 percent of listers have completed a rental, with 25 percent of those receiving multiple rentals. Those folks have made an average of $50 each so far — and if your bike is popular, you can pull in upwards of $100 a week, depending on pricing according to CEO Will Dennis.

But just like Airbnb and Getaround before it, Spinlister still has a lot of work to do to educate consumers about peer-to-peer rentals, and to reduce friction in the process. As a result, it’s put up new resources on its website, including handy guides for renting and listing bikes on the site. The goal is to decrease fulfillment times and increase the likelihood that both renters and listers respond to one another. Spinlister also has general guidelines for those who haven’t been on a bike in a while, as well as city-specific resources for New York and San Francisco.

For those who are still unsure if they should list their bikes, for fear of theft or damage, the startup has also introduced the Spinlister Guarantee, which will insure the fair-value price of a bike for up to $5,000. That should set some folks’ minds at ease.

What’s next for Spinlister? The company expects to expand to several new U.S. cities over the next six months, with plans to expand internationally soon after that. It’s also hoping to go mobile and roll out an iPhone app. It has raised $225,000 in seed funding and is in the process of hiring an iOS developer and looking for a Rails developer as well.

For those of you who will be in New York City for TechCrunch Disrupt and wish to skip the cab line and bike around town instead, Spinlister is offering up $20 credits to the first 25 people to email TCDisrupt@spinlister.com and sign up for an account. Happy biking!