Our friends at SpaceOut chat about collaborative consumption and how you can make money from thin air! Check them out before the end of January and you can try them for free for 2 months.

Despite all the gloomy news in the world, one shining star of the modern era is the worldwide Collaborative Consumption movement, and if you are reading this you may already be an active participant, or at least, interested in learning a bit more about it.

As a business owner in this innovative field, I am very proud to be involved, and urge all Aussies to take a participative role in this grassroots movement towards a more local and less ‘greedy’ model of consumption. And in my opinion, one of the best benefits is that money and goods get cycled at the community level. This keeps money and resources in the community, and not continuously funnelled towards the big corporations - which are not necessarily evil, but do tend to end up with lots of (our) cash!

SpaceOut was an early starter within the Collaborative Consumption movement (running since 2009) and what we do is match up people with unused space in their home or business with people who need space, but don’t want to pay commercial rates. Both sides get to benefit, and all transactions stay at the community level.

SpaceOut was set up originally to provide an alternative option for people looking for storage space, but as a result of demand from our members, quickly expanded to include parking space, office space, commercial space and pretty much any type of space you can imagine.

Collaborative Consumption is aimed at smart living in difficult times. It relies on people like you helping to spread the message. Please take a moment to think of who you know who may be able to participate. Whoever it is - the community wins every time!

About the Author: Damon Russell - one of the original founders of SpaceOut - came up with the concept of “Private Storage” when moving to Japan, and looking for somewhere in Australia to store his gear for an extended period but at reasonable cost