Marketplace, the meeting place for providers and customers. Your personal sales manager.
Current Status
This is a completely finished product, which has already started to bring a small income.
Signed up active providers are now 1300+.
Signed up active customers - 2400+.
The submitted requests are 5400+.
We had grown up to the 38 000 most popular sites of Ukraine according to alexa.com (see the screenshot). It's almost without the cost for any promotion.
The project is designed for Ukraine, but it will not be difficult to scale it to other countries.
Annual sales, $
10
Organizational form
private entrepreneur
Number of employees
6
Problem or Opportunity
The project was created to solve the problems of the two target audiences:
- entrepreneurs / freelancers
and
- customers, that is all those who are looking for goods or services via the Internet.
The goal of the project is to allow people from both target audiences to find each other quickly and cheaply.
It is expensive and difficult for freelancers and entrepreneurs to find new customers, and it is long and difficult for customers to find reliable providers.
We offer a kind of marketplace that solves these problems. Each cent, spent by the provider, will bring him more benefit.
How it was before? Customers searched for providers through friends, message boards and so on. It was a long and not always effective. The providers were looking for new customers through advertising. It was expensive and not effective.
Solution (product or service)
The customer submits a request, to which the system after the moderation automatically selects providers using a complex algorithm. Then the customer chooses the winner who executes the request. And after the request completion the customer leaves a mark for the provider and feedback about his services.
The provider signs up at the website, chooses the categories, regions and other parameters of the desired requests. Then the provider should only wait for the requests. If the request is not interesting for him, then the system does not bother him any more with this request. But if it's interesting, then we sell him customer contacts. After that, the provider probably wins the request and after completion will be able to put a mark and write the feedback about the customer.
Marks of the customer and provider about each other are the most important parameter in the rating calculations. The higher the rating, the more targeted requests the provider will be able to receive.
Died competitive projects:
yapan.com.ua (Ukraine)
zrobyt.com.ua (Ukraine)
pickoose.com (estonia)
Advantages or differentiators
1. We sell the customer's contacts, and do not charge a commission for the executed request.
2. Easy sign up without documents.
3. Easy start for beginners.
4. SMS notification for the urgent emails. Not all people use smartphones and check the email daily. Some of our users check the email once a week, and even more rarely.
5. We work for all regional centers of Ukraine.
6. We are cheaper (customer contacts - 5 UAH, SMS - 1 UAH).
Finance
Monetization of the project now takes place in two ways:
1. During the acceptance of the request, the provider pays 5 UAH and receives the customer's contacts.
2. If in the provider's settings there is a SMS service, then for each received SMS, he pays 1 UAH.
You can add other paid services, for example, paid promotion of the providers, if his rating is not enough. Or a paid promotion of the customer's request, so that more users see such request.
Business model
1. Value proposition:
a) looking for new customers for providers;
b) looking for the best providers for customers.
2. Target Audiences:
a) entrepreneurs and / or freelancers
b) customers who are looking for products and services via the Internet.
3. Distribution channels:
a) for customers - SEO-promotion (96% of visitors and requests)
b) for providers - Internet advertising at the specialized resources and also targeted cold calls with an offer to sign up.
4. Relationships with customers. We did not buy the feedbacks about the project, unlike many other resources. This is all sincere feedback from real users of the resource. The users write us, they are exited from the great idea and smart implementation of the web-service.
5. The structure of income. Both paid services and SMS, and purchase of customers contacts already bring in the small income.
6. Key activities:
a) improving the work of a web resource (DB design, web design, programming);
b) promotion (SEO-work on the website, adding the content to it);
c) marketing (SEO-oriented articles, online advertising, articles in the media, page promotion on Facebook, etc.).
7. Partners:
a) Web hosting on which the site is located;
b) email gateway for email sending;
c) SMS gateway for paid SMS;
d) a resource for hosting SEO-oriented articles;
e) Facebook.
8. Key resources:
a) a team of 6 people;
b) a unique algorithm for selecting providers and supporting the requests.
9. Expenses:
a) marketing and advertising costs;
b) Hosting costs;
c) the costs of maintaining and improving the site (possibly).
Reason for sale
I had the resources to make a quality web service, but there are no forces and finances anymore for the promotion of the web service. This is a completely finished product, now it is needed to bring the audience there.
I do not know how to put this into practice, how to make the web resource popular. I'm a programmer, not a marketer, not an advertiser. I do not know what to do next. Therefore, I want to sell the product of the hard work of our team to someone who understands the specifics better than me.
Market
The feature of start-ups is that they are created for a market that does not exist yet. The market for this project is just beginning to be created.
The project has two target audiences:
- entrepreneurs / freelancers, who are about 2 million (only according to official data) in Ukraine,
and
- customers, that is all those who are looking for goods or services via the Internet, which are 20+ million people in Ukraine.
In 2016, the percentage of e-commerce in Ukraine has tripled, to 3%. While in the EU it grew to 16%. The global e-commerce market is also evolving. It is very likely that in the next few years the percentage of e-commerce in Ukraine will again grow at times.
Over the previous 13 years, the population of the Internet has grown by several times and now is 65%.
The coverage of the Ukrainian audience by leading online stores and marketplaces has also grown.
1. Mistrust of users to the project. This is the biggest obstacle that we have encountered. All these years we did not even have the office (everyone worked remotely), so many users were deterred from working with us.
2. The provider can buy the customer's contacts, but do not achieve the agreement with him.
3. Dumping policy of competitive projects.