The Three-step process of creating a Freelance Marketplace

Plan

• Some of the world’s successful companies, like Airbnb, Amazon, Walmart, Google, and Apple, work with freelancers. Following their example, more businesses worldwide refuse to limit themselves to the local pool of candidates and go looking for the required talent overseas. As a result of which the Freelance market is growing and it has still not reached its full potential yet. The renowned freelance marketplaces are Fiverr, Upwork, TaskRabbit, etc.

• Yet, despite a large number of existing freelance online platforms, none of them are perfect.  A dedicated, niche marketplace might be able to compete with the giants by making finding specific expertise a lot easier. For example, writers work, this platform enables freelance writers to get their work published. Another example could be 99designs, dedicated to designers and architectures.

• Try to analyze what services are getting offered on generic platforms like Facebook or Craiglist and can be grouped to form a niche freelance marketplace. This could be the first step in defining a target market for your marketplace.

• To build a successful freelance website, it is very important to choose the right revenue model. Marketplace owners need to make a decision on which revenue model would be best suited according to their Business model. Learn about all the revenue models here.

Build

Coming up with ideas for a marketplace is just the beginning. Now that you have validated the business idea, start figuring out what features you need for your freelance marketplace. Some of the top features are

Learn more about all the necessary features here

The next step is to create a visual identity and a user interface for your online freelance marketplace. Marketplace Software like IdyaFlow provides templates to choose from which can be customized according to your needs. IdyFlow client TechieFriends is a freelance marketplace platform committed to transforming the tech-support for home and small businesses so that it is fast, safe, cost-effective, and efficient. 

To get a Demo of the website template and how it can be customized to your requirements. Click below.

Onboard Suppliers

After learning how to create a freelance marketplace and setting it up, now its time to launch the marketplace and get suppliers on board. This is a classic chicken and egg problem. The following two strategies can be used to alleviate this problem.

Focus on acquiring customers and suppliers from a single community or city, and expand gradually. Start from your business network, and expand from there. Doing this helps to gain credibility, which can encourage more customers and suppliers to sign on to the platform. It’s also much easier to persuade local suppliers who don’t already sell online, so try to research and get to know potential local players and ask them to join your freelance marketplace platform.

When launching a freelance marketplace, focus on hyper-local market, Try to analyze what services are getting offered on generic platforms like Facebook or Craiglist and can be grouped to form a niche freelance marketplace. 

Monitoring

After creating a Freelance Marketplace, owners can track their sales with accurate metrics. For example, by incorporating the Ratings and Review feature marketplace owner can see which products and services are in demand and know which vendors are most preferred. As a result, the owner can promote goods and services that truly matter to its users.

With IdyaFlow Add On Features, Marketplace owners get the ability to perform customize on-page search engine fields for products – Title, Description, and Keywords. They can also integrate the marketplace with Google Analytics and Facebook pixels to track and report analytics on marketing and ad campaigns. Thus, empowering the Marketplace Owners to learn and improvise their strategies.