Going against the giants like fiverr & upwork being bootstrapped.
I’ve been building suprlance.com for a while now with my co-founder Aqib while having a full time job.
We took our own time trying to figure out what freelancers actually need.
Did surveys on Fb groups, spoke to people on Twitter, participated in discussions on slack groups and product hunt.
What we understand is this.
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People are too dependent on Gig platforms for work (which is a good thing for platforms)
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Being Independent is way to grow and build a sustainable business.
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Showing proof of work in a better way..
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Fudged review systems.. there are Gigs on fiverr Who promise reviews for your gigs on Fiverr 🤷
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Competing against low ballers.
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Heavy commissions (upto 30%)
What Freelancers need is a commission free marketplace
Proper proof of work to show on profile
Collaborative environment
Finding opportunities based on skills and not bidding systems.
Opportunity to grow and build sustainable business by that I mean a way to communicate with buyers and retain them for probably next gigs.
What we have built so far on suprlance.com ?
For Freelancers
- Show projects (portfolio)
- Connnect your own payment gateway and receive money directly to your account (stripe, razorpay)
Coming soon -> (paypal, flutterwave,Midtrans) - write your own blogs
- Sell Services
- Sell content
For buyers
- Dashboard to find the purchased content
- find bought services
- Donations
Upcoming Updates
- Freelancer Discovery
- Messaging options
- Seo optimisation of Blogs
- New landing page (current one is old)
- post job requirements (buyers )
- non fudgable Review system (still figuring this out)
Results so far
- Around 70 freelancers on the platform
- Who have done around 600$ worth transactions
Got the Above results by launching on Betalist & Betapage
Why I’m I writing this post?
This platform feels like is the only place where bootstrapped founders can get some viable feedback from other founders.
Note - screenshots on landing page are old af.. not updated..
Like it. I wish you success.
Curious though...
How will you make money?
What is your marketing strategy?
You mention success in attracting freelancers, but little mention of clients?
What - I assume - makes these kind of platforms challenging, is you have to market to two different markets and then freelancer covers a massively wide range of services
Did you considered niching down to begin with, say graphic design, then expanding?
Looks like you've done a great job nailing down what freelancers want, but what do clients want? I can say - with client hat on - as someone who hates freelancer platforms, that sourcing freelancers is hard and time consuming.
Hey Pruthvi,
As you have a marketplace here, I would say that it's definitelly important to make both sides happy. Buyers are the ones who will pay, so i think it's worth considering them even more (in order to try outcompeting Fiverr or Upwork).
As far as I remember, Fiverr, Upwork and other similar marketplaces used to have more freelancers than buyers. This simply shows that it's easier to obtain freelancers than buyers. Of course, you'll need freelancers to start of, but I would suggest to concentrate on "why should potential buyers choose your platform instead of Upwork and etc.".
That's just my opinion, hopefully it will help! ;)
Hey Aivarasaz,
That’s a good question, Definitely helps.
Yes we asked ourself this question.
Why would some body who’s used to certain platforms would want to buy from our platform.
I truely believe it’s not the platform that these buyers should trust but the freelancers.
As far as I understand there are two types of buyers
one who cares about the quality of work and not the price tag on it.
one who does care but doesn’t really matter as long as the work gets done under certain price tag.
I’m looking for the first type of buyer at the moment.
Freelancers who onboard on the platform are the one’s who match with the intention of the first type buyer, I.E to provide quality service & charge the price they deserve.
Second type of buyer will automatically switch when the demand flips.
For example platform like Gumroad made 180 mil in total transaction value and 10 mil in revenue in 2021.
Most of these creators sell on Gumroad sell info products and wide variety of services.
I’m not saying we are better than Gumroad but we are onto something big if this is executed well.