TechFold - Bold tech & web commentary

SideJobTrader - Find those people that are great to know

There’s a bunch of people that - if you know them - can save you bales of time, money, and hassle. These are electricians, mechanics, roofers, painters, etc. - basically all of the trades that cost an arm and a leg through a contractor, but that can be paid with cash and a case of beer if you know the right people.

SideJobTrader aims to create a marketplace for making these connection - giving trades people an after-hours way to utilize their skills and make extra money, and consumers a way to get jobs done on an informal, less-expensive basis.

A noted in the SideJobTrader press release, this can be an ethical grey area - i.e.: if you take your car into the shop for work, and the mechanic offers to the work for half price at home on the weekend, its pretty tempting to take the offer - even though nominally you and the mechanic are ripping off the garage that’s brokered your relationship.

Releationship Brokering

Which perhaps provides the paradigm shift that underlies SideJobTrader: In many cases (small jobs), the value added by garages, contractors, dealers, etc. is a brokerage function - connecting consumers to tradespeople, and providing the work venue. SideJobTrader provides a means to disrupt and make that connection directly - a tried and tested “remove the middle-man” strategy. Where it can get sketchy is in bigger, more complicated jobs - in which case you’re paying that contractor not just for the connection to tradespeople, but for the management thereof, supply procurement, warranty, etc. - a different type of transaction entirely.

So - the moral of the story - perhaps - is that services exist on a spectrum of complexity and cost, and the decision on where in that spectrum to land is now in the hands of consumers.

Fresh Launch

At the moment, SideJobTrader seems to have the expected new launch sparseness - there aren’t many tradespeople in there yet. Given that tradespeople generally aren’t internet-centric and deskbound in their work, recruiting them into the service may be more of a challenge.

As you’ll see in the screencaps below, SideJobTrader is also working with a very utilitarian design. Perhaps because the initial focus of the site is on building a stable of tradespeople, there’s litte consumer-focus yet - search, for example, is not prominently featured on the homepage.

Craigslist, Credibility, Business Model

SideJobTrader faces an uphill battle in adoption: they’re not the first to offer a way to find informal workers. Craigslist and online classifieds spring immediately to mind.

More importantly, however is the notion of trust. How does the average person make one of these informal connections? Through a word-of-mouth recommendation from a friend. That recommendation conveys credibility - a metric which is currently missing from SideJobTrader.

Also working against SideJobTrader is the site’s business model: charging tradespeople to be listed. SideJobTrader charges $7/month, with slight discounts for longer periods, up to a maximum of 90 days. While charging may keep out spam, it will also keep out tradespeople who have many other free options (craigslist, for example) to choose from. Charging tradespeople seems directly contrary to the sites goals as it will actively work against SideJobTrader achieving any critical mass.

To me, SideJobTrader seems like a natural fit for an ad-supported business model anyway.

Summary

As a fresh start, SideJobTrader offers a compelling proposition - saving money and bypassing the traditional way of getting certain things done is appealing. The site’s current state shows that it has maturing to do from functionality (feedback loop, please), design, and business model (IMHO) standpoint. Maturation is an expected part of a new venture, however, and I’ll be following SideJobTrader as it evolves.

craigslist, sidejobtrader trades

Share This

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!