The advent of technology and changes in the market has already disrupted the gig economy, resulting in the staggering growth of on-demand services. This provides more high-quality services and options to the customers while also providing more income streams for workers. Services marketplace is also a lucrative business opportunity for aspiring entrepreneurs to tap into new markets.
If you are also among the crowd who have been thinking about building and launching a services marketplace, now is the right time. The global on-demand services industry will reach $335 billion by 2025. It is one of the main reasons service marketplaces are receiving great hype among entrepreneurs and small businesses.
What is a Services Marketplace?
Before directly diving into building a services marketplace, one should properly understand the services platform to make sure it is worth investing the time and effort. A services marketplace is a website where freelancers, private individuals, professionals, and companies advertise their services and get hired by the service seekers who need their help.
To put it briefly, an online services marketplace is an eCommerce platform that facilitates the buying and selling of services between a buyer and service provider. So, if the information has persuaded you, and you feel it is worth investing in this business, your next point of concern will be to decide the type of services marketplace to build.
Types of Service Marketplace
Services marketplace can be categorized into different types. Let’s have a look at the popular ones.
- Travel marketplaces provide travelers with accommodation, travel packages, attractive offers on vacations and excursions. Airbnb and Booking.com are popular travel marketplaces.
- Fitness and healthcare marketplaces help people adopt a healthy lifestyle by providing professional trainers, nutrition experts, and doctors.
- Education marketplaces offer live tutoring sessions and online courses in numerous subjects. Coursera and Udemy are some examples.
- Hyperlocal delivery and aggregator marketplaces build a network of local service providers to provide doorstep services to the customers. UberEats, Lyft, BlaBlaCar, are examples of aggregator marketplaces.
- Tool rental marketplaces provide customers with tools they require for a short time. For example, HomeDepot rents all types of tools, from drills to moving trailers.
Building an On-Demand Services Marketplace
Building a services marketplace includes several steps. Let’s have a look:
Choose a Niche
The first step is to decide which type of services you will provide in your services marketplace. Some of the most successful marketplaces have been focused on one niche and have outperformed their competitors. We have mentioned the popular niches in the industry above. You can either select from these or research for some more.
Determine USP of Your Business
Before you move ahead with finding service providers and seekers for your platform, determine the USP of your business. Try to get answers to a few questions like, “what value will you be adding to this industry?”, “What difference can you offer to your service providers and seekers that other marketplaces do not?”.
Make sure you stand out from your competitors and become the first choice for the service providers and seekers. Conveying what you can do better for them could be key to convincing them to join your platform.
Search for the Vendors/Service Providers
Once the niche is decided, the next step is to find the vendors for your marketplace. Please do some research to find out where the service providers of that specific area are available and reach out to them. Share the opportunity and incentivize them to work on your marketplace and become a vendor. Contractors and workers can be found on:
- Trade organizations
- Adverts of marketplaces like Craiglist
- Social media
- Your network
Find Service Seekers
Post recruiting enough service providers on your platform; you need to have many service seekers who will hire those service providers. Attracting service seekers to your platform can also be done in multiple ways:
- Content marketing
- Email marketing
- Community building
- Paid advertising
Build the Marketplace
Once you are all prepared with the requirements mentioned above, now is the time to decide whether you will be
- Building your platform from scratch
- Buy a readymade software
You can choose to build your platform from scratch. However, this will require you to hire a developer or outsource the task. Being a quite complicated project, the development of this marketplace will be expensive and time-consuming.
The other way is to buy a white label solution like Yo!Gigs and launch your marketplace with minimum effort. There are many affordable readymade software available in the market that can be used to build and launch a services marketplace. These marketplaces are usually integrated with all the basic and advanced features, making it seamless for the service providers and seekers to operate the platform.
Over to You
Even though building an online services marketplace does entail numerous challenges, the business idea is quite prosperous and has great earning potential. The steps mentioned above can help you build a strong foundation for your business. Get started and have your website up and running, and then you can always grow your platform.
