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MenuHave there been any buyer-centric, bounty-based services that worked?
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Taskrabbit and oDesk.
Though over time the most common requests are usually standardized into products to reduce complexity for the buyer. For most buyers the open ended nature of a bounty system is intimidating.
Buyer Centric on it's own may work if the value proposition is strong e.g. Odesk, elance , every Job board under the sun (in some ways), etc.
Bounty based though is intimidating because of the process of defining rates is arbitrary, in a non f2f interaction it's much easier to have a pre-defined set of rules to engage in.
But there is a classic problem of chicken and the egg problem in a buyer-centric marketplace and if one does not think it through, you may be in for a very long haul.
A big (maybe biggest) reason why buyer initiated bounty markets don't work is that the buyer is shouldering the initial cost and risk. They have to take the effort to *maybe* get a result, when they're the one trying to spend money and want to be as lazy as possible.
In contrast, if they go to a seller-driven market ("I will sell this for $50") then they know those opportunities are ready for their taking.
The markets where this works are the ones where the demand-supply balance is so wonky and/or so liquid that a buyer is sure to get responses from sellers. Examples would be oDesk/elance/99 Designs, where people post "I want to pay $100 for xyz."
You could count the stock markets too if you include bid-ask systems.
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Related Questions
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When creating a marketplace, does it make more sense to focus on stimulating demand first or supply?
Focus on the more difficult side of the marketplace. For instance, if you think it'll be easier to get suppliers, then focus first on getting buyers - always be working on your toughest problem (aka your biggest risk). You'll find some great blogging on Marketplace and Platform topics here http://platformed.info (read the ebook too!)CM
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How important is it for a marketplace startup to drive enough demand (customers) for your supply (sellers) to make a full time living off of it?
It's very important. (first, read this article by Josh Breinlinger - http://acrowdedspace.com/post/47647912203/a-critical-but-ignored-metric-for-marketplaces) The way you achieve success in a marketplace is by driving liquidity for both your supply & demand. Demand-side Liquidity = When users come to your marketplace, they can achieve their goals. Supply-side Liquidity = When supply comes to your marketplace they can achieve their goals... which are almost always to make money. If you're making a large amount of your supply-side users a full-time income, then you're helping them achieve liquidity. Now it's not so black and white and it doesn't always have to be a "full-time income." It depends what their goals are. E.g., 1) At Airbnb, renters aren't looking to quit their day jobs and become landlords full-time... they're just look to earn a substantial amount of income to offset their rent, mortgage, etc. So in this case, I would probably goal on # of renters that earn >$500 / month... and (in the first 1-5 years) try to grow this number by 10-20% MoM... and maybe by just 5% once you're in the mid-high tens of millions in yearly revenue. 2) At Kickstarter, the goal of the supply-side is to get their project successfully funded. They don't care if the project creator is "full-time"... they just want to make sure they meet their funding goal. This is why they talk about their 44% project success rate all the time - http://www.kickstarter.com/help/stats 3) At Udemy, our instructors want a substantial amount of their income to be driven from their Udemy course earnings... so we look at how many instructors are earning >$2k / month.DT
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When recording income for a marketplace startup, is it typical to use the gross transaction or just the fees collected per payment?
You usually only recognize the commissions as revenues and use the term "Gross Merchandise Value" (GMV) to describe the size of the marketplace (value of all transactions going through the site)BW
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Is a subscription based model a viable monetization strategy for a mobile medical app? Is the app industry shifting towards this?
Freemium revenue for mobile apps was up 211 percent last year (2013), according to a report from mobile analytics company App Annie and IDC. 83 percent of the top thousand apps on each of the iOS app store and Google Play — monetize via freemium, an even bigger proportion of revenue generated by those top 2,000 apps arrives via freemium: 92 percent. Naturally, the key to success as an app developer who uses the freemium model is getting as large a percentage of your free users buying something as possible. That’s a significant challenge. You have to do what makes the most sense for your app and the users on it. You must create value for the user and make it compelling for them to spend money on whatever you plan on offering. In terms of viable it is tough to say because I don't know what your medical app does. 1. Look at the data from your app 2. Talk to your users about what they want 3. Look at what your competition is doing or others in a similar verticalTP
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Holding funds in a 2-sided marketplace?
Check out https://www.balancedpayments.com/ They are made for marketplaces. Airbnb CEO among others invested in them and they have some of the best pricing/payout fees. Also some good info on http://www.collaborativeconsumption.com/2013/10/08/online-marketplaces-are-hard/ One of Balanced Payments co-founders is writing this blog series on marketplaces.MA
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