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MenuWhat can I do to be more than just a middleman marketplace?
My business sells office and coworking space online to startups and SMEs. I'd like to know what else I can do besides just selling space as the middleman. What additional value can I add?
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Hello:
Great that you have some traction in this marketplace. Now you’re looking to grow.
Your best resources for determining where expansion makes sense are your current customers. They know you, know what you offer and hopefully have a level of comfort with your business.
So reach out and:
* conduct a brief (3-5 question) survey on their needs outside of office/desk space
* talk to your best clients personally to discuss their office-related challenges
* meanwhile, are you doing everything you can do to build up your client base?
Lastly, given the knowledge you’ve built up around the office/coworking space, perhaps it’s time to explore acquiring your own property to run.
If you wish to discuss, send me a PM through Clarity for 15 free minutes.
Thanks,
Kerby
You can sell advice/consulting packages to start-ups/SMEs on best practices (choosing the correct space, negotiation, what type of leases, issues to watch out for, when to look for more space, etc). You can also sell consulting to owners who want to get into the co-worker space on best practices from their side, and how to attract start-ups/SMEs
A few quick ideas:
- Can you rent the furniture equipment (lease it on a monthly basis), for startups that don't want to pay the high up front cost?
- Can you offer a peer to peer listing service for other startups to sell their unwanted space or furniture to each other and you manage it?
- Can you add an option for individuals to book day rates to work from an office instead of coffee shops?
- Can you innovate on the actual financial model of the "selling of space", i.e. make a no down payment, have weekly payments instead of monthly for cash strapped companies?
- Can you rent our space in unorthodox places like bars, night clubs, and night restaurants that can pop up for day time work space from 8am-5pm?
Just a few quick ideas, would be helpful to know what your business is!
Here you can find useful tips on how to scale your marketplace - https://clutch.co/app-developers/resources/how-to-scale-online-marketplace-app \
Hope it will help!
Office for rental for the income profit buy more offices to charge for rental
Wow... my brain almost exploded with ideas.
Tip: Visit every Co-Work office site you can find + look at how they monetize their businesses with multiple streams of income.
If you get stumped just start booking calls with Clarity folks for direction.
When you find a person you work well with, hire them as a monetization strategist to help you optimize your money flow.
Your core value is marrying the buyers and sellers, what is your core value to moving out of the middleman marketplace?
If you can define the core value(s) well, you can consider diversifying to serve the same customer with a different range of products/ services (e.g. furniture, startup program ..) but are you doing it or still a middleman?
I think a good piece advise suppress millions, hope it helps.
This is a really great question.
It's not necessarily bad to be a middleman, but your intuition is correct — if you can move move downstream and directly tie into the value a customer gets, your customers are less likely to cancel/move out of your coworking space.
I'd think about this in three ways...
1) What are COMPLIMENTARY services you can offer your customers? In other words, what else do your customers need? The immediate thought for me are startups and SMEs always want more help growing their business. If you can give them a network of experts — like maybe access to a law professional 1x per week, an email marketing expert 1x per week, etc. — during physical or virtual office hours, that could be a huge benefit. Think about WeWork... it's not just about the space, it's about the benefits and network.
2) I think partnerships, in general, are highly underutilized but extremely beneficial. Think of all the local businesses in the area of your coworking spaces. Can you offer them gym discounts? Discounts to the local FedEx Kinko's for shipping and scanning? Most local businesses are desperate for customers, so the odds of getting a deal and increasing your footprint are easier than one typically thinks.
3) Ask your customers! When they signup or join, ask them what's the #1 thing they're struggling with their business. Most people are bad at telling you what they want (the great book "Ask" talks about this), but are GREAT at saying what they don't want, or their bad experiences in the past. Asking them their #1 frustration makes it easier than an answer to get their top 10. I'm not of the belief that the customer knows everything — you'll have to read between the lines sometimes and make some educated guesses — but it can help you sometimes get pointed in the right direction.
Hope this helps! If you have any follow-up questions, happy to jump on an hour call. We built an 8-figure online company by building complimentary products, so I'm familiar with how this is approached.
It great to see you want to grow more and achieve something 1st understand what you good at in thinking about the specific and important parts that no one else can provide but you. 2nd how you can improve that with your idea and skills 3rd create an online marketplace for your niche. To complete all this you have to understand what is chicken and egg problem and how the customer's cycle can work then only you can jump from being the middle man to entrepreneur
I've successfully helped over hundreds of entrepreneurs, marketplace owners, and businesses, and I would be happy to help you. Please send me more information before scheduling a call - so I can give you maximum value for your money. Take a look at the great reviews I’ve received: https://clarity.fm/ripul.chhabra
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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 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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Freemium v.s. free trial for a marketplace?
It depends on a number of factors but I'd boil it down to two key things to start: 1) What is your real cost to provide a free plan or trial? 2) Who exactly is your customer and what are they used to paying and who and how do they pay today? When you say "online workforce marketplace" it sounds as though you're placing virtual workers. If that's the case, or if you're paying for the supply side of the marketplace, the question is how much can you subsidize demand? Depending on where you're at in the process, I'd also question how much you can learn about the viability of your marketplace by offering a free version, assuming again, that free is actually a real cost to you. I was part of a SaaS project that started charging people for early access based mostly on just a good landing page (we clearly stated they were pre-paying) and were amazed at the response. I've also run a SaaS product that offered free trials and realized that the support costs and hand-holding and selling required to convert from free trial to paid wasn't worth it, this despite the product's significant average ARR. You might be better off providing a "more information" sign-up form (to capture more leads) and let them ask for a free trial while only showing your paid options. I've been amazed at the lead capture potential from a simple "have questions? Click here and we'll contact you" This is all the generalized advice I can offer based on the limited information I have, but happy to dive-in further if you'd like on a call.TW
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What is the best pricing (business model) to apply to a marketplace?
I like to separate your question into 2 sub-questions: #1 How do we determine which side to charge? #2 How much is the right amount to charge? On #1, my answer is that you can charge the side(s) for whom you add the most value. In your examples, Uber really solves a big problem for drivers, it's that they sit idle for a good part of the day, so are willing to pay a lot for new leads. (their alternative is no work) Consumers are charged more for the convenience of a private car but they are probably not so much willing to pay more for a taxi, even if they can hail one from their phones. For AirBnB, it's a mix, it's a way for landlords to monetize idle capacity which they are willing to pay for, but it's also a way for a renter to pay less than they would normally pay for a hotel. On #2 (how much), I like to triangulate a number of factors: - What's the maximum amount I can charge one side, while still being a good deal for them. - How much do I need to charge so that I can become profitable? (the economics are quite different if you charge 3% vs. 12%) - What are comparable services charging for substitutes/competitive offerings? I will just add that there is no formulaic way to determine pricing strategies (curated vs. open), and it's a lot more about what's the comparable and what the value delivered is. That's how I approached the question while deciding the business model at ProBueno.com (my startup)MR
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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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