Hello, I currently opened up freelancebazar.com. It is an online marketplace for freelancers and outsourced professionals. While I seem to have no problem attracting the professionals, I am having a really hard time attracting people to post projects. All the professoinals that I have are going through the links that suppose to be attracting the people seeking projects lol. This is one of those sites that are hard to get started because no one wants to to use it due to it being a vacant dead house. Does anyone have any tips on how to get this type of site going? One of things I do plan on implementing is a referral program where people can earn 80% of all commission that an account creates for 30 or 60 days of there referal's signup. However, this will not do any good because I am going to guess service providers do not want to introduce competition. Anyways, please let me know and if you have any tips, advice, or ideas let me know. Thanks, Drew Dulgar
Post some projects there to draw attention of people and try to allocate things. I think you understand what I mean to say.
Its a little sneaky but you could potentially post a few projects under different accounts. If anyone contacts you about it you can say the position has been filled, this might help to create a little buzz. Offer some real incentives for people to post projects. For example, the first 50 people to post projects can post projects for free for 3 months. Hope this helps
That is what I was thinking about, creating a few extra accounts and posting projects. Even if people bid on them, i will choose one of my other fake accounts as the winning bidder to the project. Seems kinda cheesy, but i guess I have to do what I have to do. One side effect to this is the $5.00 refundable publishing fee. Account funding is currently done with paypal, and I cannot send money to myself lol, therefore I can't fund my own accounts on my site. ( I could manipulate the database, but I dont want to risk getting the accounting out of order.
I have to agree with tonybogs on this. Try to post some projects on there and maybe create some testimonials from others that have used the site. I know you don't have one yet but you might want to do the "sneaky way" again and create some so people can see its ok to post . Also you might want to indicate that it is free to post. Outline the advantages of posting and what it can save them.