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Show HN: A place to buy and sell services directly from each other

work.io

71–80 of 85 posts

Re: Show HN: A place to buy and sell services directly from each other

#71
post #46

Interesting, and nice design. I'd like to be able to add my github and behance.net profiles as well if I can. Those would reflect my skills a lot better than would my facebook. Also I don't really like that my username seems linked to whatever my email address was -- I should be able to display my real name, and if I can change that I haven't found where yet. What is the user ID for and why is it listed in my profile…

Thx for the feedback! Your should already be able to connect your LinkedIn account on your profile page. Github, behance and other identity providers of specific industries will be added in the future. Right now we fetch your name from the identity providers that you connect (e.g. linkedin) and fall back to the user part of your e-mail address if none connected. Being a little experiment, this is the only way to set…

Couple more things.

Why is it linked to my facebook account? I don't remember ever opting in for that. How do I unlink it now because my facebook account is not a business account.

For that matter, how much control do I actually have over what you pull from my accounts?

- Can I delete anything you add and unlink any accounts I link? - Can I opt not to synchronize my accounts or lock my profile at a certain state? - Can I delete my entire workio account if I want, and if so, what if anything does workio retain of my data?

Re: Show HN: A place to buy and sell services directly from each other

#72
post #66

All of your fonts are too small. All of your text colors are too gray. I'm in my early 30's with fairly good eyesight, and its just way too hard to read anything on your site. I tried signing up and going through the Sell services bit, but just gave up because the whole thing gives me a physical headache trying to read anything.

After zooming in a couple of levels I found the site pretty readable. Then again I'm using ClearType which looks horrible but at least has high clarity for old farts/cheap monitors like the one I use at work.

Related point. The navbar text looks terribad on Windows. Zooming in a couple of levels makes it pretty decent. Catering towards bad software sucks but is necessary in the face of market share if you're running a business.. :/

Re: Show HN: A place to buy and sell services directly from each other

#73
post #66

All of your fonts are too small. All of your text colors are too gray. I'm in my early 30's with fairly good eyesight, and its just way too hard to read anything on your site. I tried signing up and going through the Sell services bit, but just gave up because the whole thing gives me a physical headache trying to read anything.

We will work on that. At the moment the highest priority is to create great processes. Design improvements will follow. (Some small ones are already in testing as they are part of the process too.)

Re: Show HN: A place to buy and sell services directly from each other

#74
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, thanks a ton for the detailed feedback! 1) Solvate and many others. 2) Went with the current one to see what appeals to people, but like mentioned the industry specific landing pages will be a lot like you suggest. 3) Sign-In is both Signup & Login, the redundant one is just as backup (just to explain the thoughts behind it). 4) Still fiddling with this, most sites like oDeks et al do it, but nt yet sure if it's…

While you're taking suggestions, let me enter my information instead of parsing my social network connections: a) I don't have some of those social networks at all and b) I'm not going to let you have access to the other ones. I'm probably the ideal target for you, in terms of offering services, but I'm simply not going to bother if you require, even politely, intrusion into my life.

Understood.

You can offer services without connecting anything. Right now they additional info is only used for matching.

We will work on a way to enter information manually.

Re: Show HN: A place to buy and sell services directly from each other

#75
As many others have pointed out, I'm confused. Here's a good starting point for your pitch/value proposition:

1. What problem are you trying to solve? (It seems like you're trying to solve many problems at once, but state these with more clarity)

2. How are you solving this problem? (What part of your solution solves the problem and how?)

3. How is this different from the competition? (When describing how you are solving the problem what do people do today that you do differently for the customer)

Also, it appears there are two sets of value propositions - one for Buyers and one for Providers. You'll need to clearly explain both to each audience.

Edit- Oh and good luck! The technology itself is extremely impressive and good job looking for feedback....now iterate!

Re: Show HN: A place to buy and sell services directly from each other

#76
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote an article about this a month ago http://lucahammer.com/post/31269937454/startup-wording I know that we have that problem and we try to solve it. I believe that discussions like this one help with it. We try to describe what we offer and others tell us what they don't understand. We remove overhead from outsourcing. You define what results you need and the people on the platform deliver. No management needed.…

OK, so by mentioning 'outsourcing' we start to understand a bit more. You're focused on enterprise (or reasonable sized operations then?). Then you should say so. You have to remove all the jargon from your pages (and preferably simplify the text by removing a lot of it) and then explain your proposition like it was to a 5 year old (as someone else said here). Sorry to go on about this, but it's crucial if you're goi…

We don't use outsourcing because people assume it's for bigger companies. Also it evokes a negative feeling.

Recently a developer created a task. He has a popular plugin for an open source CMS and wants to offer a paid version of it. Therefore he needs TOS. Finding a lawyer who has the right expertise in that space takes time. Instead he went to work.io, defined what he wants as a result and paid. The task is now distributed to fitting lawyers and the developer will get back exactly the results he asked for.

On the other side is the lawyer who gets contacted by people who ask what random things cost. She has to make an estimate and doesn't always get the job. Often she has to explain things instead of just getting them done. She charges by the hour because every client is different. On work.io she has a a list of tasks, sees how much she will get for each of them and can fulfill them immediately. She doesn't have to run after the money because work.io can pay her as soon as the buyer accepted the results.

We already plan landing pages for specific industries as it is easier to explain it with examples. A marketplace for services that can be fulfilled without further interaction between buyer and provider.

Elevator pitch for my grandmother: Work has changed. You already experienced how less people were needed to work at farms while there was more food for everyone. Today factories get the same treatment. Intelligent machines, we call them roboters, can make many tasks and at some point in the future there will only be a handful of people needed to build for example a car. Most people work in the service industry. The teller at your bank for example. Or your taxi driver. Or the cashier when you buy groceries. These jobs will be automated too. I can use my computer to do the same things the teller does. It can talk with nearly all other computers on the world through some kind of phone line. While you need to go to the bank to send me money, I can do it myself. Taxis will be able to drive on their own and you surely remember the last time we were at Ikea were we used that laserthingy ourselves and paid with the plastic card instead of waiting in a line to have someone else to do exactly the same thing. Computers enable us to do things we paid others to do for us in the past in less time because we don't have to wait in lines. * ping * We are already there? On the way down I will explain you what work.io actually does.

Elevator pitch for my grandmother (second try): work.io enables people to work like they were employed by a company without the corporate bullshit. They get a list of tasks and can decide on what they want to work. They get paid by tasks and know upfront how much they will get for each of them. They even can do only a part of the task and someone else will do the rest. They will then be paid for the percentage they did.

Instead of enroll others, people who need something done can create a task on work.io and pay for it. We then make sure that they get the results they wanted.

This creates a much flexibler environment for everyone involved. Companies can be managed by a core team that gets things done by great people done as they need it. They can buy an evaluation of their idea, a list of competitors and all legal documents they need for incorporation and doing business. If they want to get into a new market they buy the needed insights. They can buy a marketing strategy and the needed copy. They can even have someone else to incorporate their company. Nearly everything is at their fingertips.

Re: Show HN: A place to buy and sell services directly from each other

#77
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thx for the feedback! Your should already be able to connect your LinkedIn account on your profile page. Github, behance and other identity providers of specific industries will be added in the future. Right now we fetch your name from the identity providers that you connect (e.g. linkedin) and fall back to the user part of your e-mail address if none connected. Being a little experiment, this is the only way to set…

Couple more things. Why is it linked to my facebook account? I don't remember ever opting in for that. How do I unlink it now because my facebook account is not a business account. For that matter, how much control do I actually have over what you pull from my accounts? - Can I delete anything you add and unlink any accounts I link? - Can I opt not to synchronize my accounts or lock my profile at a certain state? - C…

We do some auto discovery via your mail adress. Only public available data.

Right now you only can decide to connect or unlink your whole account. This is done on your profile page. Let us know if there is a problem so we can look into it. You can hide topics, industries and geographies we have pulled from your accounts.

If you choose to delete your account (no clickable link right now, mail us) we will remove all of your personal data. We will retain data you submitted as part of fulfilling a job. There may be backups that still contain other data by you but these won't be used if we can avoid it.

Re: Show HN: A place to buy and sell services directly from each other

#79
post #65

I think the problem here is that you're doing EVERYTHING. If you tested out a single vertical (e.g. legal work for startups), and connected it with a market of, say, well credentialed lawyers who're interested in working for themselves, then I would know exactly what your site is for, and how/when I might use it. If you tell me that I should use you for everything, I'm probably going to use you for nothing. Give the…

Landingpages for verticals are already planned. Thanks.

Re: Show HN: A place to buy and sell services directly from each other

#80
I created a profile (which was quick and easy, well done). I wanted to connect it to my LinkedIn profile, but apparently you require access to 1. my profile 2. the email I use for my LinkedIn account and 3. my connections.

I can understand 1, but not 2 or 3, and I'm not willing to provide them to you without a good explanation of why you need them. I imagine other users will feel the same way. Why not just require access to my profile? It's much less threatening that way, and you'll get more people connecting their LinkedIn accounts.

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