How to Create a Freelance Marketplace like Fiverr

COVID lockdown changed the world drastically. More and more people started working remotely, and millions of employers worldwide switched from traditional employment to freelancing. Hundreds of big enterprises prefer dealing with freelancers instead of in-house experts. Moreover, the freelance market wasn’t hurt by the pandemic. It even grew!

Freelance websites like Fiverr are extremely popular today. Around 57 million Americans are freelancers. So building a freelance marketplace like Fiverr is a good idea that can make you rich. Let’s analyze the basic steps to follow that will help you built a robust freelance marketplace.

A Freelance Marketplace: Definition and Its Main Goal

It’s a platform where both business owners and freelancers can find each other. Here, companies can find individual experts for specific short-term tasks. In turn, freelancers can also apply for opened positions if there experience and skills match requirements.

Here are the main reasons why marketplaces are so popular:

• Such services are very convenient because it is very easy to find candidates for your work and to find tasks for freelancers.
• It’s an extensive database of talented experts.
• All marketplaces have time-tracking options. This means that an employer has precise information about how many hours were spent on this or that task.
• Such platforms have built-in payment gateways. Employers make payments via the platform in a few clicks.

Overview of The Main Options a Marketplace like Fiverr Should Have

To build a freelance marketplace like Fiverr, you should know the specifics of this business. Typically, such marketplaces have the following mandatory options:

• This feature is compulsory for both: a buyer and a seller. The process should be easy and fast. It would be great if you add the option “register via Google or Facebook”.
• User Profile. It should include general information, a photo, and users’ reviews.
• Search System. Any online marketplace can’t do without this option. A user should be able to search for the services by entering keywords in the search field. Moreover, the main page should be subdivided into categories and types of services. Fiverr also allows its users to sort by newest arrivals, recommended, and best selling. These categories also have to be added.
• Payment System. PayPal is the main payment option on Fiverr. But if necessary, you can also add other payment options like Visa, Mastercard, etc. Moreover, you need to monetize your platform; a Fiverr charges a service fee.
• Communication tools. It would be best if you either created a chat or added the button “Contact Seller”.
• Review System. A freelancer marketplace can’t do without this system. A feedback system provides a real source of information for all the users. After the task is done, a buyer needs to rate the seller and leave feedback.

Building a Two-Sided Platform Like Fiverr: Tips to Follow

The main goal of such platforms is to be a mediator between employees and employers. It helps millions of users from various corners of the world to find suitable work or employees. Here’s a detailed guide to follow.

Develop your business strategy

This field is highly competitive and it is really hard to make your platform popular and attract users to it. Why should users choose your platform? What makes it different? You should have some unique options that will definitely make customers choose you. So build your business strategy first.

Develop the architecture

The central part of your freelance platform is the back-end architecture. It shows how it should work, how all the components interact with each other and what value it brings to users.

User interface and design

To make a unique product, you need to conduct a comprehensive research. Analyze the most popular marketplaces, read a variety of marketing investigations and create a unique and user-friendly design.

Build a minimum viable product

If you wish to test your marketplace and check whether your audience is ready to use it, you can build MVP. It usually includes only basic options. In doing so, you’ll check your idea and decide if it is worth being used.

Choose the software solution

When you finally build your strategy, you should choose what software solution should be used. There are two ways to choose from:

• Custom development;
• Ready-made solutions.

If your overriding purpose is to create a long-term project with a variety of features, and a custom UI/UX, you should opt for custom development. In this case, you’ll be working with a qualified team of experienced programmers that are ready to meet your requirements. Our team has many years of experience in this niche and is ready to help you build a marketplace that will be the main competitor to Fiverr or Upwork.

QA tasks

It goes without saying that quality and uniqueness are your key priorities. Excellent quality is the main attribute your marketplace must demonstrate. There are lots of manual and automation testing tools that enable a development team to test the platform (Selenium, Capybara, etc.)

Deployment

When the product is ready, engineers face another task – to make it accessible in the web environment.

What Are The Key Benefits of Building a Marketplace from Scratch?

When it comes to building companies like Fiverr, there are lots of factors that you need to consider. However, if handled properly, it’s a profitable investment! Here’s a list of the main benefits of making a marketplace from scratch:

• When choosing custom development, you’ll make a peer-to-peer marketplace as you want it to be. A development team will implement all the features that you want.
• You know that gradually, your marketplace will be growing: the number of users, listings, requests, etc. Therefore, your software should cope with all these high loads. Otherwise, it will crash. When choosing custom development, you’ll avoid all these risks.
• When dealing with a custom development team, you’ll be able to integrate lots of options that will go perfectly with the software.

Overall, if your main aim is to develop a freelance marketplace like Upwork or Fiverr, you need to choose a future platform, determine a set of compulsory options and contact a software development team that can help you realize this project. We would be glad to help you with your marketplace idea!