(Nothing to do with the For Nine Pounds blog)
(Nothing to do with Ireland’s most famous blogger and author)
I love the idea of 50 pieces for 50 euros that happens every year with Habitat in Dublin and I love the idea of poundshops or Euro2 stores, as they’re now called, where everything under one roof is a simple set price. So I was wondering about the idea of a website that aggregated offers from Irish companies. Services for a flat fee of 20 euros.
Examples:
For twenty quid we’ll give you a domain and hosting for a year.
For twenty quid I’ll give you a twenty minute skype consultancy on what you need to change on your website frontpage to rank higher for certain keywords.
For twenty quid I’ll upgrade WordPress for you.
For twenty quid I’ll design a simple logo for you.
For twenty quid I’ll write a press release for you.
This wouldn’t be like the fantastic Bargain Alerts forum on boards.ie that highlights special offers, but which time out after a while. The forum too concentrates mostly on products of all types. The For Twenty Quid site would offer services as these are social things, in a way since they connect people together. Also too the offer would ideally be there for 6 months or at minimum 3 months.
I’d see it as a way for people with a limited budget to get something quality for a “must be stolen if it’s that low” price and as a foot in the door for those people that want to sell on additional and more in-depth services. Unlike some kind of Buy and Sell listings, there would be quality control so not any auld crap can be offered or useless stuff that isn’t of any use unless you pay for another product or service.
Every offer too would have a feedback option so you can read the reviews of the services that have been offered. Reviews are good.
I’m wondering what people think about such an idea and would they offer their own services on the site and what would they offer for twenty euros?
Is 20 Euros too cheap? Would dealing with 20 euro payments mean too many resources used to cash them? Should it be set at 50 euros to get rid of messers?
The other option is to just do this over a set few weeks every year where all money goes to charity and people are in effect donating their services in exchange for money going to a charity. It would be nice to see a blogger born charity initiative doing the rounds.
There’s a lady down the docks will do a whole lot for 20 quid… lowest common denominator as usual
Great idea for traffic.
You could also do it by time. 1hr of X. 1hr of Y. not as good though.
I’d go with €50 at least. Perhaps multiple levels of offers, in increments of €50.
For 20quid it is a pretty good idea. I could see myself going to http://www.20squid.com and impulse buying loads of stuff. I wouldn’t spend €50 unless I really needed to.
Really cool idea Damien.
Simon,
If I remember my Peter Cook and Dudley Moore correctly, a conversation with your sort goes:
“good morning (5 shillings), how are you? (10 shillings) how may we help you? (15 shilllings)…”
The idea of layering the offers so that you can aggregate your consulting needs in increments of €50 is good. It provides an incentive perhaps for two or more people to pool their expertise so you might get 1hr of input from 2 people for €90 if you take the ‘bundle’.
So if you wanted advice on the legal issues of data protection and the practical process-y and IT things you might do to ensure your data is protected you could buy a bundle of advice from two sages.
Or one sage and an onion.
Good idea! Have you heard of the Internet Bargain of the day site? Its very popular in here. http://www.ibood.com/
So that’s what IBOOD stands for!
sweet damien.
you need to sit on your hands awhile
Not only it is a good idea but it will work and make money. We all like simple things and one price makes it easy.
In a previous life, I was doing hotel promotions. Hotels were loading their spare rooms in our system at a set price, €99. The concept was many hotels, many locations, one price. It worked so well that it was hard to believe, thousands of bookings every day for everywhere. People were just calling the line to get away because it was so simple.
My take is 50quids is better. Most developers, designers, writers, entrepreneurs etc.. could charge an hour of work and advice for 50quids. 20quids seem low unless it was only for charity.
Sounds like a freelance jobs site (of which there are tons of out there already) – with the “usp” of one single price. Can’t see it working to be honest.
For a charity angle. There are plenty of opportunities for technical people to volunteer services at http://www.volunteeringireland.ie/
Brilliant idea…
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Cool article.
I hope you’ll surf on my site..
Thank You Again