Hey all,

For a while I've been trying to come up with a good idea for a community type website that will generate some good traffic and eventually a little revenue. I mostly just want something to sink some energy into - a way to keep up my PHP and design skills which would otherwise rot away at my desk job (as a C++ programmer). Anyway, thought I'd float an idea off everyone and get some reactions -

What do you think about a site (call it websitecontest.com or something) that lets people post their requirements for a website/page including buy price and then lets designers compete for the business - it would be kind of like a targeted elance but with the work being done upfront by the designers hoping to win a contest. I guess modeled after the way the Related Offers and Requests forum on here sometimes works when someone posts a request for design.

I've got lots of ideas like giving designers profiles and keeping track of a design portfolio. Maybe having the designers put templates up that people can buy even without starting a contest. For revenue I was considering charging a small percentage (say 1-5%) of the final win to the designer who got the business through the site.

What do you all think? Would you visit - as a customer? as a designer? Would this site even be useful to the community - is there a need?

Dave

elance.com clone? :) If you have time & money , why not.

This is a good idea, but you need a lot of money to publicise the site so that there is a lot of traffic going there at the same time. Its hard to slowly build from zero If there is only a few designers, no one will post work. If there is no work, there is no designers. This type of site is hard to start but easy once you got the ball rolling because once it has designers and work, both sides will be attracted until you just have to worry about bandwidth.

it sounds like a good idea, perhaps you ccould sponsor the related offers and requests thread to build up some traffic?

Are we allowed to sponsor forums? I have been trying e-mail EV1 about the top sticky post on the specials but nothing:(

I did kind of have elance.com in mind (see the origonal post) only base it more around a contest than their model. I was also thinking more for small to medium projects - nothing past a few hundred bucks. I know as a freelancer it's really really tough to get business leads from elance unless you're really good. I wanted to answer that problem.

I also don't have the money or desire to try and start from nothing and build to a big scale overnight. I've seen how leads are generated and how the process works on here. All it would take is to get enough people - even if it was just a subset of the folks on here at first - to go there instead of a forum. To make that happen I'm assuming I'd have to add some good value past what's available in a forum situation. You're right though - there is a major question of getting the designers to drive the requests to drive the designers - etc. Which comes first, the designer or the customer (rhetorical question)?

Don't even know if I'm going to really give it a shot or not - just toying with the idea.

Dave

thebyp2 -

That's a great idea! If WHT allows people to sponsor forums that would be the perfect place to get the word out and attract the right visitors. I'm guessing once I had maybe 10 designers and the people here who request web designs knew to try, it would slowly grow as more designers saw the one's on the site being succesful...

Dave

After you're up and running, I'd try to get listed in as many Webmaster Resource directories as possible. That should get you quite a bit of traffic for both clients and designers.

I, for one, would sign up to be a designer. I run a web hosting company, and would CONSIDER putting up a banner for your site for a month or so. Or mayber we could banner exchange, with both of us benefitting.

I'm open to ideas, so let me know.

James Cutlip