Freelancer.com, currently one of the biggest online jobs marketplace in the sector, has now ventured out into household businesses. The company has launched a new marketplace for local plumbers, cleaners, cooks, etc. to offer their service on demand. Initially, the marketplace will operate in its home market, Australia and then expand globally this quarter.
Freelancer’s existing business connects job seekers to those who are looking for freelancers for their projects. With this new service, the company has jumped into offline jobs market. The service will work alongside its existing online business.
The company currently has more than 15 million registered users from over 73,000 cities. At any given time, 2 million people are bidding on jobs, claims the company’s CEO.
Matt Barrie, CEO of Freelancer.com, said,
When you have the largest and most liquid online services marketplace in the world with over 15 million registered users, it is natural for us to expand our business to encompass location-specific tasks. Now, a family in Delhi can hire a local electrician to fix the wiring in their bathroom, a business in London can hire a local events specialist to run their product launch, and a young professional in Sydney can hire a removalist to move houses – all utilizing our existing marketplace and products, such as our Milestone Payment system.
The company is not partnering with other providers to expand its new local service network. Instead, it is hiring professionals for the expansion and this new service business. It will use the same commission structure for local service business which it uses for its online marketplace. The company will take 10% commission of every transaction a user makes.
To become the biggest online job marketplace, the company has made about 17 acquisition to date, including Warrior Forum which is considered to be one of the biggest forum for internet marketing. But, the company does not intend to follow that strategy for its new local jobs business.
The company has calculated to represent at least $75 billion per annum in gross payments with the new offering. The Total Addressable Market for the company is also estimated to increase to hundreds of billions per annum. Only in U.S., the temporary labour market is estimated to be on the order of $100 billion.
Freelancer’s new offering has a potential of growth but it will have to compete against established names in the same domain. Amazon recently entered home service business and Google is also reportedly close to launch its own local service marketplace. Other players in the market include Ebay Hire, Angie’s List, Handy and TaskRabbit among others.
