Jobpic: An Auction Site for Services

Many web workers are familiar with bid sites like Elance — those sites where a person can post a project and solicit bids. Whether you rely on bid sites to sell your services or you just pick up the occasional gig for a little extra money, Jobpic has offered up a reversal of the bid site concept that could prove interesting for finding new work.

Rather than the traditional bid site approach, in which a prospective client posts a project and looks for the lowest bid, Jobpic allows service providers to post an offer and let prospective clients bid on it. You effectively auction off your time, hopefully getting the highest possible rate for your work. Officially, the site can be used for selling any type of service — there are a few dog walkers and house sitters looking for work through the site. However, it does have categories for listing both “creative services” and “writing and editing,” as well as other categories that may interest web workers.

In order to post a listing, Jobpic requires you to fill out a profile, with information about your skills and at least one portfolio piece in order to demonstrate your skills. Unfortunately, the site does not allow you to simply point to a portfolio of your work elsewhere. Once you have the required sections of your profile completed, you can create a listing for whatever service you want to offer. It’s worthwhile being specific in creating your listing: If you only want to auction off an hour’s worth of time, rather than an entire project, that information should be in the auction details. You can also set minimum bids or prices, as well as a “Book Me Now” price.

The listings already on Jobpic aren’t anything to sneeze at. As I was browsing through the site, I saw one web designer who had auctioned off her work with a final bid of $500. There’s a tendency to aim towards smaller projects on the part of sellers; at least to start out, that certainly makes sense. After all, you don’t have a lot of control over who bids on your time and you may not be the best fit for a long-term project. However, Jobpic can be a useful way to add some new work to your schedule.

Currently, Jobpic does not have as much traffic as it really needs to be a useful tool for anyone looking to add a project or two to their schedule, although based on the past few weeks of traffic, the number of users on Jobpic seems to be on an upward trend. If Jobpic can get the critical mass of users it needs, it has the ability to be a better source of income for web workers than the more traditional variety of bid sites.

Have you tried Jobpic? Was it successful for you?

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