I've been thinking about a way to get into the freelance (virtual) workplace and compete with players such as guru.com, rentacoder.com, etc. Among the many ideas I've come up with, I'd like to share this one with BHW - hoping to get some good feedback. It's fine to take the idea and run with it - should you see potential in it

The Idea:
What if I create a freelance site with the twist of contributing to charity from every project completed? In other words, every time you buy services on the site, a portion of the money spent (on the site) will go to charity.

Buy, Sell and Give!

And now, it's time to get some feedback from you. Hit me!

On a scale of 1 [totally sucks] to 10 [has good potential], rate this idea!

Well, if you really do donate a portion to charity, you may get more people as their money is doing good and I'm sure you'll feel free giving you bit.

However, if you are pretending to give a portion to charity, I'm quite sure that's fraud and I assure you it will come back to bite you in the butt someday.

In fact, I wanted to make it non-profit. It's about doing good. Actually, I wouldn't be distributing the money; I'd give it to the members and they will give it to charity.

Originally Posted by danielgb123

Well, if you really do donate a portion to charity, you may get more people as their money is doing good and I'm sure you'll feel free giving you bit.

However, if you are pretending to give a portion to charity, I'm quite sure that's fraud and I assure you it will come back to bite you in the butt someday.

Originally Posted by pozedanjire

In fact, I wanted to make it non-profit. It's about doing good. Actually, I wouldn't be distributing the money; I'd give it to the members and they will give it to charity.

how do you garantee the members will give the money to charity and not just simply run away? Or pretended to have donated the money?

Good point. I'd need to think this through in more depth.

I really think charging 15% (like RAC) is way too much. Besides, if I have a good freelance site that's generating money I'll be satisfied with just a good salary.

I think having the charity touch will attract a lot of people. And we can indeed make a difference while buying/selling software services.

So maybe I should handle money distribution to charities - versus letting the people do it themselves.

So do you see potential in the idea?

Originally Posted by darkmobius

how do you garantee the members will give the money to charity and not just simply run away? Or pretended to have donated the money?

You could do it like this - say a certain percentage of all money earned from this site will be donated to "your favorite charity". Then you can give the option to the coders to donate a portion of their earnings as well (maybe set up a PayPal account to collect the funds from the coders). Once a coder decides to "give", then you could place them on a "Preferred List" on the front page. Also, I applaud your idea.

Nice idea pozedanjire; it's never too late to monetize the desperate and gullible.

There was this one guy who used a spin-off of this method. He made a reiki website, gave free "healing" treatments and after some time the people he "helped" started asking for certificates of his treatment (I suppose for some social proof purposes).

Bottom line: the "healing" is free, but the certificate of "healing" costs $15.99+shipment

Actually, this is serious. I do want a legit business out of this. There's money to be made in the freelance world - connecting buyers and sellers. However, I do not want to just build another RAC, GAF or Guru.

I want people to use my site because it's different. It needs to provide them something different.

At first, I thought of building a non-profit site. Then I figured maybe I can tie it all to charity.

So I'm serious about this. It's not about taking advantage of anyone!

Originally Posted by crofire

Nice idea pozedanjire; it's never too late to monetize the desperate and gullible.

There was this one guy who used a spin-off of this method. He made a reiki website, gave free "healing" treatments and after some time the people he "helped" started asking for certificates of his treatment (I suppose for some social proof purposes).

Bottom line: the "healing" is free, but the certificate of "healing" costs $15.99+shipment