Here is a little backstory on how this idea came about.
So, I was watching a FireShip skit on YouTube the other day, titled "Why did my side-hustle fail? How to validate business ideas".
1 minute and 18 seconds into the video, FireShip highlights there being really only two options to growing your startup/side-hustle business. 1. doing the organic marketing yourself (investing time) 2. paying friendly companies like Google or Meta absurd amounts of money to appear on their platform(investing money).
Further along the video (1 minute and 44 seconds), with classic FireShip humour says, "no one wants to stand in a corner twirling a sign for the side hustle". Which is true.
So, if investing your own time towards organic marketing (twirling a sign yourself for your business) is not option and the alternative is investing large amounts of money for paid ads, what are start-up founders and side-hustle enthusiasts on low budgets supposed to do?
This question is why I am here on HN today. I am hoping to validate an idea I put together to address this problem.
I will not bore you with the specifics, but the basic idea is to have start-up founders on low budgets post bounties for their organic marketing, with whatever funds they have at their disposal. These bounties will have descriptions and set requirements specified by founders, on what type of content they want made to market their business.
With these bounties posted, content creators of all sizes, can participate in these bounties in hopes of getting a share of the bounty prize money for their top performing bounty entries, basically giving someone else the job of twirling a sign for your side-hustle.
There is a large population of aspiring content creators that want to monetize their content, many of whom give up early because of monitization restricts they struggle to reach (subscriber, follower, view counts). With this idea, content creators of all sizes can participate and earn from their top performing content.
Also, with TikTok having recently launched their "creator rewards program" to a select few regions, it isolates creators from other regions that really want to monitize their content without relying on sponsors.
This seems like a bleeding neck problem for these creators - so the market is there, and why I believe now is the right time to launch a service like this.
Well that's enough of me babbling. I would like to hear your thoughts around this idea, and if it can actually becoming something big if implemented.
Thank you for your time.
Not to say your version doesn't sound distinct. 'Bounties' sound more direct than Bark's system of scoring leads and charging for credits and credit packs. (a more detailed lead/bounty costs more credits/money to bid for). It sounds like your version would be a bounty being a budget from the poster and you'd take either a flat fee per bounty or a %?
There may be reasons why Bark runs the model on credits (perhaps it simplifies their service?) but I personally like the angle you have if it means the Bounty shows the client budget up front. It's a weakness of Bark that jobs posted often lack budget information, making it hard to assess if a job is worth taking. On the other hand, the startups and small businesses posting jobs often have no idea how much to offer for a budget. That's a pain point you should look at addressing too.
Essentially: definitely a market for this, it's all going to be in the execution, your idea sounds more direct than a leading competitor, but how do you deal with job posters who don't know how big a bounty should be?