// Category: Development
Thumbtack Clone - How to Build a Website Like Thumbtack
// Category: Development
Thumbtack is a website where you can hire a private individual, specialist or company to do things for you that you don’t have time, desire or skills to do. The platform was launched in 2010 and in several years gained the status of a unicorn company with a capitalization of more than $ 1 billion. In this article, you'll learn how to clone a Thumbtack — create a site with the same features, similar design, and repeat its success story.
In terms of the operating algorithm, Thumbtack is an open multi-vendor platform like Amazon or AliExpress, only instead of goods on this site they sell and buy various services. Whether it’s buying food, standing in line, or drawing up a conclusion from an aeration expert, you can outsource it all with Thumbtack.
Benefits for Employers. The main value proposition for those who are looking for performers is the ability to quickly find a local professional in any field with transparent and competitive prices (250000 performers in more than 1000 services). At the same time, on Thumbtack you can find both a performer for a one-time job and a professional for constant cooperation.
Other benefits for employers:
Benefits for Performers. On the other hand, service providers can advertise their business on the site for free and without much effort, reaching over 10 million users. “The average Thumbtack specialist earns about $ 70 an hour,” said Marco Sappacosta, CEO of Thumbtack. Moreover, more than 40% of performers earn on Thumbtack from 50 thousand dollars a year.
Other benefits for performers:
When doing your service listing, you should analyze the region you are targeting. If you have many competitors that provide a wide range of services, then you need to bet on a specific niche (at least at the start). If there are no such sites, then you can follow the Thumbtack path, creating your own horizontal services market. To make it easier for you, here is a list of such sites in different countries, regions:
Features of the local market. This is another thing to look for when starting a Thumbtack clone site. Many such startups, such as TaskPorter, GoGetter, Butler and TaskIsland, have failed because they did not take into account certain nuances of the local market. So, when launching the Singapore listing of TaskPorter, its founder did not take into account the following features:
In addition, one can also note the difficulties that TaskRabbit encountered when entering the UK market. The startup team found that their tonality of providing information is not suitable for local residents. In the USA, texts and advertisements are presented in an enthusiastic style, while in the UK this must be done in a more restrained English manner.
Supply and demand balance. When you start a site like Thumbtack, you may not have enough performers to complete all published tasks. Usually this problem is solved with the help of an advertising campaign, which is launched a few months before the official release of the listing. But this does not always work, because marketers do not always choose the right target audience.
For example, it is believed that the best performers of everyday routine tasks are students, because they have a lot of free time and are ready to work for little money. Therefore, advertising is launched with an orientation towards this target audience. But the thing is the students are free only in the afternoon, while you need to walk the dog or buy food in the morning or at lunch (before the children return from school). Therefore, to search for performers of everyday tasks it is better to rely on the unemployed or students on external degree program.
Performer's profile. Each participant in your system who wants to be a service provider should be able to specify various details in his profile, such as a description of the services provided, rates, portfolio and more. In addition, it is important that the performer’s profile automatically displays his rating and reviews, as well as the number of completed tasks.
What else is important to consider:
To simplify and speed up the selection process, Thumbtack uses a questionnaire to automatically filter profiles. For example, if a customer is looking for cleaning services, the questions may be: “Which dates are preferable?”, “How many rooms do you need to clean?”, “Are there any pets?” etc.
Based on the survey, the system issues recommendations to performers. The place in the list of recommendations depends on factors such as proximity, skills and education, ratings, availability and time of the last completed assignment.
Job posting. A questionnaire is also used to create a service announcement on Thumbtack: city, business profile, price range and specialization (name of service). Next, you need to add a photo, indicate some details (business name, year of foundation, number of employees, address, etc.), add a brief description of your business and answer a few more questions regarding your business and target audience.
Communication between users. Already during cloning a Thumbtack site, you need to create a real-time chat function with the ability to video chat, use photos and links. Herewith, it is imperative to implement the message history function with time stamps for all activities.
What else to consider:
What is important to consider when implementing a payment system:
Typically, performers are judged by these criteria:
Subscription. In this model, most of the features are provided free of charge, while some premium features are available only by subscription. Money can be taken for connecting a chat, disabling advertising, expanding the coverage area and more. Access to the site only by subscription is not worth it, as this will greatly reduce the number of users.
Freemium. Assumes free access to the site, but with limited capabilities. If the user needs more features, he can connect them for an additional fee. Such a model is similar to a subscription, only in this case the user connects each function separately, and does not receive all the premium functions in one package.
Advertising. Some platforms provide their services absolutely free of charge for both customers and performers, and profit from advertising. This can be “highlighting” the profiles of performers and showing them at the top of the list for an additional fee, or it can be regular contextual advertising that can be connected using Google Ads.
As you can see from the table, to create a site like Thumbtack, you need from 500 to 580 hours of development, which will require at least 3 months of real time. If the hourly rate is at the level of 50 dollars per hour, then this budget of such a project will be in the range of 25 to 29 thousand dollars. The hourly rate mainly depends on the region of the technical partner: North America and Western Europe - 80-100 dollars / hour, Eastern Europe and East Asia - 40-60 dollars / hour, Africa - 20-40 dollars / hour.