While it’s easy to assume that 199Jobs is simply the Philippine analogue of microjobs site Fiverr, the platform was created to solve a genuine problem.
Co-founder Glenn Santos was an entrepreneur who felt a genuine talent crunch in the country, particularly for part-time or project-based work. “So I turned to software to solve some of my problems and that helped a bit, but for some work like writing or design, I still needed a person to actually do the job,” he says.
He assumed there would be a platform where he could hire for such work. “I thought that there might be a local marketplace where people bought and sold services where I can simply order a task and it would be done,” he says. “Turns out, there was none, so I decided to build one myself.”
What’s the economic value of a microjob?
Part of the challenge in developing what would eventually be 199Jobs was determining the cost of the jobs for the price point – as in the case with Fiverr – would be integral to their branding. Prospective users needed to estimate how much they would have to budget for a particular task, and the right brand name could immediately convey that.
Co-founder Fitz Villafuerte says the team considered several price points. “We found out that 99 PhP (US$2.26) is too low for sellers, while 399 PhP (US$9.12) and up would be expensive already for buyers,” he says.
In the end, they settled upon 199 PhP (US$4.55). “It strikes a good balance where sellers would be willing to sign up and buyers would be willing to try out the service,” Villafuerte says.
Apparently, Filipinos agree – there are already 4,000 users on the platform who have posted more than 2,000 jobs. While most of the buyers are Filipino, they are not necessarily based in the Philippines. “Overseas foreign workers, Filipino-Americans, and foreigners buy from us, not just locals,” Santos says. “We get buyers from Australia, UK, Japan and even Vietnam.”
But what’s most interesting is not the user demographics, but user behavior.
According to Villafuerte, most 199Jobs members use the platform to pick up part-time work, and they do so in tandem with other sites, such as Freelancer.com, oDesk, or Elance. “The services they offer with us are usually tasks, which they can finish within a day,” Villafuerte says. “The fast cycle nature of the jobs allows them to earn quickly and easily, with very minimal impact on their other, larger-scale projects.”
A few 199Jobs users have started to use the platform exclusively. Villafuerte thinks it’s due to the straightforward nature of the jobs. “Very little time is spent on talking to the buyers about their requirements; and the upfront payment takes away the hassle of waiting to get paid by clients,” he says.
Since the jobs are so simple, some 199Jobs freelancers have earned good money from the site. According to Santos, the very top earner has already made more than 10,000 PhP (US$228.57). That’s in a country where the minimum monthly salary is not much more than 8,000 PhP (US$182.86).
Another one of their top earners is a student who picks up freelance writing work through the site. The additional income helped the student pay for his final year of college.
To succeed on the platform, Villafuerte emphasizes the need for social validation in the form of employer reviews. “The key to becoming a top earner on the site is to really do a good job and get those positive feedback because that’s a major consideration for buyers,” he says.
Santos recommends freelancers sell a skill that they can do well, over-communicate with buyers throughout the process, and promote the available job whenever and wherever possible.
See: Freelancer teams up with Malaysian government to get low-income groups into work
The future of microjobs in the Philippines
When Tech in Asia asked Santos who his team considers as competition, he did not shy away from naming the largest international player. “The big gorilla of course is Fiverr, as well as a lot of other microjob sites,” he says.
Rather than compete with Fiverr by trying to duplicate its model, the 199Jobs team is focused on where it can distinguish its own value proposition. “Fiverr focuses on serving Western markets, particularly the US,” he says. “We’re making a niche for ourselves by first focusing locally, then looking to other avenues for growth such as expanding regionally.”
Santos believes that the Philippines should be a hub for microjobs. “While we are the outsourcing capital of the world, Philippine businesses, especially small and medium enterprises, don’t outsource work to others as often,” he says.
Shouldering such work hurts their core operations, he feels. “Smaller businesses always try to do everything on their own, to the point that the work is done very badly, and that’s if it gets done at all,” Santos says.
In the same way that the Philippine government is trying to turn individual Filipinos on to the idea of online freelancing, so are Santos and Villafuerte trying to show small business owners in the country the value that micro jobs can bring to them.
They want to emphasize that outsourcing to freelancers can help business owners grow their business, or at the very least, give them time to focus on other things. The 199Jobs team understands that conveying these two points to their freelancers is not scalable, but for now, with the market being what it is, Santos and Villafuerte feel that it’s necessary.
The co-founding team even goes so far as to pinpoint how 199Jobs can exactly help business owners. “We’ve been contacting them directly, talking about their needs and trying to find out which jobs we have can help them,” Santos said.
Villafuerte uses the example of digital marketing. “Most SME’s would simply create a website and sign up for social media accounts, which would later become dormant due to lack of manpower or time to manage – that is unless they hire full-time staff, which can be expensive,” he says.
According to Villafuerte, the value of microjobs in general and 199Jobs in particular is that small business owners can more quickly test which marketing efforts are worth their time. The freelancers could experiment with everything from Facebook and Twitter to Reddit and Pinterest. “This helps them test out several social media channels at minimal costs, and see which ones will be effective for their business,” he says.
Meet 199Jobs, the Philippines’ answer to Fiverr
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