Gig-workers should stop selling their time at a desk job and monetize their talents with the gig economy
By Philipp Toth
In the modern, highly-competitive workforce, many people in corporate positions are stuck doing a routine job that is neither fulfilling or engaging with their personal skill set. A recent survey by The Conference Board found that 49 percent of employees in the U.S. are not satisfied with their jobs. These corporate jobs may pay well enough to pay the bills, but the people in them are simply selling their time behind a desk, rather than involving themselves in work that utilizes their talents.
The gig economy might be a more fulfilling option for you
Everyone has at least three skills, things they are particularly good at, even if they are things that in no way apply to their current line of work. The power of the gig economy is that it opens the door for these workers to find a job that caters to what they are actually good at doing, or are passionate about, instead of simply what they happened to be hired for. Unsatisfied workers should stop selling their time to an unfulfilling job, and start monetizing their skills and talents.
For example, a quality assurance provider might be a really talented painter and spend their free time painting houses. If this person were to become involved in side-hustling, they could maintain their steady income from the quality assurance job, but begin earning money by doing what they love. Over time, as they developed a network of clients and have built up a worker rating history they can use to prove the quality of their work, they could eventually quit their quality assurance job and begin painting houses full time.
There are countless gig opportunities available to skilled laborers, but what many people don’t consider is that there are also many ways to monetize work they would be doing anyways. For example, someone who likes to take walks, could develop a peer-to-peer contract with a neighbor who has dogs, to take their pets for a walk everyday along their normal route. Another possible gig opportunity is if someone lives in the city and is the only one in their building with a washing machine, they could lease out its use to the rest of the tenants. Apps such as NextDoor are particularly helpful for learning about the needs of people in your local area, as well as contacting them to offer whatever services you can provide them with.
But the gig economy is far from perfect
Unfortunately, one of the major pain-points in the current gig economy comes along with the wide availability of non-transactional gig marketplaces, such as Facebook and Craigslist. The problem is that in order for a gig-worker to reach their full potential market of clients, they will need to manage accounts on every relevant digital matchmaking platform. This not only creates additional unpaid administrative time, but creates problems for their worker rating.
Every matchmaking platform has their own method of evaluating their worker reviews and ratings. This means that a gig-worker who is using five different platforms, would need to build up a strong rating on each of the five platforms before they can consistently and reliably earn new clients from them. This problem in the gig economy can be solved by a universal worker rating history, which can be presented to potential clients on every platform independent from that platforms own proprietary worker evaluation metrics.
Heymate is your partner in the gig economy
The mobile deal-closing tool for the gig economy generation, heymate, seeks to be the platform where everyone, no matter what profession they have, or what their skills are, can find and earn money by utilizing their talents and passions. Heymate, allows its users to create, negotiate and administer legally enforceable peer-to-peer contracts in under 20 seconds. These contracts can be for any type of work and can be presented on any gig marketplace, social media, email or even offline in person. This accessibility also means heymate’s own worker rating can be presented anywhere the offer is posted, which means that even if the worker is using a marketboard they’ve never used before, they can use heymate as a universal rating system to always ensure potential customers know their quality of work and trustworthiness.
Heymate aims to make deal-closing as simple as the good-old fashioned handshake.
To learn more about heymate, please visit our website at heymate.works or join our Telegram community (@heymate_official) to keep up to date on recent developments!
Heymate will launch to iOS and Android devices in Q1, 2019.
Philipp Toth is the CEO and founder of heymate, a portable deal-closing tool designed for the gig economy generation. Philipp has 12 years of experience in corporate value creation and operational excellence design and implementation, accumulated during his careers in management consulting and investment management. Heymate seeks to solve the gig economy’s efficiency gaps and payment deficiencies by allowing users to create legally enforceable peer-to-peer contracts online or offline within 20 seconds.
