Local community gig-work might be what your life has been missing
By Philipp Toth
Many freelance and gig-workers want to lend their services to their local community to earn their living. Every community has their own needs and opportunities for service providing, and the gig-economy provides a perfect entrance into that market.
While apps like Uber or AirBnB provide plenty of opportunities to get started working as a gig-worker, a lot of people want to have more freedom in the types of work they do, particularly those with broader skill sets and passions.
Examples of local gig-work
- Event planning
- Landscaping
- Carpentry
- Janitorial services
- Cooking and baking
- Dog walking
- Housing maintenance
Gig-work is your chance to do what you want, how you want
Finding the right side-hustle for you can be tricky however. Many skill sets such as detailing cars or wedding planning require a lot of trust on the part of the customer that you have enough experience to satisfy their needs, and may elect to go through professional service providers instead. One of the biggest hurdles to finding gig-work within your local community is finding the first few clients, especially if you are new to the area. While at the start it might be hard to find new clients, once you start building trust with customers they will be likely to return, and bring in new customers through word of mouth.
Examples of ways to find or advertise your gig-work
- Word of mouth (friends, family, colleagues, neighbors, etc.)
- Market boards (Craigslist, Oodle, Facebook, GumTree, Close5)
- Door-to-door pitching
- Posting fliers on bulletin boards or lamp posts
- Posts on social media targeting your local area (Facebook, Nextdoor, Twitter, Instagram, etc.)
Finding ways to engage with your community
There are many ways to connect with your local community, especially in the age of social media. One of the best social media platforms for finding gig-work in your community is Nextdoor.
Nextdoor is a social media platform that connects you to other users in your area. This allows them to share news about events or problems in the area and post requests/offers for services. While your mileage may vary with Nextdoor depending on how many people in your area use it, it can be extremely helpful for getting your name out there as a service provider.
The deal-closing platform for the gig-economy generation
Heymate is a mobile deal-closing tool designed to streamline peer-to-peer contract settlement, terms and conditions and price negotiations in less than 20 seconds. The mobile app allows any user to easily create contracts online or offline for any exchange of goods or services, and mitigates all the time-consuming terms coordination of the current gig-economy. Once two parties agree on the terms and conditions, payments are escrowed until the legally enforceable contract is settled, at which point the worker receives their payment instantaneously.
Local community work lends itself to the heymate platform perfectly. Users could, for example, meet their perfect gardener at a bar, send them a link for the heymate app, close a deal and have them show up for work the very next day. The same logic would apply to anyone who uses Nextdoor and sees that they fit the bill for some work that a neighbor needs.
Heymate is an extremely powerful tool because it can be used in any situation, for any type of work and between two people who might not even speak the same language, all within a matter of seconds. The platform’s goal is to become the new standard for gig-workers by being secure, fast and as simple and trustful as the good-old fashioned handshake.
The platform launched its invite-only alpha version in Sept. 2018, and will release to the public in Q1, 2019.
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!
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.
