Looking for bargain? Welcome to the web

Christmas is a peak-time for retailers. But, everyone knows that this has not been a great year for them. Marks & Spencer, for example, had pre-Christmas sales to boost business. In the last month alone, many large high-street chains, including Woolworths, Zavvi, The Officers Club, and Whittard of Chelsea have collapsed into administration.

On the other hand, Amazon claims that this is their best holiday reason ever. ReadWriteWeb also has some data showing that online sales are going strong. Why has the recession yet to hit Amazon and
other online retailers?

This is the time that online retailers start to show their cost advantage, and grab market share from the traditional retailers.

Why is that? It is simple. We are in recession, and are much more cautious about spending. We want to stretch every penny further. We want bargains. Online retailers are in a perfect position to serve consumers well in the current economic climate.

Online shopping is an experience everyone is familar with now. Online retailers have improved their online shopping experiences dramatically. Now it is simple, hassle free and secure. Moreover, online deals tend to be better than those found on the highstreet. There is no reason why
online retailers can not continue to grow.

Although the recession is a major crisis, it can also be an opportunity to some businesses as well. Consumers always have needs but their purchasing behaviours change under difficult economic situations. Online retails are able to continue reducing prices in such conditions, and
therefore can continue grow.

I think this is a great opportunity for MinuteBox also. People are looking for bargains for tagible goods. They also want to get bargains for services, which is one of the benefits MinuteBox is aiming to create

for its users.

We are now in the last development and testing phase. I cannot wait to launch our site and offer our service to our users. If we can serve our users well and create bargains for you, we have a good business at a time of recession.

Sell your time Online or Offline

Last week a friend showed me a new website, HourVille. He thought that in them, I might have a direct competitor. I had a very quick look at the website, trying to find out what they are trying to do. It is quite interesting that they are advocating a very similar concept: "selling time", but they are not a direct competitor.

Basically, HourVille is a marketplace for users to sell their services by hour OFFLINE. Yes, that is the difference. Minute Box wants users to sell their time ONLINE.

You may ask if that makes big difference. I would say, yes, that we have similar model but in different markets.

I remember when I had just come up with the idea of creating a website for people to sell their spare time, I was thinking about the same issue; should I let users sell their time online, offline or both?

Before long, I chose online. But why? At that time I was thinking, 'what if a person is paid via Minutebox to clean a flat, and then ends up robbing the house?'. It seems a huge responsibility if our marketplace is for offline services. Even though you can disclaim this kind of responsibility in your terms and conditions, it still seems very troublesome to me.

HourVille is a cool website. You can easily arrange someone to offer services and pay for that on their website. Before HourVille came along, GenieTown is another similar marketplace that exists for users to offer offline services. They are both great websites. Since MinuteBox has a similar concept to HourVille, it will be interesting to see how they grow.

However, I still believe I made the right decision in choosing to focus on online services.

1. Geographical limitations:

If you are looking for offline services, you are probably looking for someone in your own city, town or somewhere close by. That is the reason why HourVille is now focusing on Texas, their home base. GenieTown has a similar strategy of focusing first on some specific locations such as Palo Alto in Silicon Valley, and then expanding to other areas.

Since services on Minutebox are delivered via online chat or e-mail, our users are not affected by these kinds of geographical limitations.

2. Barrier for users to sell their time:

Some users sell their services for living. They see these online marketplaces as an ideal channel to sell their services via, in addition to more traditional marketplaces.

Some users are just amateurs. They see these marketplaces a place to generate some extra cash. eBay is a great example. You can see a lot of professional sellers as well as amateur ones there.

To these time-trading marketplaces, the amateur sellers can be the magic Long Tail. Since they do not do this for living, the marketplace needs to make it very easy for them to sell their spare time or they simply will not bother. Furthermore, marketplaces for online services actually have many advantages, allowing them to attract such amateur sellers. Firstly, users do not need to travel. They sell their time from home with their PC, Internet connection, and maybe a mic or cam. Job done.

During the economic downturn, it is a great thing for users (be they professional or amateur), to have different ways to generate more income. We are now in the last stage of development, after which we can launch the new version of the site. We are targeting the 10th of January 2009 as our launch date. Hopefully we can offer users an even more easy and flexible way to monetise their time and skills. Let's beat the recession together.

P.S. I have created a group on Facebook called "Sell Expertise in Your Spare Time: MinuteBox.com" for MinuteBox. Join us if you are interested. Also, if you are a twitter user, follow us.