Gumroad is a platform that allows creators to sell digital products, create custom landing pages, track sales and receive payments. They also don’t charge a monthly fee. Just a flat 10% fee on all transactions. As of Q2 they were making $5.3 million in sales and $2.6 million in net income.

Jobber is a platform that helps small home service businesses organize their operations from scheduling jobs and managing their crews to invoicing and collecting payments. They charge a monthly fee and are a large business with over $100 million in revenue last year.

So where’s the opportunity?

I think a simple Jobber with a flat percentage fee on sales would allow people to start their own micro-service business.

Are you going to pay a monthly fee if you only work three to ten hours a week? Nope.

But what if you wanted to start a side gig cleaning one house a week on Saturday between 10am-1pm?

What if you could just offer those times that were convenient to you???

That’s where this service comes in. You could post a landing page and then people could book your service online. Then when the job was done the system would take care of invoicing and payment processing. No monthly fees, just incremental cash flow for the operator.

The platform could also market services by city and make additional revenue through advertising.

Best part. The consumer experience. Instead of me trying to call or get quotes for a simple job, I can just go online and schedule someone to come and mow my lawn and pull out my garbage cans for the two weeks I’m on vacation. Or book someone to rake the leaves, or clean the house, or whatever small service I need.

There could be reviews and flags for supporting kids businesses as well. Heck, you could probably start one that was just for kids in school.

Biggest issue would be people trying to go off the platform to avoid the fees, but I think if you made the scheduling and payment processing seamless then that could help prevent a portion of it. 

Gumroad simplicity. But built for a micro-service business with scheduling included. Boom!

Business Ideas of the Week

• Automatic Evergreen is an interesting agency model that turns your content into a newsletter for $2,500 per month

• Potable water delivery can net you $150k per year

• There’s companies that test fire hoses for fire stations

Business Success Stories of the Week

Holme and Hadfield did their first podcast on Ecom Gold, they sell cases for watches, knives and other personal items. They launched on Amazon and sold $1 million in their first year, $4 million in year two and are on track to sell $6-7 million this year.

• Lucent Globe is selling $100k per day in dishwashing sheets

• Scrub Daddy is selling $100 million per year