Online Community To Outsource Tasks

21/02/2012
By Staff Writers
In Cybershack News

In Beta version
Payment depends on task’s worth
You can vet people who do talks

Airtasker is a Sydney based venture that aims to provide a platform for Australians to outsource everyday tasks to people in their local community – similar to services that exist on Gumtree and freelancer.com.

Airtasker is an online community marketplace that connects people who need everyday jobs done with other people in their local area looking to earn some extra cash by running errands, completing handyman tasks and doing other odd jobs.

Posting a task on Airtasker is free and takes about two minutes. You only ever pay what you think a task is worth and when it’s completed. To get a task done, you:

Post on Airtasker what you need done and how much you'll pay for the service.
Runners (local community members interested in doing the task) can ask questions and then make an offer to help out.
Check out the Runner’s profile, history and ratings and, once you're happy, assign the Runner to the job.
Once the Runner completes the task, pay with cash or securely through Airtasker’s PayPal facility.
Runners pay a fee of $2 plus five per cent of the value of the task being completed and as a special promotion from launch, Runners can start using Airtasker for free without having to provide their payment details if they simply spread the word about Airtasker on either Facebook or Twitter.

A range of features have been built into Airtasker to help create a safe and friendly community for collaborative commerce. “Task Walls” let people chat about a task before working together. Airtasker can also verify users’ payment information and phone numbers through a SMS system. Community members are also encouraged to gather references and feedback reviews from people they work with. These features combine to help people get a picture of who they will be working with and will help build a thriving community-based marketplace.

Setting up an Airtasker profile is claimed to be easy. You can even sign up using Facebook Connect, which helps add to the trust and safety levels in the Airtasker community by allowing users to check out other people’s real profiles (public Facebook profiles only) and mutual connections before deciding to accept a Runner to carry out a task. People can even see if friends have worked with other community members before, increasing the confidence with which people use Airtasker.

Reserach carried out by Pure Profile for Airtasker showed that out of a list of tasks that Aussies wanted to outsource “assembling IKEA furniture” ranked higher than “turning up for dinner with the in-laws” and on the flipside, 40 per cent of people would be willing to assemble someone else’s furniture to earn some extra cash.

Other survey findings:

84 percent of Aussies surveyed aren’t on top of all their life admin chores, with one or more tasks sitting untouched.
More than 50 percent of Aussies spend four or more hours per week doing household chores. That's more than two working days per month.
70 percent of Australians would pay up to $20 to outsource their most hated errand whilst more than 30 percent of Australians would pay up to $40.
The task people hate the most and put off as long as possible is cleaning the bathroom and toilet (28 percent)
The task that people would most like to outsource is "turning up for work on Monday".
20 pecent of men said that they were on top of everything whereas only about half this number of women (12 percent) said they were on top of all their chores

Tasks people are most willing to do to earn some extra cash: