Can you build Fiverr.com in Webflow?

can you build fiverr or artwork with webflow ear table and zapier in today's video i'm going to be breaking down the individual features and tell you how easy or how hard it is to build certain types of features with the no code stack that i'm using so without further ado let's get into it friends welcome back to the channel if you're new here my name's connor and on this channel i make a whole bunch of tutorials that will help you set up your own online business or marketplace using noco tools like webflow ear table and zapier so besides making these videos here i also coach people on setting up the mvps using webflow ear table and zapier and occasionally people also reach out to me to do entire builds for them and one of the most commonly requested marketplaces that i get are platforms like upwork or fiverr if you have watched any videos on this channel before you'll know that i have set up my own freelance marketplace in new zealand called unicorn factory and that is probably one of the main reasons why people want me to help them build their own version of their local freelancer marketplace and oftentimes what they are looking at is for something like the unicorn factory but with the functionality of fiverr and artwork now one thing that i want to say straight off the bat is that even though unicorn factory is a freelancer marketplace it operates very very differently to platforms like top tower upwork or fiverr for example i have a completely different business model the way that their platforms work is that they actually clip the ticket on the way through when people make transactions through their platforms whereas i have a membership model another big difference to what i do compared to those other freelancer platforms is that they usually make you communicate with your client inside of that freelancing platform whereas i just fought on all the information of that particular lead to the freelancers and then let them take it from there outside of the actual unicorn factory so when i started the unicorn factory i had to pretty much make a decision very early on whether i wanted to clip the tickets on all the individual transactions that happened along the way or whether i wanted to go down the lead generation path where i would just charge a membership fee but then not charge for the lead generation itself so the few reasons why i decided to go down this path the first one is i kind of feel like as a platform i shouldn't be intervening in the relationships between the clients and the freelancers so i just decided that i just want to forward on all of that information to those freelancers and then kind of let them take it from there the second reason is i also didn't really want to take the responsibility of you know the actual transaction that happens between the freelancers that creates a lot more work it creates a lot more responsibility and as soon as you do the lead generation and you basically tell people that it is up to them to do their own due diligence a lot of that responsibility is basically passed on to the freelancers and to the clients which makes your job kind of a bit easier thirdly and more relevant to this video here also building a platform where you can actually keep those transactions online and keep the communication online is quite difficult with the existing noko tools that are out there at the moment so in today's video i'm going to be going over some of the key functionality of platforms like fiber and upwork and i'm going to tell you how easy or hard it is to rebuild it using the webflow ear table and zapier stack but before we get into it if you're new to this channel then please do me a quick favor and subscribe to the channel also while you're at it please like this video it's always much appreciated and it lets me know that you want me to make more of this type of content but without further ado let's just check out the first feature so let's just start off on fiverr and we'll go and have a little browse through the site and the first thing that i want to look at is the actual listing pages for all the different services that they have to offer on their platform now if we go and have a look at their listing pages you can see that the main difference between what they do and what i do is they promote the services whereas i promote the freelancers now this is a classic listing page and some of the functionality that they have on there are things like the ability to save certain gigs to your personal list and then you also have the ability to select things like um top rated seller and a whole bunch of other factors that allow you to basically filter out different types of services so all of that is definitely possible with the website ear table and zapier stack in fact this is quite similar to what i'm doing with the unicorn factory and the tool that i use to do all of the filtering is a tool called jet boost and it allows you to do exactly this all you need to do is you need to create different cms fields inside of your collection and then what jet boost will allow you to do is to apply these tags to your search and then it will automatically filter out all of these services or my case freelancers one thing that i don't have on the unicorn factory is the ability to save to your list and now that is something that you can still do though using jetboost so they actually built a functionality that works with member stack where you can basically create a page that only displays all of the different services or gigs that you selected for your short list by using a combination of the two features that they have on member stack and jet boost now the next thing that i want to go and have a quick look at is the actual listing pages so in this case i'm referring to the pages with all the different gigs and the first thing that stands out here is the gallery where you have a range of different images with examples of the work that that particular freelancer has done and that is something that i have on the unicorn factory as well and you can use something like the cms lightbox on webflow to build the exact same functionality now another thing that they have on this page is um a review section with different reviews from different clients of that particular freelancer and that is something that is also possible inside of webflow so what you'd do is you'd create a collection and then you'd actually have to use a little bit of custom code to create this slider functionality but in theory that is very very doable so overall most of the design layout things that you have in here are very very doable with the existing stack that are out there right now so so far so good now the next thing that i want to look into is user accounts so on the unicorn factory i have user accounts for all the different freelancers and on that particular page on the website they can do things like apply for jobs that have been posted to our job board they can edit their profile they can upgrade to paid memberships and do a whole bunch of things like that on fiverr though you have user accounts for the freelancers and for the clients and that is something that i currently don't have on the unicorn factory because it poses some technical challenges with the existing tools that are out there at the moment now in theory it would be very very possible for me to use member stack to create accounts for both freelancers and for clients i have however run into little limitations where a user can't have both types of memberships at the same time so what i mean by that is a freelancer can't be a client at the same time however that is a use case that comes up very very often and the problem with that is is that if a freelancer tries to switch from the freelancer account type to the client account type they oftentimes end up cancelling their memberships that are associated with the accounts and that oftentimes causes issues in terms of them being able to access certain types of features and overall it's not fantastic now i want to say straight off the bat that membership is thought in the very early stages and what they have done for the noco space is absolutely phenomenal but that has been a feature that they just haven't implemented yet but i do kind of expect them to build it over the next year or so so this is definitely some functionality that a lot of people feel they must have in the first iteration of the freelancer marketplace and that is something that might be a little bit of a roadblock if you want to go down the webflow ear table and zapier route it most certainly affects the second most requested feature for people wanting to build their freelancer marketplaces and that is in-app messaging now the way that fiverr or upwork works is they make sure that the freelancer communicates only on their platform with the clients so that they can be sure that they don't get cut out of the transaction that happens after the client comes to an agreement with the freelancer so if you ever use fiverr to hire a freelancer and you mention the word pay in the message they basically notify you telling you to better not leave the platform otherwise everyone will get banned this is something that i here are must have for people wanting to build their own freelancer marketplaces and that is something that is currently just not possible with the webflow ear table and zapier stack now in theory you could build a messaging type app by connecting the cms to each other and i've actually seen people attempting it but even if you could build it and you could design it to look as slick as it looks on fiverr i would absolutely not do that because you're gonna run into scaling issues with the webflow cms so i would genuinely just stay away from it and that brings us to our final feature which usually ends up being the deal breaker for a lot of people wanting to go down the webflow ear table and zapier stack and that is how payments are processed through the different platforms now the one thing that everyone wants to do is process payments through their platforms and it makes sense obviously clipping the ticket along the way can be very lucrative if you manage to get a lot of freelancers on your platform and manage to get a lot of clients booking freelancers through your platform but oftentimes you're going to run into issues with the existing tools that are out there right now that will allow you to process payments in the way that you intend to now i haven't tried this myself but in theory you could try to build a payment system with webflow e-commerce and then connect it through zapier ear table member stack but from what i've heard there are some slight limitations with the actual zapier integration for webflow e-commerce but i'll get back to you on the specifics about that in the future because i actually plan on attempting to build something with that exact outcome now one thing that will definitely not work is the ability to split the payments to your own account into the freelancer account and i believe on stripe the actual functionality is called stripe connect which is what a lot of marketplaces use and at the moment there is just no no code solution out there that allows you to do that now there are certainly some little hacks that you can come up with for example with jotform where you can just connect a specific form to a different freelancer profile or a service profile you could also potentially try some things with member stack where you create a bunch of one-off payments and then connect them to those accounts but again those are hacks and you do require a bit of experience in the no code space in order to make that work overall i feel like the best solution at the start is to just validate your marketplace and your platform by seeing if you can attract enough freelancers to the platform and generate enough demand from the business side in order to then decide whether or not it makes sense to go down the path of building a custom version of your freelancer marketplace now of course because i talk about no code on this channel i do also have to bring up bubble again i don't know that much about bubble but i do know that a lot of the functionality that i mentioned in this video that were not doable with webflow ear table and zapier are definitely doable with bubble the thing about bubble is you're gonna have your own types of issues and limitations that you're going to have to deal with even though you can build those types of features some of the issues that you might run into are things like the seo but also the design functionality side of things again oftentimes the whole thing in the noco space is it's a game of trade-offs and priorities and you just have to figure out what is most important to you and then evaluate based on the tools that are out there what the best fit is for you i think one of the things that people oftentimes find and they usually find out after they have built everything is that half the features that they feel they need in order to figure out if their business is worth investing in or not are not actually necessary when i started the unicorn factory i started with the absolute bare bones of what was required it was just a simple webflow cms collection that had different landing pages for different freelancers and that gave me enough insights to see that there is a bit of demand for it from the freelancers and from businesses and that allowed me to start investing a bit of money in the platform but also more importantly more of my time now if this video convinced you to just start off with the absolute bare bones and the essentials and you need a little bit of help then just jump on over to my website i run a little program called the mvmp program where basically help you get your version 1.0 of your marketplace up and running it can be in whatever niche you want i usually recommend people focus on local marketplaces to start off with but just check out all the information on the website and i look forward to having a chat with you soon other than that that was it for this video hopefully we'll see a lot of developments in the no code space over the next year so that i can then make a renewed version of this video basically telling you what new features are possible and what's not possible other than that thank you so much for sticking around for the entire video and if you are new here then please remember to subscribe other than that i'll see you back here for the next one bye

Channel: Connor Finlayson

Views: 2,299

Keywords: webflow, airtable, memberstack, no code, fiverr.com, freelancer marketplace, marketplace app, marketplace app development, webflow tutorial, freelance marketplace, airtable automation, no code tools, webflow ecommerce

Id: Wor5tL_Dcbo

Length: 11min 21sec (681 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 04 2021