Tradesmen Finding Employment Online In Economic Crisis
Tradesmen are now turning to websites such as MyHammer to find work
Everyday news about the credit crunch and resultant recession seems to get gloomier. The pound is weak against most currencies, house prices are dropping and everyone is tightening their purse strings. Tradesmen and labourers are amongst those who have been hit the hardest. However, a number of resourceful tradesmen have been able to use online resources to beat the crunch.
Tradesmen are now turning to websites such as MyHammer to find work. The website is an online marketplace for tradesmen and people looking for their services. It allows tradesmen to find a large pool of jobs and create a rating based profile. From June to December 2008, 7,153 jobs were awarded to MyHammer tradesmen and these jobs had a combined value of over ?200,000.
In January alone, over 1,000 tradesmen found work on MyHammer. Nearly half of those were awarded more than two jobs.
"Despite the credit crunch I’m booked up for months with MyHammer jobs," says Raymond Lynn of Monray Domestic Services who has been awarded 50 jobs since joining MyHammer and has a 100% customer rating.
Robert Swift the UK manager of MyHammer says:
"There are always people who need jobs doing around the home. The trick for tradesmen is finding those people. MyHammer provides the kind of marketing power that most independent companies do not have. We have thousands of jobs all over the country, centralised on our site for tradesmen to browse and quote on whenever they want."
MyHammer works by allowing consumers to post their jobs on the website. They appear on pages such as the one below, which is a listing of all carpentry, handymen and joinery jobs currently being offered:
Those jobs are then free to view and tradesmen can quote on jobs that are relevant to them in terms of location and area of expertise. Communication with the customer is done via the forum where questions can be asked. Once a quote is accepted and the job is done, the tradesman receives a quality rating from the customer allowing them to build a national, online profile.
About MyHammer
MyHammer launched in Germany in 2005 where it has quickly become the largest internet portal for consumer services, with over 25,000 job postings running at any one time, and over €120 million worth of jobs posted on the MyHammer portal in 2007. In Germany, over 500,000 members have registered for free with MyHammer with over 1,000 jobs being posted daily. The services available on the MyHammer platform cover the entire spectrum of the trade and service industry, from general repairs and home improvements, right through to delivery and rental. Users can post their jobs on the MyHammer platform for free and tradesmen and service providers can then make informed offers to win their business.
