Earnings on errands

One cold winter night in 2008 Lea Buske (Leah Busque) discovered that her Labrador over food, but go out in this weather out she does not like: "My husband and I had an idea how it would be great if you can had to go to the site and set the price you're willing to pay for his job. It is possible that some of the people who live nearby, would love to fulfill this unpleasant job. " Leah was so obsessed with the idea that a few months later moved from her main job and opened her own company called RunMyErrand.

With the money received from business incubators, in September 2008, was launched website errands, and after a few months it has had about three contractors who carried out hundreds of orders. The project is now renamed to TaskRabbit, has more than 2,000 users in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston and other cities of America. They perform a wide variety of 3 million jobs in the month.


"Take care of our compost pit": a message a few weeks ago published a young mother 27-year-old Rachel Christenson (Rachel Christenson) from San Francisco online TaskRabbit. Neither the Rachel nor her husband did not want to dig yourself constantly fills the compost pit. So she decided to look for her wanting to do all the nasty "dirty work" on the Internet. After 11:00 Christenson found contractor. 45-year-old research scientist Douglas Ivi (Douglas Ivey) received for his work to clean up the tank with $ 31cherez compost site.

The new generation of web sites and applications for smartphones allow people to put all the nasty chore on the shoulders of temporary "personal assistants." These workers take on a wide range of responsibilities - from small orders to perform a truly extreme tasks. For example, the authors of one of the ads, which was recently posted on errands TaskRabbit, looking for someone who can play their friend, who is a member of the department for work with clients. "Today is his birthday, and we need a volunteer who will call their client department several times an hour for four hours. The goal calls - as long as possible to keep the birthday boy on the phone "- read the ad.

Thousands of people who do not have a permanent job or work part-time, have made the implementation of such a chore in a single job in a regular source of income or part time available to work. For performing practical jokes often come from my mother, sitting at home with children, senior citizens and students. People working with specially selected second jobs appropriate to their skills and qualifications.

In April of this year, 24-year-old Eric Dumen (Erika Dumaine) saw online errands TaskRabbit ad to urgently buy and bring shoes to the address. Dumen bought and brought the shoes to the customer and received for his services $ 17. August evening on Friday, 21-year-old student at Aura Montano (Aura Montano) was standing on the Brooklyn Bridge with a sign "I love Anna Lewis." So she was able to draw the attention of the client's wife, who was returning on the way to work, and give her a bunch of flowers in his name. For his work, Aura was awarded $ 19.

Many investors have already noticed the benefits and prospects for the development of such projects. Internet trading platform TaskRabbit, which is owned by the corporation Zaarly, provides intermediary services in search of contractors and sale of goods. The company, which is based in San Francisco, recently received its development $ 14.1 million from venture capital company - investor Google Inc. «Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers».

Actor Ashton Kutcher (Ashton Kutcher) and clothing designer Marc Ecko (Marc Ecko) also evaluated the benefits of an unusual Internet project. In October, to the fans of Zaarly joined Meg Whitman (Meg Whitman), who heads the corporation Hewlett-Packard.

Zaarly project was launched a few months ago. Now with the help of more than 1,000 customers a week in their contractors. The average cost of a one-time fee for the performance of work is around $ 50. According to the president and co-founder of a 33-year Fishbeka Bo (Bo Fishback), about half of all transactions made through the site, related to the sale of a variety of goods, and the rest - to the provision of various services. The latter include, for example, a request to purchase a suit in the style of Michael Jackson for the dog.

Sometimes, however, the work can be much nastier. Thus, the actor John Barks (John Burks), who runs the Chicago-based studio, accidentally dropped during a rainstorm a bunch of keys in his sewer. As stated in its announcement, the lucky ones who will do the nasty job and finds all the lost keys, including the key to your home, office and Mercedes Barks, will get the reward of more than $ 100. Barks introduced a Google search query "loss of keys in a sewer," to find out which methods to extract key used other unfortunates. He even tried to get a bundle with a rod and a magnet, but all attempts failed.

After that, he put on the advice of friends on the site Zaarly ad, which immediately responded to the 27-year-old graduate of the University - one of the most active participants. Fifteen minutes later, the keys have been returned to the owner, for which the whole operation cost $ 80. "To be honest, I never thought that someone could help me", - confessed Barks.

Marc Ecko, who founded the multibillion-dollar fashion company named in his honor, published a specification for creating a cake for the birthday of his seven sons in the form of tin famous drink Barq's Famous Olde Tyme Root Beer with a recognizable logo. His son got a cake and Mark, in his words, "has become a hero in the eyes of a child."

Ashton Kutcher also repeatedly appealed for help to the site errands TaskRabbit for services from delivering a cup of hot coffee to find a teacher in Hebrew. And every request to work, which he published through the site (as stressed by Ashton himself, anonymously), was carried out very quickly. "Companies such as Zaarly, were able to use unemployment totally awesome and efficient way," - says Kutcher.

Leah Buske claims that to date feedback on the medium difficulty setting arrive ten minutes after placing the last. Earlier this period was half an hour.

56-year old resident of San Francisco Alan Greenham (Alanna Greenham) was no money and no job. She tried unsuccessfully to send their resume to jobs, while in April saw no ads to TaskRabbit. Applicants who wish to perform some task, must pass three phases. Filling out the online form, having a video interview and a security check, Greenham joined the ranks of "contractors» TaskRabbit. It performs a variety of jobs through the site every day, getting at least $ 25 per hour. She performed more than 250 jobs, and its income exceeded $ 1,500 per month. Greenham recently carried on his motorcycle with a sidecar small cargo from San Francisco to San Bruno (CA) and received for his work $ 100.

Participation in online errands TaskRabbit does not involve additional charges for posting job. The average cost of service fees of 15% of the promised compensation to be paid by the user who placed the ad.

Amazon Mechanical Turk service allows people to work remotely as temporary employees. According to the vice-president of Amazon Mechanical Turk Chiarelli Sharon (Sharon Chiarella), companies such as Microsoft and LinkedIn, are placed on the project proposal related to the management or the sort of content.

About a year ago a teacher from California, Chris Berry (Chris Berry) became involved site errands, to feed his wife and four children. 39-year-old Berry earned more than $ 10,000, doing unpleasant work with compensation of 10 cents each. According to him, he sometimes performed more than 1,000 orders a day, starting with writing tips on the game of golf and ending counseling young parents. "I'm not going to dwell on this - says Berry - I could play games on Facebook, or to spend time on other stuff, but from such an" unpleasant "work, I get a lot more fun."