199inr: Official Ramblings

Freelancing for everybody!

Win a Sony Cybershot Camera!

If the idea of making money by selling simple services doesn’t excite you enough, here is something to make the deal even sweeter for our fellow freelancers. Now you can win a Sony Cybershot camera. Yes this is true, we are giving away a Sony Cybershot camera and this is what you need to do to be eligible

  1. Create your account (if not already).
  2. Create one or more gigs. The more the better chance you have to win.
  3. Deliver at-least one order by the end of Jan 2012. Each delivered order gives you one ticket for the draw.

The winner will be chosen by a draw of lots of all the orders delivered by Jan 31 2012.

This is what you will win!

The camera will come with bill and 3 years manufacturer’s warranty. We’ll also include a 4GB card and a carrying case to get you started as soon as you get your camera.
 
We aren’t done yet!
All the sellers who will deliver at-least 2 orders with 100% positive ratings will get a 199inr T-shirt.

199inr, the simple maths

While working on 199inr, we used to bounce the idea off our friends. The intention was to sense their sentiments on the core idea and the fixed price of Rs.199. The feedback we got was mixed but not at all surprising considering that we ourselves have done all that mental jugglery around the price many times. People who looked at the idea from buyers perspective got very excited and immediately saw the value for themselves. This was also true for the people who saw themselves on the other side of the fence, except for the two questions “Why 199 bucks? and “Why the fix price?”.

 

Its true, 199 bucks is no way a sizable amount by today’s standards and its also true that not all services can be fit to sell for Rs.199. However, 199 bucks can easily become a price magnet attracting more buyers and orders than a higher price would. The thing to consider is that this is a new model for India. First people are still wary of buying stuff online, now couple it with the fact that they are buying a service where they don’t get anything tangible. So to encourage buyers to try out this model and the multitude of services available, we have to leave some money on the table for them.

 

The idea of a gig is of a small, simple but useful service that one can deliver in say 1hr of dedicated work. We’ll show why 199 bucks is not a bad deal for sellers at all. Here comes the simple maths to show how it can actually be as good as or even better than a day job:

 

Say a seller has 4 gigs listed on 199inr and is on average able to churn out 2 orders per day.

Earning per order = (199 – 29) = 170 bucks.
Earning per day = 170 x 2 = 340 bucks.
Earning per month = 340 x 30 = 10,000/- approx.

 

This is when one worked part time for like 2-3 hours per day. This would be equivalent to 30,000/-per month full time job.

So what are you waiting for, create your gigs now.