> "The biggest issue I see is the risk of extra-market activity"
Unless Get Maid can provide the users and maids with enough useful features that they see a value in keeping the long-term-arrangement through the system.
e.g. convenient (recurring) payment processing, giving maids increased visibility in one-off job searches based on number of long-term relationships, centralizing maid scheduling [1], factoring maid schedules into one-off job availability, factoring required commute time/distance into job feasibility [2], seamless arrangement of Maid-approved 'fill-in' Maids when they need to take time off or something comes up, centralized 'gig notes' that would be made accessible to any in-system fill-in maids [3], etc.
There's plenty of opportunity for Get Maid to make a compelling pitch to keep everything in-system.
[1] keys being: allowing the maid to set 'availability' to reflect their personal-life scheduling demands (including vacations and such), keeping all job schedules in one place, automatically keeping this calendar up-to-date on their smartphone, etc.
[2] A maid may technically be available at 3pm for another job, but if the 3pm job is uptown and she just wrapped a weekly 2pm gig downtown, it's not going to work. Keeping everything in-system will spare users the hassle of contacting maids who can't actually make the scheduled time and spare the maids the hassle of seeing jobs they can't actually take.
[3] how the client likes the laundry done, high-traffic areas, etc.
Agreed -- another question I have is how much $ they keep. If they're only keeping 20% or so and the maid is able to earn $36/hr, then that's a big incentive to stay in-system for sure. Also to your point, if they build in the features to allow for recurring arrangements with a "preferred" maid and truly give the maid a business-management system (i.e. tax prep help, income reports, etc.), then that's further incentive to do so.
Unless Get Maid can provide the users and maids with enough useful features that they see a value in keeping the long-term-arrangement through the system.
e.g. convenient (recurring) payment processing, giving maids increased visibility in one-off job searches based on number of long-term relationships, centralizing maid scheduling [1], factoring maid schedules into one-off job availability, factoring required commute time/distance into job feasibility [2], seamless arrangement of Maid-approved 'fill-in' Maids when they need to take time off or something comes up, centralized 'gig notes' that would be made accessible to any in-system fill-in maids [3], etc.
There's plenty of opportunity for Get Maid to make a compelling pitch to keep everything in-system.
[1] keys being: allowing the maid to set 'availability' to reflect their personal-life scheduling demands (including vacations and such), keeping all job schedules in one place, automatically keeping this calendar up-to-date on their smartphone, etc.
[2] A maid may technically be available at 3pm for another job, but if the 3pm job is uptown and she just wrapped a weekly 2pm gig downtown, it's not going to work. Keeping everything in-system will spare users the hassle of contacting maids who can't actually make the scheduled time and spare the maids the hassle of seeing jobs they can't actually take.
[3] how the client likes the laundry done, high-traffic areas, etc.