How does the Thumbtack business model work?

Thumbtack business model works on a single revenue stream where the company charges fees from service providers to list their services on their database.

Updated 1 August 2024

Chandrapal Singh
Chandrapal Singh

Director at Appventurez

Mobile applications have greatly benefited many businesses, providing immense growth and revenue generation opportunities. With on-demand service apps and versatile commercial platforms, individuals can delegate tasks to experts, enhancing their quality of life. The gig economy is expanding, offering incredible options for those who prefer flexible working hours instead of the traditional nine-to-five, Monday-to-Friday schedule.

It also allows organizations and new commercial job centers to showcase their skills while consistently earning well. If you are considering developing websites like Thumbtack, we’re here to help you take care of the process. Let’s start by looking at what Thumbtack is and how it became successful!

What is the Thumbtack Business Model, and how does it work?

Thumbtack is the USA’s biggest on-demand job commercial center that matches users with specialist co-ops. Regardless of what Thumbtack users need to complete ‒ clean the house or put together a wedding ‒ they’ll locate the best experts in the region.

Chief Marco Zappacosta and his colleague had the idea for building the Thumbtack business model in 2008 when they saw the trouble they were having finding a decent authority in their neighborhood.

He quoted

“The best approach to consider it is that this has been a truly hyper-divided industry, and it’s been difficult to survey who’s accessible, who’s certified, and the amount they will charge because there was adequately no basic framework on which these people were working. We are building that platform.”

In any case, the system didn’t become effective immediately. Thumbtack’s business model attempted to get projects or assignments and needed to reevaluate its underlying ways of driving the business a few times. These days, the platform offers users in excess of 1000 solutions and gifted experts to bring in credits through the platform in each of the 50 US states. As per the reports, the company has also secured a $275 million investment at a valuation of $3.2 billion.

Thumbtack Vs. Taskrabbit

Discovering help around your area is a splendid startup idea that has elevated work connections to the next level. It is surprising to realize that TaskRabbit and Thumbtack’s business models only emerged in 2008, one year after the launch of the first iPhone.

Leah Busque, the founder of TaskRabbit, quit her programming position at IBM to start her own venture after recognizing the need for such assistance. As is often the case, she first encountered the requirement for task runners and began searching for organizations that offered such services.

Failing to find anything, she launched her own business to help individuals who needed assistance with their daily tasks. At the same time, Marco Zappacosta and his team developed their platform, Thumbtack.

Thumbtack Vs. Taskrabbit

Their thought came from the longing to take the Craigslist idea and change it into a job commercial center. In contrast to TaskRabbit, which focused on home tasks, Thumbtack business model didn’t confine the regions of specializations. Presently, Thumbtack is designated “the Amazon of home services” and is viewed as the greatest delegate in its specialty. 

Thumbtack Business Model

Thumbtack utilizes an alternate adaptation closer to the ones we use on comparable platforms. In the first place, experts needed to buy in to look for bids for employment, yet the organization that chose this methodology sometimes needed to catch up to their foundation.

These days, the Thumbtack business model utilizes a compensation for every lead plot, which implies experts are charged when they begin visiting with likely users. The amount of this expense depends upon various factors, such as the cost of the service, the size of the undertaking, and even the opposition in a specific circle.

Although this thumbtack revenue model has worked for quite a long time, not all specialist organizations are content with it. Leads don’t generally transform into users, so experts sometimes need to pay without bringing in cash.

Crucial Thumbtack Features

As a startup, you should start development with the most irreplaceable highlights that give the most significant advantage to the users. For that, start with prioritizing highlights to pick those the venture can’t survive without. These are the Thumbtack features that render the possibility of your venture. 

Service Provider/Tasker Profile

Each professional who will offer the solutions should have the option to build their profile and add significant prices, portfolio, references, and cost. So, adding all these options to mobile app onboarding is crucial for better management.

Consequently, surveys, appraisals, and the quantity of conveyed assignments on the profile should give users more certainty about choosing the expert. These Thumbtack features allow them to spare time to check the accessibility of the Tasker for the essential date and time. 

Job Posting

Numerous websites, such as Thumbtack for business, utilize a wizard of questions to pose to a pretender to depict the assignment. This spares time and streamlines the process of presenting an interest. In addition, users can add all the prerequisites and desires in the post. It will rearrange the process of finding a specialist co-op in a specific area.

Easy Payment Integrations

As the entire commercial center’s idea is to create opportunities for taskers to benefit, you must add advantageous, secure, and generally utilized approaches to pay and get installments. There are several digital wallet trends available in the market, as API and Thumbtack business models have the option to utilize them.

Most platforms utilize an escrow technique where the customer pays ahead of time, yet the cash is kept in the intermediary account until the undertakings are finished. At the point when the undertaking is endorsed by the user, a tasker gets their installment, barring the platform’s bonus. This gives security to all parties involved, including the stage.

Search & Match

Both Thumbtack business model and TaskRabbit are enormous frameworks with a large number of solutions and variations of blends. To improve the quest for positive assistance, they give an arrangement of channels by territory and solutions.

To reduce the pursuit time to seconds, stages propose to pass a concise meeting of 5-10 inquiries to channel profiles. The coordinating may likewise consider such factors as abilities, closeness, evaluations, accessibility, or the recency of the last finished task to show the best outcomes first.

Such a methodology smoothes out the entire cycle, decreasing the time usually spent on checking every boundary physically and independently.

Communication

Furnishing your users with helpful methods of interaction is significant. When in doubt, it isn’t sufficient to have work posting portrayal fields alone; most of the time, it is important to explain the subtleties, send photographs, or add a few inclinations in close-to-home addresses. 

Keeping all information inside your site keeps individuals from leaving to offsite couriers. Thumbtack features don’t fret if customers impart outside the platform, as they take payments ahead of time for each lead whose contact is shipped off the Tasker.

Rating & Reviews

Reliability is one of Thumbtack’s main features. Other than the not-so-subtle personal research for users, audits are perhaps the most ideal approaches to demonstrating the standing of the network individuals.

To the extent numerous positions are managing home visiting, looking after children, caring for, and so on, users will give extraordinary consideration to the input of the individuals who recently utilized the administrations. The survey should likewise be confirmed to build reliability.

To simplify the tasks of building a website like Thumbtack, here is the infographic that can help developers choose the right technology stack for your app:

How to build a website like Thumbtack?

Regardless of what item you need to work on, there are a few things you need to do before beginning the turn of events. 

Determining your Niche

Picking the correct specialty can decide your business’s success, yet high rivalry can make it difficult. That is the reason you should do thorough statistical surveying to comprehend where you have the most obvious opportunity to succeed in building the Thumbstack business model.

On-demand job commercial centers differ in the number of solutions they offer, from one-stage service provider applications for canine strolling to multi-service applications like Thumbtack. It’s imperative to analyze the circumstances in the territory where you will launch your product and pick a solution appropriate for it.

Start with an MVP model

Integrating MVP in a startup before launching an undeniable item is helpful for new companies. Counting just the main highlights that will fulfill your users’ necessities, an MVP causes you to rapidly launch a product available.

In addition, an MVP permits you to get criticism from early users and improve your item to give a superior user experience. Thumbtack, TaskRabbit, and other on-demand task commercial centers are focused on two kinds of users: users and specialist organizations.

Validate your business idea

Approving your business thought is absolutely necessary before you begin taking a shot at an idea. Business idea validation allows you to examine your business possibilities, rivals, and monetary open doors to shape your business thought. This is what services like Thumbtack are all about; it has been so impactful.

Choosing from the trending app ideas for businesses is an asset that can assist you with approving your business idea quick. Take as much time as necessary and fill in all segments of the canvas format. The following is a Thumbtack business model that can fill in to act as an illustration for your own.

Monetization Options

As the platform organizes every one of these associations, it ought to get some benefit that can be gained from the accompanying sources:

Commission

The most well-known approach to benefit from this service is to take the mobile app monetization models from the arrangement. It very well may be:

  • A rate from the installment for the total work. For instance, TaskRabbit takes 15% of the absolute cost by the Tasker for their finished administrations.
  • Pay-per-lead model, a fixed expense for a lead associated with a tasker. The Thumbtack business model energizes 20% for each lead that is reacted to by the specialist organization. However, the association may not be mandatory to lead to an arrangement.

That is why this strategy is frequently tormented by the Thumbtack taskers. They state that the number of qualified prompts generally leads to a low number of people even considering utilizing the stage.

Subscription

You should give a freemium bundle of essential highlights or lead restrictions and permit users to redesign administrations for cutting-edge openings. A few platforms offer their coordinating types of assistance for nothing, both banners and temporary workers.

They charge for advertisements and features of the specialist co-op in the top positions to bring in cash. Apps like Thumbtack utilize this model very well and have become one of the top revenue-generating apps globally in recent years.

Partnerships & Collaborations

Organizing with certain brands like Ikea, eBay, or Amazon allows you to get a subsidiary commission from buys, just like the Thumbtack revenue model. Simultaneously, you’ll give a ‘all-inclusive resource’ user experience, sparing their time and expanding their fulfilment from utilizing your foundation.

For instance, a commercial center for discovering independent fashioners and modelers permits furniture and stylistic theme shops to be attached to ventures. This provides a bit of genuine incentive as users can right away book the thing without the need to look for comparable things on the Internet. 

Build Trust for your Platform

Trust is one of the central viewpoints to consider when creating an on-demand task commercial center. Professional organizations enlisted on an undertaking site regularly need to visit users’ homes, so users need to be certain they’re recruiting reliable people.

One approach to expanding trust in your foundation is to execute an evaluations and survey framework. You can likewise consider personal analysis for experts to give users true serenity.

How Appventurez can help you build a website like Thumbtack?

Thumbtack serves as an excellent on-demand commercial job management platform for skilled workers. In exploring the essence of Thumbtack, we delve into the underlying vision that propels businesses to establish such a platform. At Appventurez, where we function as a leading website development company, our approach aligns with a belief in impactful ideologies. We meticulously shape these ideologies into successful products within the marketplaces we navigate. Collaborating with us provides a strategic edge in the competitive landscape and ensures access to the ideal tech stack for developing your next business app.

FAQs

Q. How Does Thumbtack Make Money?

Thumbtack makes money by charging service providers to find leads and contact customers. The website allows the service providers to choose the customers they want to work with and vice versa. The cost of a lead on Thumbtack fluctuates on the basis of the value of the job.

Q. What Makes Thumbtack so Successful?

Thumbtack aims to provide a convenient and efficient way for customers to find, research, and hire local professionals based on their individual needs. For the professionals, Thumbtack offers a platform to showcase their services and grow their businesses.

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    Chandrapal Singh
    Chandrapal Singh

    Director at Appventurez

    Director and one of the Co-founders at Appventurez, Chandrapal Singh has 10+ years of experience in iOS app development. He captains client coordination and product delivery management. He also prepares preemptive requisites and guides the team for any possible issues on a given project.