SetYourRate.com is Priceline for Local Services - ReadWriteWeb

In another source of a "Why Didn't I Think Of That" moment, I read this week about SetYourRate.com in Read Write Web. SetYourRate.com follows the Priceline model, allowing you to advertise for services on the website, naming a price your willing to pay and allowing service providers to either accept your price or ignore your business.

Now all it needs is a celebrity willing to take up it's cause for stock options just like William Shatner did with Priceline. Not sure that the Internet has reached the critical mass needed to make this work but I'm sure the said the same thing about Priceline a few years ago.

Read SetYourRate.com is Priceline for Local Services:

Buyers can browse the site's yellow pages-like listings of service providers, or they can enter a description of the service they're looking for and the price they're willing to pay. Service sellers can then browse those want ads and bid on jobs.

"The inspiration behind SetYourRate.com was that everyone has a marketable skill or service they can offer," said SetYourRate.com co-founder Luke Aviet in a press release. "The Internet has proved a great medium for buying and selling products. We are simply using the same principles to help buyers and sellers of services efficiently connect as well."

I'm not sure that professionals will buy into the name your own price idea, and from some scanning the web site it seems that most of the people offering services are amateurs or moonlighters. Indeed, according to the press release, "the most common reason people offer services through SetYourRate.com is to provide a second income." Certainly you can find reliable help that way, but for many people, I suspect the phonebook or broader local search sites that include user reviews will offer greater utility.

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