Link to the site: https://bitcoinerfreelance.com/

The website is a freelance marketplace where all gigs are priced in Sats. You'll never see a dollar sign on the site. Users can both sell (post a gig) and buy services offered in gigs.

I originally came up with the idea when at a meetup in Oct 2022. Since then I have been working on it during weeknights and some weekends. It was my first time building / hosting a website from scratch, so I learned a lot along the way.

Originally, I had many concerns surrounding the need to prevent fraud on the site. What I discovered along the way that pretty much the only way to accomplish that is by going down the custodial route. There technically is a carve out in the FINCEN rules when operating a marketplace that you don't need to apply for a money transmitters license, however there are other legal steps you want to take to increase the likelihood that you don't become a target for legal action from FINCEN. Instead of worrying too much about fraud, I made sure to add a reputation score as well as reviews so that users can see which sellers have a good reputation.

Since custodial is out of the question for now, I went the P2P payments route. All payments are in lightning, because on chain fees are going to get pretty crazy here soon. You need a lightning address to post a gig, and buyers will pay you directly, without fees from the website.

I'm currently working on making it so that sellers can pay to appear higher in the search results. The search result ranking will depend solely on search word matches, then ranked by the amount paid by the seller to boost the gid. The boost amount will be visible directly on the gig so that buyers can see that the sellers have skin in the game.

Additionally, I am working on marketing, starting with twitter ads.

Lastly, I am participating in a startup competition put on by Pleb Lab, called Top Builder. Wish me luck!

I'm open to suggestions, feedback, and questions. There are definitely some rough edges on the site, but overall I think it currently provides enough UX to get off the ground. Let me know your thoughts and if you think the site is a good / bad idea!