Website Idea: Service Barter, Help in recession

This idea sprung up as I was thinking of the recession, I thought of different ways for people to save money. In the Philippines, we use the term called “Bayanihan” which means helping each other out. So I thought for us to save money, we can exchange services at no cost. The idea is basically I scratch your back and you scratch mine. Here’s how it works:

Imagine just like a listing or directory there would be listings for “Need, Services offered.” and with the directory there would be a list of specialty (e.g. plumbing, doctor, gardening, web designer). So members would be looking thru the Need section if they would like to help others in exchange for their services. And if members are looking to offer services, there would be certain criteria they could set for what service do they want in exchange. The member could screen thru a number of offerings and see what the other member has to offer thru their message and profile. “Services offered” will be filtered to be seen only by members who fit the criteria.

How it will be is for example Plumbing job in exchange for a website design or gardening in exchange for doctor consultation. As much as possible, it will be best to remove monetary value online as the helping hand of another member (especially during times of need, imagine leaking pipes and no one to help…) could mean a lot to another member at that given point of time. But dual type (service barter / monetary value) could still work, as long as the monetary value is lower than the going rate or is priced thru Crowd pricing (of what is the acceptable price by the members).

Feedback and Ratings will be crucial as it will be of great help to screen out certain spams or to give the members a better chance of screening before agreeing to a service exchange. Good (karma/samaritan) Points should be given to those who really helped members out.

Some unclear thoughts:

• Screening out adult type of services?
• If monetary value is added to the services, would the website use this as revenue?
• Who gives their service first?
• What happens if the other person simply didn’t do his said service to the other?
• Conflict Resolution?

What do you guys think?