I DELETED 90% OF THE SERVICES ON LEGIIT

I DELETED 90% OF THE SERVICES ON LEGIIT

Ok not deleted... but made invisible.

Around 2 years ago we made a risky decision at Legiit

You see one of the major pieces of feedback we got from people was that "there are so many services on the site I don't know which one to pick or who to buy it from"

We called it the Netflix problem... so much stuff you end up overwhelmed and choose nothing.

Further many of them listed their service and when the site didn't automatically reign money down on them they never checked it again.

At that time we would pause those every 90 days, then reduced it to 30... but it didn't help the Netflix problem because more, mostly reptitive services would fill in from the other end.

Further, around that time we made some decisions about who we wanted to be and how we wanted the marketplace portion to function and what we decided was...

...we don't want a lot of freelancers to succeed, we want the best freelancers to succeed and the rest to go elsewhere.

So less quantity, higher quality.

However we didn't want to shut them out completely either because we could end up missing out on new talent.

So we decided to do something radical.

Something risky.

Something no other marketplace had done before...

...we made 90% of the services on the site invisible.

They already had to meet a 55 point checklist to even get listed,, but after this change that still wasn't enough to get them into the marketplace, categories, or search.

Their services would show up on their profile, but not anywhere else.

It was up to them to prove to us that they deserved access to our customers by either bringing in their own customers, investing with us, using some of the tools we give them, or meeting some other criteria.

The logic was basically "The ones that just want to do commodity level work won't bother to do the work, and we will be left with only the ones that are serious about running freelance buiness and doing well by our customers."

I didn't want my marketplace overwhelmed with services most people won't buy, and I didn't want newer freelancers getting to practice on our customers' businesses.

This was a gamble of course, and the response from freelancers was... not positive to say the least.

We have at least 2 1 star Trustpilot reviews from freelancers complaining aobut it and got a lot of support tickets, usually from brand new freelancers who listed a service, immidiately searched their own services, asked or complained, then never visited the site again... so people we don't want anyway.

So it's bee around 2 years now and despite the risk and the challenges I can say with certainty...

...it was a success and the right decision.

The problem it set out to solve was the Netflix problem, and that largely worked.

We have the same amount of customers buying more services from less freelancers... for more money.

That was the goal and it worked... but there have been a lot of other side effects I didn't anticipate:

> Support tickets and chats have dropped significantly (Over 50%... don't have the exact number in front of me)

> The number of orders with a 5 star reivew has increased

> The number of orders with a 1 star review decreased

> Late deliveries dropped by 4%

> Approved dipsutes... meaning disputes where we sided with the customer (on site disputes) are down to .16% of orders

> Less new freelancers are signing up which may sound bad but is actually good

> Less burden on our support team so it freed them up to help our customers more instead of babysitting freelancers

> More on site advertising sales

> More Legiit Seller+ sales (dramitcally more)

> Chargeback and PayPal disputes are basically zero after being rampant before

...and our sales are up 20% YOY.

So this was a gamble, and one that came with some pain, but it turned out that it was the right decision.

The lesson to me from this is... decide who you want to be, and who you want your business to be... then figure out how oyu want to get there and just go for it.

It might be risky.

It might be painful.

...and you will second guess oyurself.

But if you are operating from a place of good faith and execute relelntlessly the results will follow on a long enough time horizon as long as you...

...Think Big.

Thanks everyone.

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