Here is an inter­view with Swapaskill.com founder Nicole Wehden:

So Nicole, Who came up with the idea of Swapaskill?

I did.

How did you come up with the idea for the website?

I had a belief that the inter­net could do some amaz­ing things for mankind if we use it in the right ways. I spent a lot of my time think­ing of ideas to do this and came up with many ideas but none of them was quite right. The idea came to me one day when I wanted by bath­room floor tiling and found that tilers were very expen­sive. I thought to myself “I wish I could find a tiler who needs a busi­ness coach”. Some­thing then came to me. When I was young, back in the 1960s I lived in a small com­mu­nity where peo­ple in the street used to use their skills and hob­bies to do favors for each other as a nat­ural part of com­mu­nity life. As a result, every­one was bet­ter off than they would oth­er­wise have been, in terms of what we gave each other, and also in terms of the per­sonal sat­is­fac­tion that comes from mak­ing a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence to some­one else’s life. Those mem­o­ries came back to me which trig­gered the idea that we could bring back this com­mu­nity spirit with the added ben­e­fits the inter­net can bring. My mind started to think about how great it would be to be able to go to a web­site and find peo­ple who want to swap favors who have skills I need and who are look­ing for my skills. Many skills can be swapped online so the oppor­tu­ni­ties are world­wide as well as local.

How long did it take you to do so?

I spent a good year or so try­ing to come up with the right idea. I had very spe­cific cri­te­ria which I would highly rec­om­mend to any­one want­ing to start an inter­net busi­ness. They were;

1. The idea will make a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence in some way
2. The idea has PR poten­tial – a story that the media will be inter­ested in. This gets you free PR and gives a great start to the busi­ness whilst build­ing the brand.
3. The busi­ness can be finan­cially sus­tain­able in its own right with­out hav­ing to rely on adver­tis­ing. The jury is still out on whether or not adver­tis­ing as the only form of rev­enue is sus­tain­able model and I think it’s wise not to rely on it.
4. It was a cause I per­son­ally believed in and that I could get per­sonal ful­fill­ment and enjoy­ment out of.

For the first year or so every idea I came up with met some of these cri­te­ria but not all. Swa­paskill met every­one and more!

How much invest­ment have you invested in Web­site (From Scratch)? (Time and mon­e­tary value)

This is an inter­est­ing one. I have per­son­ally spent very lit­tle money. Why? Because I swapped skills with a web devel­oper. That devel­oper and his col­leagues now own shares in Swa­paskill and we have a fan­tas­tic part­ner­ship with skills that com­ple­ment each other. There are many web devel­op­ers reg­is­tered on Swa­paskill so lots of oppor­tu­nity for bud­ding inter­net entre­pre­neurs. Peo­ple can join up for free and find web devel­op­ers and design­ers from around the world who may well be inter­ested in col­lab­o­rat­ing. It’s a fan­tas­tic way to build an inter­net busi­ness. I would rec­om­mend you give the devel­oper shares in the busi­ness. If they have a vested inter­est they will make it a pri­or­ity. If you have a great idea you can keep down your costs down by col­lab­o­rat­ing instead of buy­ing the web design and devel­op­ment skills, plus get­ting some great PR sto­ries to mar­ket the site. Also, nowa­days there are some great viral ways of mar­ket­ing your busi­ness which are rel­a­tively cheap. Like plug­ging into Face­book so mem­bers can invite their Face­book friends auto­mat­i­cally in just two clicks. If your mem­bers believe in you, they will rec­om­mend you.

How would you mon­e­tize Swapaskill?

I can talk gen­er­ally on this. The obvi­ous one is always adver­tis­ing but as I men­tion below I don’t think any busi­ness should rely on this. The best way of gen­er­at­ing rev­enue totally depends on your busi­ness but I think in prin­ci­ple the impor­tant thing is to make it free to join and then show the real ben­e­fits of pay­ing. Smaller charges for ser­vices seem to work best. I like the dat­ing site model where you can search and find some­one you like and then have to pay a small fee to make con­tact with them and other mem­bers. It is made very clear what you’re get­ting for your money and at that point you know you want it! At Swa­paskill we want to keep every­thing free for mem­bers if we pos­si­bly can.

Are you cur­rently work­ing Full time for Website?

Some days/weeks I work full time on it oth­ers part time. In time I expect to be work­ing full time on it. Be pre­pared to work all hours all days! Peo­ple expect the help they need even if it’s in the mid­dle of your weekend!

Any suc­cess story from Swapaskill?

Check out the full story…

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