Having used a handful of sites like freelancer.com and elance.com with varying results, I'd say the best results I've seen were from postings I put up on freelanceswitch.com job board (jobs.freelanceswitch.com/jobs)
Adding features to Sponsorist.com, need a UI/UX expert to help layout new signup flow (preferrably 1 page), profile pages, embeddable widgets, etc. Need to keep it in Bootstrap. Please email info at sponsorist dot com for more info
"Paypal doesn't require this. A buyer can use their credit card. They don't need to sign up for anything."
This is not exactly true. When a buyer uses their credit card they are promoted to add an email address which essentially creates a Paypal account for them. They may never actually log into that Paypal account and use it, but they will have a paypal account with the info they've entered. It's Paypal's sneaky way of signing people up.
Hey there, thanks so much for the feedback! Absolutely, the site is already open to sports team and athletes and there are a few sports listings on the site already. I'm setting up a campaign to reach out to 4 groups: sports teams/athletes, schools, tech events, and nonprofit fundraisers.
Agreed, my startup has a two sided payment process and was flagged by Paypal very early on for violating their Acceptable Use Policy. This was for the mere fact that the business model made my business a third party handler, which violates that agreement. Some companies fly under the radar on this, I wasn't one of those.
So, the realistic options left imho are ACH using something like AmazonPayments and sending out checks, which has its issues. Unfortunately there simply aren't as many options for paying money out as there is taking it in.
Btw my startup is Sponsorist.com, currently taking $ in through Stripe and sending out as checks. For now. :)
Here's how my startup ended up using Stripe:
After being told by Paypal I couldnt use Paypal at all (due to my business model being a violation of their Acceptable Use Policy) and then more recently Braintree telling me I could only process low number transactions (less than $250), Im happy to say that http://www.sponsorist.com now processes payments with Stripe.
While this article definitely was geared more toward the individual/hobbyist/"solving a problem" reader, its great to see a broader discussion of open source economics open up.
For those individuals, which (if any) OS marketplaces do you guys prefer to use, or would you rather put something out on your own?
I'll be attending Superconf this weekend, excited to get some insight on startups from the guest speakers, and other attendees. Hopefully i'll find a good local dev too. :)