Service Exchange & Reviews

Here's the way I see it. There are talented artists and people and companies who are just starting out who need to build portfolios and build business relationships. On the other hand there are other people and businesses who are also starting out and do not have a lot of money for design or set-up, graphics, advertising or whatever they need. I am suggesting a forum which brings these people together. One example would be that you have just finished a terrific children's story and need an illustrator. You could post the project on elance.com or some such site, but you don't have the money to pay an illustrator up front. You just have a great children's story. With a barter forum you could post a project for an illustrator and get responses from artists willing to do the work for their portfolio and/or a percentage of the profits. The illustrator could decide if he or she wants to invest their time and talent in the project for a later return. Another example would be if you had an idea for a website but not the talent to design a website or money to purchase web design or marketing services. You could offer a similar deal. The artists would decide based on your plan whether they wanted to partner with you. Like small venture capitalists with talent instead of money.

I also see this forum as a resource for reviews and ratings of fee services on the web. I checked AskJeeves when I tried to find the lowest price for domain name registration services. There are many sites that rate costs for products and rate sites that offer products, such as gomez.com, but I couldn't find any central place that rates or reviews services. There are individual sites that rate or review specific services like hostsearch.com for website hosting services.

I think this forum would fill an existing need. Any comments and suggestions would be appreciated.