Peer to Peer (P2P) services are improving our lives by making it easier to achieve tasks outside of regular business hours. Whether you need pet food delivered, or a delicious home-cooked meal, if people offer a service they can provide it through the peer to peer services. We’ve referred to this before as the Sharing Economy because business and commerce is made possible through people’s ability to share and exchange their goods and services for a fee.
Through user-recommendations, starred reviews, past experience, or curiosity we try these new services as they come along. But one of their main goals would have to be what they offer us on top of their intended service. AirBnB, Uber, Go People, and more all provide us with value through convenience, low barriers to entry, and speed. All of these reasons are what helps the sharing economy grow and, in turn, helps create more jobs.
Creating More Jobs
Today, people are transforming their free time into an avenue for extra paid work which is only good news for consumers. Why? Because, it keeps things moving and keeps the economy flowing. As competition increases and the P2P network expands, we’ll soon see all sorts of businesses appear that offer goods and services unlike others before them. Turn your spare room into a hotel room, your kitchen into a restaurant, your garden into an events space and more.
TechCrunch recently published an article that highlighted some of the strengths and opportunities that P2P services have brought us. Especially in a competitive jobs market, some highly educated workers are finding it hard to land careers, so they’re turning their free time into a space for them to earn a living. Some are even using P2P services as an opportunity to gain on the job experience that they can use as leverage to get their step ahead on the employment ladder. It’s a great solution to an otherwise stagnant job market and something greatly advantageous for the rest of us. Why? Because it means that more and more services will come to us readily available, cheaply, and simply.
Go People helps this by offering any person with a car, bike, motorcycle, van, or even Opal Card the chance to find work. Find a job in a local area, make an offer on delivering a product and make it happen. Thanks to an ever-expanding user-base, Go People is making these opportunities more and more available every day.
Go People: Creating Affordable Services
Go People embodies this with our parcel delivery service. Opal Card users, bikers, cyclists, and other drivers alike can be called upon to transform their spare time into your business or personal convenience. Those groceries you need delivered but you’re kept back at work? Simple, tap into Go People and someone will be with you in minutes. Capped price deliveries mean you’ll get your items delivered without any shocking fees and speed is part of our service. Did you know that our current average is just over 10 minutes to get your parcel delivered across the regional Sydney area?
With a current fleet of Runners in their thousands, it’s only like that we’ll see these figures improve and make your life that much easier. So while employment and experience is an advantage to the P2P producers, convenience and simplicity are passed on to the consumers.
While at first they might have seemed strange or absurd to let random strangers carry out tasks that used to be achieved only by professionals, it’s becoming increasingly normal. The success of P2P services is only in its infancy. Giants like car-driving service Uber have reached a point where their market value is gauged in its billions. So it’s clear that there’s money to be made in the market but just as clear that there is a market hungry to take advantage of its services. More and more users are continuing to sign up and join forces with Go People to deliver your packages to where they need to go.
Successful P2P services make it big when they meet the needs of their community. Every day, people throughout urban Sydney have packages and items that they need delivered and, sometimes, these may be outside regular business hours. With the push of a button Go People makes this possible. And it’s incredible.
What’s The Worst That Could Happen?
But what could go wrong, what issues might people face today? Some may claim that P2P services are taking people out of the job but we say different. In the business, what everyday people call a “game changer” we call a “disruptive innovation”. By its definition, innovation means to develop and improve upon something that already exists and disruptive means to upset the balance. When combined, a disruptive innovation is self-explanatory: an improvement to an old product/service that has upset the balance.
The trusty .mp3 player had long been around before Apple introduced the iPod – but a sleek and simple design and user interface attracted millions of consumers to it in the height of the digital music heyday. The same with the iPhone, the iPad, and now the Apple Watch – these can all be referred to as disruptive innovations because they have improved upon what already exists and made them better. This forces the current market leaders to change too, to keep up with demand.
Go People achieves the exact same when they addressed a need in the stagnant courier market. Sometimes people need something delivered on their terms, at a price that suits them, in a place that suits, and in their own time.
The Future’s Pretty Bright
The same can be seen with P2P services, when people move toward a new service it’s because it provides something that the traditional route doesn’t. This sort of competition is healthy and promoted by modern-day economics because competition drives change.
Often, people say we live in uncertain times and while that may sound ominous, in actual fact it should be seen as exciting. The taxi industry had changed little over time and now with the press of a button, people can hail an Uber that’s more convenient, affordable, and novel. The courier industry used to have rigid rules and operating hours, now with Go People you can send anything at any time from anywhere in Sydney. This is empowering. This is a game changer. This is a disruptive innovation.
We don’t live in uncertain times, we live in exciting times.
What P2P service do you think the world needs?