Have you heard of Bidvine? When I first heard the name and the concept, that you enter the details of the service you need then professionals would bid on it, I thought it was for gardeners only – my mind clearly just jumped to that with “vine” in the name! I thought that was a great idea, but I didn’t need a gardener (although it would be nice, the garden is small enough for us to deal with alone!). It wasn’t until I read a bit further that I realised, duh, it wasn’t only for gardeners – you could hire pretty much any sort of professional service you need via Bidvine!
So how does Bidvine work?
When you visit the Bidvine site, you’re faced with the a simple question: “What service do you need?” Start typing in this box and you’ll find a range of suggestions popping up. For a long time I’ve been considering how some fashion bloggers hire photographers to take outfit shots – this would be ideal for me because Ben isn’t keen on helping me set up with the camera and get good fashion photos, and we just don’t have the time between us to travel and find really interesting locations. Fashion photography itself wasn’t option, but portrait photography was, and that’s close enough, so I clicked that, entered my postcode and away we went!
You’re then asked a series of further questions to get more detail about what you’re looking for so that they can provide you with the best quote and best professionals available for what you need. I narrowed down the type of portrait by filling in the “other” box with “fashion/outfit shots for a blog” then went on to answer more questions such as “Where will these photos be taken?”, “In what format would you like the images?”, budget-related questions and so on.
I submitted my answers and sat back and waited. Bidvine will submit your answers to a range of professionals on their database who fit the service you’re looking for; these professionals can then submit their quote in response to you, with any further information or questions they might have.
It turns out I didn’t need to sit back and wait for long! In less than 24 hours, I’d received 5 quotes from a range of professional photographers in my area:
As you can see, some of the professionals are already gathering reviews on Bidvine with star ratings which is great to see, and many of them also have links back to their sites so that you can further explore their work and decide who will be the best fit for you.
The only problem for me? I’m so terrible at making decisions and saying no to people, that I find it really difficult to make a decision between these people who’ve taken the time to make a special quote for me!
I did this mini Bidvine test a couple of weeks ago and have actually since used Bidvine again to submit a quote for a bathroom installer (more on that another day, but hopefully we’ll be updating our en suite in the new year!). When I submitted my answers for this one, I was told that there may be a slower response to this request as fewer plumbers and bathroom installers had signed up to Bidvine’s services in my area – it was nice to get this information right at the start, and we have actually had a few responses, but definitely slower than photography. Come on, Northern plumbers – get yourselves onto Bidvine!
Have you tried Bidvine or a similar service? What did you think?
great post