We're not planning to charge to join, to post new projects, or to bid on projects at
www.sypad.com. We do plan to support a mechanism where suppliers can place a deposit when submitting a bid, but that will be completely optional.
We'll include the core features for free and then make other features such as larger capacity available via an upgrade.
Our goal right now is to get feedback on the site - the rest will evolve as we see how much storage and so on gets used. We built the site based on several years of experience as both buyers and sellers on other outsourcing web sites, so our goal is to deliver an experience at
www.sypad.com that's the best of all worlds.
In response to the site you mentioned... there's a great story from
Selling The Invisible that goes as follows:
A woman was strolling along a street in Paris when she spotted Picasso sketching at a sidewalk cafe. Not so thrilled that she could not be slightly presumptuous, the woman asked Picasso if he might sketch her, and charge accordingly. Picasso obliged. In just a few minutes, there she was: an original Picasso.
"What do I owe you?" she asked.
"Five thousand francs," he answered.
"But it only took you three minutes," she politely reminded him.
"No," Picasso said. "It took me all of my life."
So it's hard to put a value on the creation of something new, be it a company, a web site, or a drawing. We hope to make
www.sypad.com a place where buyers and sellers find it easy to work together on great projects. Look forward to your feedback!