I emailed Andrey, founder of Sheet2site, the other day: 

Hey Andrey, Jason here. I have an idea, of running a Sheet2site web design agency. I will make sheet2site websites for my customers as a design service. Is it ok for me to do that using your Premium plan? That means, instead of each client buying a Premium plan, I can split up the Premium plan for 3 clients, each with a custom domain...

Andrey was interested in the idea, and gave his blessings for the plan share. FOr those who are not familiar, Sheet2site is a website builder where you can build, edit and manage a website using Google Sheets. It’s great for listing directory type of websites, and comes equipped with template designs for real estate listings, city guides, job boards and affiliate links. And with that, I went ahead to start testing, whether these productized service ideas had any market demand. One of the best ways was to create it as a gig on Fiverr. Or any other gig platforms for that matter – Upwork, Freelancer, etc. Fiverr is just easier because there’s no bullshit system—like Upwork—of having to buy credits in order to post your gigs.

First I started by checking out the competition. “Listing / directory website” – loads and loads of cheap Fiverr gigs using Wordpress. But search for “real estate listing / job board / amazon affiliate links website using google sheets”, and there’s no competition. That’s great, because I’m choosing to narrow down to a niche offering with reasonable price, instead of going broad and competing downwards to the lowest common denominator in terms of price. And the niches in this case are just the unique templates that Sheet2site offers - for real estate, job boards, and affiliate links. Job boards and affiliate sites seem like a popular use case on Sheet2site as well, so those might be good bets.

The elephant in the room is: isn’t it already easy to build a website on Sheet2site? Why run a service for it? Would people pay? 

My hunch is: yes. Yes, Google Sheets requires zero onboarding. But building a website, knowing how to hook everything up together with images, copy and buttons, still requires a learning ramp up. Not everyone has the time or interest. The last 2 months I had built a couple of free coronavirus-related websites on Sheet2site (thanks to their free offer for any sites that’s covid related). One site was a donation-in-kind site to help migrant workers, the other was a community self-help board matching F&Bs to delivery drivers. Yet another was a resource directory for small-medium enterprises affected by the pandemic. There was even a job board I made for someone who wanted to help those who got laid off. The ‘clients’ then took over and managed the listing themselves, but they definitely needed help to set up, especially when speed to market is critical, or they have no bandwidth to learn (which ended being both for my clients as they were NGOs who needed to move fast to serve their beneficiaries, and were usually overworked as volunteers to start with). And lastly, I follow Andrey on Twitter, and since last month, his revenue tripled! Likely due to lockdowns when everyone is staying home and pursuing their side hustles. I’m hedging my bets on catching this wave. Besides, if someone can do well as a specialist Zapier agency, surely there’s potential for a Sheet2site one?

And so, I created three Sheet2site gigs on Fiverr, just to test if there’s a market demand for google sheet websites.

• Build a real estate website using Google Sheets - great for property agents, hotel and hospitality companies
• Build a job board that can be managed via Google Sheets - for HR, recruiters and industry associations wanting to showcase jobs for their own company/industry
• Build an Amazon affiliate links site using Google Sheets - for affiliate marketing and promotion folks

So far, just the day after I posted these gigs, I already got one enquiry about it. That makes me feel optimistic as I don’t have any reputation on Fiverr, so the prospect must be truly interested to ask. Will report back when I get more data. 

So what do you think? Do you feel that there’s potential? Do you or do you know someone who might be interested in a specialist service for Sheet2site?