Nextdoor

What: Nextdoor is a social networking site that allows you to post items for sale, find a job, lend or rent your personal items

Commissions & fees: none

Husl$core: $$$$

Expected Pay: NA

Where: Nationwide

Requirements: None

Review:

Nextdoor allows neighbors to chat with other neighbors for both commercial and purely social purposes. The site encourages users to invite their friends and post local information about everything from lost dogs to crime. Consumers can use the site to organize a group or remind each other about community events, such as city council meetings and crop swaps, too.

Nextdoor also has a commercial side, where you can advertise items for sale or rent — and where you can essentially advertise your availability to work. The best results here are for household help, such as house cleaners, handymen, plumbers and personal assistants. This is not the right venue to seek work as, say, a television producer. People selling their household goods also say Nextdoor can be a nice place to advertise for free. 

The site generally limits communication to a relatively small geographic area to make sure the communication is between neighbors, which means your advertisements won’t go to a huge audience. That said, posting an ad is free, so there’s nothing to lose in the attempt.  Eventually Nextdoor plans to monetize its operation, which may mean it will start to charge for posting advertisements. Until then, this is the equivalent of a mini-Craigs List, (mostly) without the scammers. 

Complaints

The biggest complaints about the site Involve neighborhood “leads,” who are given authority to monitor and delete conversations. These leads can be arbitrary about what they allow users to post. The site’s guidelines about what’s acceptable are vague.

The site discourages ardent political speech and some commercial posts in the main discussion group. However, you’re welcome to set up business pages. Otherwise, the only site guidelines are to treat each other with kindness and respect. Some leads have used that broad mandate to cut off conversations that they don’t like.

Recommendations

We think this is a great place to find household service work. Contractors, plumbers, electricians, babysitters, cleaners and gardeners would be wise to join and post their availability for work, when appropriate. You can also encourage your neighbors/former clients to provide references here. Other sites that may also help you find household service work include JiffyOnDemand and GreenPal.

What their users say: (From SiteJabber)

I love this site and all the great information and business sources provided!”

“Nextdoor.com is a great tool to use when rules are the same across the board. Unfortunately, I don’t understand why nextdoor.com allows rules to be flexible and allow racial discrimination.

*Updated 11/20/2020