Marketplace app all on Zapier

My wife loves to play matchmaker.  
 
Are you single and love Radiohead? I know just the person you need to meet.
From Arkansas? I know just the person for you. Eat avocado toast sprinkled
with celtic salt? And so on.  
 
There’s power in bringing two people together (for love or anything else).  
 
For you, it could look like connecting new client projects with contractors,
people in need with donors, or customer tickets with support agents.  
 
What you need is a marketplace.  
 
Today, I’ll show you how to build a lightweight marketplace all in Zapier.
You’ll have a centralized place where two worlds connect that’s easy to set
up and even easier to use.  
 
Let’s make some matches.  
 
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Marketplace anatomy

I’m going to pretend to be a non-profit doing a holiday donation drive. So,
there will be people who submit wish lists and then donors who choose a person
to buy gifts for.  
 
To make this happen, you need an Interface with:

• A form for people to submit wish lists
• A form for donors to claim a person to provide gifts for
• A Table to store unclaimed wish lists
• A Table to store claimed wish lists
• A page to serve as an internal dashboard showing both Tables
• Zaps to connect the dots and send emails

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Fill in the blanks with whomever you are trying to connect. Jobs instead
of wish lists, contractors instead of donors. Support tickets instead of jobs,
support agents instead of contractors.  
 
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Making it happen all on Zapier

If we can make donating one step easier, imagining how much more generous the
world would be? With Zapier, things get simpler.  
 
Here’s how to build the marketplace (this won’t take long).  
 

 
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First you add a form to populate the Wish Lists of people that donors could
buy gifts for.  
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A Zap kicks off to add a unique identifier to the Wish List (a simple
NameAge combination). That way, when a donor fills out a form to choose a
person, they’ll know who they’re choosing.  
 
So, a donor navigates to the “Claim Wish List” page, adds their email, chooses
a person, and claims the wish list.  
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A Zap takes the person, adds them to the “Claimed Wish Lists” Tables and
removes them from the “Unclaimed Wish Lists” Table. Another Zap emails the
donor with all of the Wish List information.  
 
Whoever is running the project can view both Tables in an internal dashboard
hidden from the navigation bar to keep track of everything in one place.  
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That’s a wrap!  
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P.S. I turned this Donation Forms/Marketplace into a template you can use right now.
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How to get creative with this marketplace

Like any Zapier app, this is about the time I get giddy and start giggling.
By adding more Zaps, you can extend this marketplace as much as you want.
 
Here are some ideas:

• Add a Slack notification when a Wish List is claimed
• Have other forms out there in the wild? Connect them all here to get the master list consolidated. Centralize how donors choose.
• Connect social so that every time a Wish List is claimed, publish a post to let your audience know they can get in on the action, too.
   

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As always, your creativity is the limit!  
 
Now go make some matches.  
 
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To recap:

• Build a marketplace app to bring people together all on Zapier (check out the donation form template from the example that you can use yourself)
• Apply this idea to projects and contractors, a shared to-do list, and any other matchmaking use case
• Make this your own by adding Zaps to extend outside of Zapier
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That's it for this week!  
 
Happy Building,  
Bryce