Amazon launches marketplace for services

Options range from conventional to offbeat and carry ratings

Amazon, the online marketplace that sells every product under the sun, is expanding its reach to sell nearly every service imaginable, as well.

The Web retailer said Monday that it had struck deals with companies across the country to offer 700 services, from repairing cracked iPhone screens to grazing goats on your lawn, through its website. Just like buying goods, customers can browse for services and pay the seller whose ratings and prices work best, but they have to book a time slot.

The new section, called Amazon Home Services, doesn’t offer every service in every city. According to a map on its website, only Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York City have a high level of coverage.

For several ZIP codes in the Boston area, around a third of the categories on the company’s website were lit up, and many services were offered only by one vendor.

Some services are conventional: You can pay $189 to have someone assemble your treadmill, for instance, or $499 for an expert to recover data from a hard drive. Others are more offbeat, with a goat herder available for hire in some markets (but not Boston) to let his animals eat your unwanted vegetation. A set price is not listed.

TaskRabbit, a San Francisco-based online marketplace for services that was founded in Boston, will offer its workers’ services through Amazon Home Services, according to a blog post on TaskRabbit’s website.

Currently, TaskRabbit sellers are integrated only with Amazon’s service marketplace in San Francisco, but the startup’s sellers will be added in other cities “over the course of the next weeks and months,” said Jamie Viggiano, TaskRabbit’s vice president of marketing. Amazon and TaskRabbit will split TaskRabbit’s usual commission, Viggiano said.

According to a page for sellers, Amazon will charge a commission of 10 to 20 percent, depending on the service. Companies that sell in-home services must register and get a background check, although Amazon’s website said the fees for those requirements will be waived through the end of 2015.