business-model, revenueI am planning to start a job board website but not sure how to accept job ads at the beginning.
As it will be a new product, there will be no ad on it at first. So, how can i persuade people to pay in order to have their ads published?
Is it OK to keep the service free for the first a few months and then ask people to pay?
Or what else should I think?
You already know that this is a pretty well-occupied market, so you could try any of the following strategies:
Find a niche where people aren’t happy and would potentially pay for better; or
Find a well-populated job board and work out how to essentially add a feature (perhaps scraping and re-presenting the content); or
Post a job ad for a commission-only recruitment executive and learn what you need to know in a telephone pre-interview
Take Careers 2.0 as an example.
Careers has been around for quite some time but you’re starting a new board.
I’d keep the service free for several months, indeed. This will make people publish on your board and you’re unique from competitors. Your board will get more visitors and then you can start placing ads (slowly), to make money and also slowly begin charging for even publishing jobs, maybe!
The type of customer you're looking for is what Steve Blank calls an earlyvangelist:
- They have a problem.
- They understand they have a problem.
- They are actively searching for a solution and has a timetable for finding it.
- The problem is painful enough that they have cobbled together an interim solution.
- They have, or can quickly acquire, dollars to purchase the product to solve their problem.
These Earlyvangelists are first buying the vision and then the product. They need to fall in love with the idea of your product. It’s the vision that will keep them committed the many times you screw up. You’ll have bugs, your product will eat their data, you’ll get the features wrong, performance will be bad, you’ll argue about pricing, etc.
But Earlyvangelists will stick with you through good and bad because they share your vision.
So the key question you have to ask is, what is your vision? The job space is obviously a pretty packed industry, so what is it that you are doing that is so different that these earlyvangelists will pay for your product, even when it's not quite ready? What problem with job posting are you solving that is so painful that posting on a job site with no visitors would be preferable?
If you don't have a good answer for that question, then you're going to have trouble finding those first customers. You might have to resort to initially offering your service for free, or only charging once the job posting starts getting views or applications. Or, you may have to build the initial audience of job seekers some other way: for example, by creating valuable content for job seekers, such as a career guidance blog or interview prep website.
The idea of keeping the service free for several months is best option to me. I too was looking out for clue before i realized this. You need to gain much trust before introducing payment. When people see the effectiveness, then the will be willing to pay for the services.
Copy jobs from employer websites and link back to them for job seekers to apply. They usually won’t mind, because they receive free exposure. This will also allow you to build relationship with employers in your niche. And will give you better chances in converting them into paying customers later.
You may also backfill jobs from Indeed, ZipRecruiter, Job2Careers and other job aggregators. This will allow you to get some revenue from the commission they’ll pay you.
Learn more in this blog post: https://www.smartjobboard.com/blog/how-to-create-niche-job-board/
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