1. Offer unique value
Choose a niche that is poorly served that you can dominate very quickly. Bells and whistles do not qualify on their own unless you are planning to spend tens of millions of dollars at a very minimum.
2. The right domain
Does it contain your keywords? Is it short, easy to pronounce, spell and remember? The right domain puts the wind at your back where you want it.
3. Create more value than you capture
Start free or with some combination of free and paid services. Feel out your ability to extract more over time. But focus on quality and service first. For most entrepreneurs it will be hard or impossible to reach critical mass and make money at the same time. See comments for more discussion on pricing...
4. Good SEO
Make sure every page has a unique title containing strategic keywords. Good content is 50% or more of SEO. But without a plan for obtaining good quality relevant backlinks it won't get you far.
5. Brand yourself
Be personal and authentic with a unique, aesthetic and usable design. or go beyond. But don't aim for perfection right away - just be crappy and let it evolve over time. Learn to communicate your unique value easily and in one sentence.
I know that many seasoned job board entrepreneurs are reading this... so, let's go, did I get it right? What advice would you give?
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Sounds good to me Eric. Couple of things I did differently is I started charging for postings right away. I was less expensive than my competitors but not to much that people were willing to try. I have certainly let many customers try for free.
I learned with an earlier Web 1.0 business that converting free customers to paying customers is not always easy, so this time around I just started charging from the beginning and that free sometimes has a negative conotation. People often times find more value in things they have to pay for than getting something for free.
I totally agree on domain name, SEO and backlinks. It has served AccountingJobsToday very well so far.
I would add to your list Content. You need relevant and always updating content. Content is still king.
**es** You make some very good points Todd! One of the most common mistakes made by job board entrepreneurs is to charge too little for their job postings after they have already reached critical mass.
Pricing is not easy. It is always easier to lower prices than it is to raise them and it is absolutely true that your pricing sends a message about quality. Furthermore, charging for your services screens out a lot of time wasters and low-quality 'customers' you don't want.
Finally, good content is at least 50% of SEO... thanks for helping me improve this list -- Eric
In my opinion, product is everything. If you start a job board with lousy software that lacks quality features, you are telling your candidates and customers that you are not a quality service. The common thought is that niche job boards are inferior to the "big three". There's no reason a niche job board can't operate just as good, if not better than the multi-purpose top three job boards with regards to product.
**es** Thank you for writing Evan! My guess is that you are a very talented marketer and may take those skills for granted. Maybe you benefit from a tight community and lots of word-of-mouth in your demographic as well. Perhaps you have decades of experience and contacts in your niche... it's just a hunch.
I agree with you that it's important to have the right features and for your system to work well but, first there is CraigsList. He is probably the most successful job board operator today with the most limited functionality. Second, as for keeping up with the top three...
Here's my own experience - I was always very impressed with the hotjobs.com functionality. But I reviewed all of the top three for their best features and created specs for my developers to implement them all. That was about five years ago. With five developers we probably implemented about 10% of that list. Today, perhaps it is a lot easier to accomplish starting from scratch with the more advanced software tools that are available... not having to guess about which Web software is going to thrive etc.
Perhaps the easiest way is to use someone else's software that has already developed all these features. -- Eric
Eric - I kind of disagree regarding your comments on Craigslist. Craigslist isn't a job board, its a classifieds site. There's a difference in my opinion. Craigslist is simply post a job, post a resume. When you think job board, you think applicant tracking system, detailed search agents, community-building features, and OFCCP compliance - all things Craigslist can't offer. I agree the skills mentioned are important, but I still put most emphasis on the quality of the site's functionality.
**es** perhaps rightly so - we also spent three months developing OFCCP compliance... I just like to include Craigslist in my thinking about the job board landscape to try to see how competitive pressures may change the future prospects of my business. -- Eric
Eric- Glad to read so many helpful comments. This site is full of insight that I wish I had devoured PRIOR to jumping in to the job board development arena almost a year ago. -Keith
**es** thanks Keith! It is never too late to change. We have never stopped changing, in fact, as the world around us continually forces us to adapt... and the year you put in has surely giving you a good basis for evaluating my ideas, which might or might not be right for you in your circumstances. -- Eric
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