You may have noticed a trend recently that more and more websites are including job boards as a way to add value to their visitors and to produce some revenue for the site. Smashing Magazine, Freelance Switch, and ProBlogger all have popular job boards that provide relevant job postings for their target audiences. It’s interesting to see how well some of these niche or industry specific job boards are doing. Because they focus on a specific industry, they are able to avoid competition with major job sites, and they’re able to provide employers with a great opportunity to reach the right audience.
I think the job board approach could be used by even more sites, and there are a number of different options for easily adding your own job board. Here we’ll take a look at 6 of the leading choices.
Job-a-Matic
With Job-a-Matic you can get a free hosted job board that’s quick and easy to setup. You can keep the job board on your domain and give it a customized look to keep things consistent with the rest of your site. You can also get a widget to promote the job board on your sidebar to get more exposure. If you want to avoid having an empty job board until you start getting more listings, you can choose to fill it with jobs from the Simply Hired database, and you can make money for clicks on these jobs. They handle all the payments and “dirty work,” and you get a check. Job-a-Matic provides a nice dashboard that lets you track and manage everything you need, including the prices of the ads.
Beyond
Beyond claims to be the most comprehensive job board software on the web. Like Job-a-Matic, Beyond is free and you can set your own prices to determine how much you make. Beyond offers resume posting in addition to job searching. Unlike Job-a-Matic, your job board with Beyond will not be at your domain, although you can customize it to meet your needs.
JobThread
JobThread gives you the opportunity to create widget to put on your site, or you can create a full job board. With the widget, you can make money by placing it in your sidebar and sending visitors to the listings at JobThread. Both options are free with nothing to install. If you choose the full job board you can of course choose your own pricing, and they handle all of the payments. Like the other options, the job board can be customized to fit the look and feel of your site.
webJobs
WebJobs is another option for creating a full, customized job board. Their system allows for job searching, job listing, and resume posting. Employers can search the database of resumes. Of course, the prices are set however you want them. Unlike the other choices, webJobs is not free. The cost starts at $199 and there are several optional upgrades and additions. For smaller websites, webJobs is more advanced than necessary.
Jobbex
Jobbex is a full-featured solution for stand alone job sites or for adding a job board to an existing website. It includes all of the features and benefits that you would expect, and then some. There is an option to email jobs to a friend, like you would see at major job sites like Monster and CareerBuilder. There are plenty of options for job seekers and for employers. The starting price for Jobbex is $5600, so it’s only for those who want to start a real business with their job board, rather than those who just want to add a secondary source of income to a website.
JobCoin
With JobCoin you can add a widget to your site to promote jobs to your visitors. It’s a pretty simple option as opposed to setting up a full job board. You have full control over the jobs that are shown on your site. You make money each time one of your visitors applies to a job through your site and when an employer posts a job to your site.
My Thoughts
I think the three sites mentioned at the beginning of this post are great examples of what can be achieved with a targeted job board. You’ll probably notice that all of these sites already have a large audience of readers. While I don’t think you need 60,000 subscribers to have a successful job board, you will need some existing traffic or you’ll have to be willing to invest some time and money into promoting it. For those sites that have an audience that is very targeted, I think the job board can be a nice addition.
“Small Business, Big Vision provides a framework for you to unleash your driven and relentless passion to achieve unprecedented growth.”
I have been looking into creating my own niche job board for a while now, and this article is really useful. JobThread looks to be the most promising, though you didn’t mention their nice little feature of populating your board with jobs from other sites if yours is a bit thin on the ground – great if you’re just getting started. You get commission for those as well.
I use JobCoin for my job board, and while it has great jobs I don’t make any money from it at all. All the ads are “free ads” which is not explained in any detail when you sign up for the service. I have many readers apply for jobs, but since they are “free” I will never be paid. I have actually left it on my blog because I feel it adds value to my readers, but I would much prefer to be paid! So it will remain until I can find something that works better for myself.
Solid post. I have been thinking about doing this myself so it is nice to see multiple services available. I don’t really understand why you would do a free job board though. Is that just to get more traffic?
Thanks for the heads up on this – it is definitely something I will work on.
Very good post, I agree that established high traffic blogs should host their own but smaller sites could do with one of the hosted solutions you mentioned.
You have done a nice work here.
If I had heard this idea a few years ago, I would have thought it was insane. In the last few years, though, I’ve found myself employed in a very specialized field and the only places I’d even think about job hunting would be specialized boards on relevant sites. Monster and Careerbuilder just don’t cut it for certain specialized fields.
Tom,
I think most of the job boards that don’t charge for lists are trying to build up enough listings so that they can start charging in the future. If an employer is going to pay to post a job they’re not going to do so at a brand new job board that has no other listings, so I think it’s a way to get things moving before charging.
Thanks for the info on all of them… I’ve noticed that i’m starting to see more and more job boards with random sites, even tech sites. I wonder how much money someone could potentially make off one?
This is a really good thing. Thanks for the all the links.
This is a great way to create more revenue for your blog. If too many ads aren’t your thing, you can create a page and (provided you have the traffic) accept job posts for a certain price.
Great post Adnan, the job you’re doing around here is just lovely!
Cheers,
Allen
Thanks a lot for the info! more ways to earn money. Really helpful. I just hope this would get me more revenue and traffic.
Hi,
A very useful post, indeed! I always interested in building a job board for my blog.
IMO, the job-o-matic is better from the rest on your list.
ps. Stumbled and tag your useful post!
I just signed up for my website, and put the links on my main pages. I’m looking forward to see if anyone actually posts a job.
What is a good price to post a job?
Sean B. Halliday
http://www.thetricitiesbest.com
In addition to provide potentially relevant jobs to your visitors; these job sites also have some very nice affiliate programs.
Starting a job board can be a great way to make some revenue from an existing community. I don’t think it requires huge amounts of traffic either, as long as the niche is small and focussed.
Another low-cost “get your own” job board service is Fuselagejobs:
http://www.fuselagejobs.com/
I appreciate the efforts done to compare various options. I have recently launched http://www.ChoseCareer.com using simplyhired but i would still like to learn about others.
Comments from users helps refine the choices.
regards
John
Great post!
I would like to connect with you and see how to work together.
Best,
Nihal Amarir
Great post! Really love reading them, can’t wait for more.
This article is really interesting and I am currently exploring the idea of adding a job board to my own website but the major problem I have is that all the sites listed above seem to work in the US only and my site is an information portal for Dundee and Angus in Scotland.
Does anyone know of a similar service that would work in the UK?
I have a job website, though not on any of the above listed but I would consider adding a widget from one of the job boards above. How can I get a free job board theme for my wordpress website?
Job boards are great. As a standalone website it would be a lot of work getting one off the ground now as since you wrote this article in 2008 competition has continues to rise.
However, like you rightly point out, websites with existing customer base of visitors and a clear niche can offer very targetted access to candidates for employers and very targetted access to jobs of interest to users.
So if that creates value for the two parties, of course you can charge for the service!
Do you have information on how to market a jobboard?
I have noticed how easy it is to attract job seekers, but attracting employers……that’s another story. Is it because they are so use to using the well known sites like careerbuilder and monster?
I am interested to hear if anyone has used one of the websites mentioned, or similar? How would it work on a website with individual user profiles over a blog?
Hi Gem- We make a really simple to setup job board that runs on WordPress, called JobRoller. You can list your own jobs, charge others to list theirs, and/or aggregate jobs from sites like Indeed and Simply Hired.
WordPress is free. JobRoller is $99. You can read more about it here.
appthemes.com/themes/jobroller/
it’s a very good post!
Hi Great info help need advice? I am an office manager whom just recently became unemployed having a horrible time job searching.. no job posting site is unique looking to make my own job board site, unique to my taste I have awesome ideas but want to be able to benefit from a free job board software kinda broke right now ! . I name it I promote traffic i want to be paid.
i want to introduce it as my own site “powered by whom ever’ advise me as to which site above would be best fit my needs . HELP …PLS
Hi
Thanks for the great information.
I have a desire of creating a job board. I wanted to know if can create a job board in East Africa with any of these sites or if there are other sites that i can use especially those with free hosting.
Useful post !
webdesignjobs.co.uk if you need a designer to design your jobsite!
great tips… i am going to create a job portal now.