Blogtrepreneur | Entrepreneur Blog

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.