How to start & grow a niche job board
Start, build, grow and monetise a niche job board
💘Why
Niche job boards solve a clear problem where companies are willing to pay for.
🔔 Problem
Companies struggle with finding qualified candidates.
🩹 Solution
Niche job boards provide jobseekers with more targeted opportunities and employers with a more focused pool of candidates.
🎪 The good
Low overhead costs, companies are willing to pay, automation possibility.
🏔️ The bad
Competition, chicken and egg problem, consistent effort, takes time.
✌️ For you
If you are looking for a digital business idea that is (after a while) easy to monetize.
🙅 Not for you
If you are looking for a quick win, hate writing content or don’t want to play the SEO game.
🔭 Examples
greenjobs.com
cybersecurityjobs.com
japan-dev.com
airlinejobs.com
ranchwork.com
woodyjobs.com
remoteok.com
startup.jobs
seojobs.com
winejobs.uk
weremoto.com
peopleopsjobs.io
🧳 What do you need
A custom domain name
An analytics tool
A paid SEO tool like Ahrefs (expensive but advanced) or Build The Keyword (cheap/free but simple).
A tool to build the job board (discussed in detail later)
☄️Find your niche
Finding a specific niche is important because it allows you to serve a specific industry more effectively, set you apart and reduce competition.
What topics are you passionate about?
Where lies your curiosity?
In which industry do you have connections?
Which successful job boards can you niche down based on specialisation, level of skills or region?
Which market trends do you spot?
Which new job titles are popping up?
In the full playbook you will also learn about examples, tools and resources to find a niche
🔭 Research your competitors
Before you enthusiastically go ahead, it’s key to do some more research.
Google for some job titles in your niche and analyze who your competitors are
Research the keyword difficulty to see if it’s feasible to make it to page 1 of Google
Research how active the niche is by
In the full playbook you will learn about how to find competitors, how to evaluate them and tools to use.
Ultimately, you are looking for a niche with:
▪️ High search volume
▪️ Low keyword difficult
▪️ No niche job boards on page 1 in Google
▪️ Promising niche for the future🪓 Pick a tool
Don’t waste weeks on a self-made site or custom features. Focus on the core features and distribution. Here are 3 options that don’t require any coding knowledge.
Niceboard is ideal if you want a specialised all-in one solution with ready to use features.
Softr is perfect to get started. You can have a working version ready in a day. But you will need to set-up some external services yourself (blog, mailing list, analytics…).
Webflow is the solution if you want full control over design, database, SEO. I only recommended this if you have prior Webflow experience or if your job board already has serious traction and you want to level up.
In the full playbook you will learn about pro’s and cons, templates and tutorials.
🧮 Set Up Analytics
You will need to know your numbers to convince companies to post their listing. For that you will need to set up an Analytics tool.
In the full playbook you will learn about some free and paying analytics tools.
🤏 Build Version 1
I know it is hard. But you must resist. Keep the first version of your job board very simple. To get started you only need:
An overview page with some filters and all the jobs
A job submission page where jobs can be posted (Keep job listings free until you build your user base)
🎣 Catch Users
Capturing emails or building up followers is key. It’s proof for companies that you can give visibility to their job post.
Add an email capture on top and at the end of your website
Add a pop-up when they are about to leave your website
Add your social media accounts in your footer
🤿 Curation of jobs
The quality of the job listings on your website is everything. In the beginning it’s best to manually curate job posts so you gain an understanding of where you can find unique and quality jobs.
In the full playbook you will learn which job aggregators to check, where to find hidden gems and how to build connections in your niche.
Tip
Always link the job post back to the original website and add an UTM parameter. Like this the company can see where the traffic is coming from and this will help you with building a name.
Example: www.url.com/jobpost?ref=seojobsdotcom🧲 Find Users
Marketing will make or break the success of your job board.
Be Active in Communities
Add Value on Reddit
Build Up a Network
Set-Up Google Jobs
Post automatically to your socials
Start a newsletter to build authority
In the full playbook you will learn about each of those in much more detail
🥇 SEO
If you rank well in Google, you will increase your visibility and brand credibility. However it requires some time to get to this phase (months) and some work. It is worth it, because it will bring you visitors on auto-pilot.
Improve your SEO structure
Make sure your meta titles and meta descriptions are set up
Set up a SiteMap XML
Get General Backlinks
Get Relevant Backlinks
Start a blog
Building Category Pages
In the full playbook you will learn in much more detail how to do each of those SEO tactics
💰 Monetization
The more exposure you give to a job listing, the more qualified applicants it will bring, the more you can charge. When your user base is starting to grow you can start charging money.
Paid Job Listings: Companies pay to list their jobs
Featured Job Listings: Pinned on top or in a highlighted color for more visibility
Social Media Boost: Charge for extra visibility on your social media channels
Email Boost: Charge for featured job listing in weekly email
Premium services: Monthly fee for unlimited job listings
In the full playbook you will get a swipe file full of examples of best practices
🐰 Resources
This article became possible by amazing makers who shared their knowledge in articles, podcasts, tweets, etc.
Inspired by Trends.vc who did the amazing market research
Searchbound from Ranch Work
Pieter Levels from Remote OK
Eric from Japan Dev
Phil from 4 day week
Lior from Remote Rocketship
Daniel Stuski from Market Remotly
NickLeRoy from SEOjobs
Want to see a next Build the Trends Playbook (maybe on AI apps, a paid directory or a newsletter)? Let me know in the comments.
Thank you. This was amazing! I would love to see another Build the Trends Playbook for a paid newsletter :)