-What did the companies that posted on your site have to say about the quality and quantity of candidates?
None of them have contacted me.
-Do they feel it was $50 well spent?
I don't know.
-Did people apply through your site and find jobs so far? Do you have a way of tracking the stats?
A few people wrote in to thank me and tell me they applied jobs. I haven't asked around, and there's no tracking in place.
-What is your future direction of this site? What features do you plan to add?
I want to keep focusing on the UX. Speed and ease of use are the features I care about most. I want the UI to be so good that people feel comfortable looking for a tech job no matter how old they are with the site catering to older geeks as a bonus.
-Oh, and how did the $10 Digital Ocean VPS hold up with the sudden spikes of traffic?
No issues at all. I use Flask-Cache backed by redis, which I'm sure helps a lot.
No trick - just not currently supported. I use Postgresql full text search, and haven't researched how to handle c++ or c#. The only sophistication baked into the search are wildcard queries and title vs. description ranking.
I'm aware of the limitations and want to fix them. If any HNers know what I should search for on Google to get this done, please let me know.
don't know about postgres but, just write a function that converts c++ into cpp (many use cpp too). Store that.
Then on search do the same thing, c++ becomes cpp.
I'm still experimenting to find the right price point that maximizes quality job postings. I've had it at $0 and had to delete a few. One person posted an ad for what appeared to be a technology cult even (deleted).
I've been asked to bump the font size by a few people and have to defer to ctrl+ (win) cmd+ (mac) for now. I'm dog fooding this site and 14pt "courier new" is what I like best.
Yes - that was very helpful. I did not increase the font-size (yet, still not thrilled about that), but I did make the body text and muted text blacker. Here's a before and after
The jobs that aren't highlighted in green were aggregated from StackOverflow. I mention that on the front page. So far, I've made $1775 total selling job listings. In the beginning, I was giving them away free.
You have done an incredible job with your site.Keep it up.I wish I could do the same with my site www.mobijobs.net which I created for app developers.Why do you keep changing the price?
1. You are now making money off of it. So how is that working? Have you created a separate bank account and pushed all your revenue to that account, for the purpose of making filing taxes on it easier? Or did you go some other way?
2. How quickly were you able to solve the chicken and egg problem of getting employers to post and people to visit? Do employers know how many people view their listing? I'm having a hard time understanding why they would want to spend $50 on your site vs simply posting free of charge on HN and getting a pretty large audience.
1. Yes, separate bank account. Stripe is really nice in that they push funds automatically on a regular basis. I have another business which uses PayPal, and I like Stripe better.
2. I'll be working on the chicken & egg problem for sometime. I don't expect a quick turnaround, but the good news for me is it's fun driving steady traffic with blog posts. I just made IndieHackers today, and I'm working on a piece for SitePoint which will be out on Thursday. Just stuff like that along with my Medium blog https://blog.oldgeekjobs.com
From the IndieHackers post in the OP, you can see my Google Analytics since I started the project (minus a few early days because I didn't have tracking). I get several thousand visits when I'm able to get blog posts promoted, and several hundred in the ensuing days. Mind you, these are people who surf HackerNews, so they're going to be stronger candidates than average although the numbers are nowhere near one of the big tech boards (i.e. Dice) and probably never will be. I'm OK with that. I'm catering to an HN-like audience, and want to go solo as long as possible.
You can't post jobs free on HN afaik, unless you're a YC company.
Thank you for the detailed answer. Final question on the second part: I was referring to the "Who is hiring?" threads for jobs. So the employers who are paying and posting on OGJ are essentially betting that their job postings will be seen by others, right? It doesn't look like they have any way of figuring out if anyone will see their job.
I don't mean to hint at anything, just trying to get a clear picture.
Yes, my intuition tells me employers see the post on HN (or Inc, QZ) and think it's a cheap gamble for highly qualified applicants relative to other outlets.
I haven't put any sort of tracking in place, so they have no way of knowing if anyone will see their job unless people apply and say where they're coming from. Employers often use trackable short urls for this purpose.
I'd imagine they get as good if not better exposure than "who is hiring" because they get promoted to the top of my site and their listing lasts for 45 days, but I don't know.
Thank you! Yes - simple is hard! I've gotten a handful of e-mails from people offering to redo the site for a fee, but I don't want it to be just another bootstrap site with 700K of assets on the initial page load. The sparse design is intentional, and I'm deliberate in my use of screen real estate. Your compliment means a lot!
This may be a newbie question. If a company is asking for a invoice (i know that most ask to justify the payment in accounting), Stripe has the possibility to generate one or are you using a 3rd party tool? Thanks
28 comments
[ 5.6 ms ] story [ 81.1 ms ] threadA few questions:
-What did the companies that posted on your site have to say about the quality and quantity of candidates?
-Do they feel it was $50 well spent?
-Did people apply through your site and find jobs so far? Do you have a way of tracking the stats?
-What is your future direction of this site? What features do you plan to add?
-Oh, and how did the $10 Digital Ocean VPS hold up with the sudden spikes of traffic?
None of them have contacted me.
-Do they feel it was $50 well spent?
I don't know.
-Did people apply through your site and find jobs so far? Do you have a way of tracking the stats?
A few people wrote in to thank me and tell me they applied jobs. I haven't asked around, and there's no tracking in place.
-What is your future direction of this site? What features do you plan to add?
I want to keep focusing on the UX. Speed and ease of use are the features I care about most. I want the UI to be so good that people feel comfortable looking for a tech job no matter how old they are with the site catering to older geeks as a bonus.
-Oh, and how did the $10 Digital Ocean VPS hold up with the sudden spikes of traffic?
No issues at all. I use Flask-Cache backed by redis, which I'm sure helps a lot.
I'm aware of the limitations and want to fix them. If any HNers know what I should search for on Google to get this done, please let me know.
probably simplest fix...
I think it would be awesome if a job site has some formalisms around various skills.
A candidate could report his/her skills like this: (skill name) --> (level of proficiency and/or interest in learning).
A job posting could report skill requirements in a similar manner: (skill name) --> (importance to job).
It would be an awesome way to get highly-targeted search filters / notifications.
Similar formalisms could be used to filter on commute / relocation details.
Edit: Negative-terms would be very helpful as well. E.g., I'm actively averse to doing devops work, even if it's a match in other ways.
Also, any chance you could bump up the font size and/or contrast of the text? My old geek eyes are having a bit of difficultly reading the site.
Thanks again!
I've been asked to bump the font size by a few people and have to defer to ctrl+ (win) cmd+ (mac) for now. I'm dog fooding this site and 14pt "courier new" is what I like best.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12743628
http://imgur.com/a/7Hf4i
The difference is subtle, but it's an improvement in my opinion.
1. You are now making money off of it. So how is that working? Have you created a separate bank account and pushed all your revenue to that account, for the purpose of making filing taxes on it easier? Or did you go some other way?
2. How quickly were you able to solve the chicken and egg problem of getting employers to post and people to visit? Do employers know how many people view their listing? I'm having a hard time understanding why they would want to spend $50 on your site vs simply posting free of charge on HN and getting a pretty large audience.
2. I'll be working on the chicken & egg problem for sometime. I don't expect a quick turnaround, but the good news for me is it's fun driving steady traffic with blog posts. I just made IndieHackers today, and I'm working on a piece for SitePoint which will be out on Thursday. Just stuff like that along with my Medium blog https://blog.oldgeekjobs.com
From the IndieHackers post in the OP, you can see my Google Analytics since I started the project (minus a few early days because I didn't have tracking). I get several thousand visits when I'm able to get blog posts promoted, and several hundred in the ensuing days. Mind you, these are people who surf HackerNews, so they're going to be stronger candidates than average although the numbers are nowhere near one of the big tech boards (i.e. Dice) and probably never will be. I'm OK with that. I'm catering to an HN-like audience, and want to go solo as long as possible.
You can't post jobs free on HN afaik, unless you're a YC company.
Thank you!
I don't mean to hint at anything, just trying to get a clear picture.
I haven't put any sort of tracking in place, so they have no way of knowing if anyone will see their job unless people apply and say where they're coming from. Employers often use trackable short urls for this purpose.
I'd imagine they get as good if not better exposure than "who is hiring" because they get promoted to the top of my site and their listing lasts for 45 days, but I don't know.