Ask HN: advice for my site, happyjobsearch.com (happyjobsearch.com)
About a year ago I created a web site to help people stay organized when looking for a job. Since then I've refined it to the point where I feel like it's now a viable product. I'm lacking two important things, however: a) a business model and b) time to market it.
My preference is to sell it, and I would greatly appreciate advice on selling a niche site like this. In the meantime I want to try and get some traffic to it, so advice on optimizing the 30 minutes a day I have to do marketing would be awesome.
Incidentally, I've been using the site to keep track of some of my marketing efforts. As I search for people to contact regarding the site, I'm storing their information and keeping track of the "next action" - review their site, email, etc. Do any of you feel you'd benefit from using a site like happyjobsearch to keep track of your marketing efforts?
A little more about the site: Its main benefit is providing a tool to approach job searching systematically. I got laid off twice in three months last year, and I found that it was very demotivating to approach job seeking in a sloppy, reactive manner. So I tried to take a GTD approach and do things in stages: collect, review, and respond. The idea with the site is to spend some time collecting job listings each day without spending a lot of time reviewing them, and definitely not spending time responding. Then, to spend time reviewing listings further and taking the time to send a proper cover letter and resume.
Separating these different processes and being able to keep track of which stage each job opportunity was in really helped me feel more in control and made me feel like I was actually making progress, because I could see what I'd gotten done. In the end that's what I hope it does for other people - help them with their job search on a practical level, but also help in some way to keep people motivated, because looking for jobs can really suck :D
62 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 182 ms ] threadAbout a year ago I created a web site to help people stay organized when looking for a job. Since then I've refined it to the point where I feel like it's now a viable product. I'm lacking two important things, however: a) a business model and b) time to market it.
My preference is to sell it, and I would greatly appreciate advice on selling a niche site like this. In the meantime I want to try and get some traffic to it, so advice on optimizing the 30 minutes a day I have to do marketing would be awesome.
Incidentally, I've been using the site to keep track of some of my marketing efforts. As I search for people to contact regarding the site, I'm storing their information and keeping track of the "next action" - review their site, email, etc. Do any of you feel you'd benefit from using a site like happyjobsearch to keep track of your marketing efforts?
A little more about the site: Its main benefit is providing a tool to approach job searching systematically. I got laid off twice in three months last year, and I found that it was very demotivating to approach job seeking in a sloppy, reactive manner. So I tried to take a GTD approach and do things in stages: collect, review, and respond. The idea with the site is to spend some time collecting job listings each day without spending a lot of time reviewing them, and definitely not spending time responding. Then, to spend time reviewing listings further and taking the time to send a proper cover letter and resume.
Separating these different processes and being able to keep track of which stage each job opportunity was in really helped me feel more in control and made me feel like I was actually making progress, because I could see what I'd gotten done. In the end that's what I hope it does for other people - help them with their job search on a practical level, but also help in some way to keep people motivated, because looking for jobs can really suck :D
You could add more value in the cover letter and interview reminder section, and also add in a resume section. For example, in the interview section a person could create a list of stuff they need to look at or study, and then check them off as they're finished. Similarly, you could create and save different cover letter and resumes. A user could use special syntax like [[Edit company name]] to just edit the relevant parts and send the resumes off.
I can see this working with a very cheap subscription model ($1-2/month) if there are more features. I dont think have you have enough to sell it right now, since most job sites have their own job tracking system.
I really like your idea about having multiple cover letters and placeholders in the cover letters. Something like that would have been helpful for me so I could see quickly which parts I needed to change. It would also be fun to code up an interface for it.
On the money side, I was thinking a one-time payment of around $8 would allow use of the site for up to a year. A subscription model sounds good too, and probably the best thing is just to test.
You can go freemium route. Providing SMS and/or e-mail based reminder service to your paying customers only springs to mind.
What about adding interview email reminders? send me an email 24 and maybe 3 hours before I have an interview to make sure I haven't forgotten it.
Is there a feature to remind the job seeker of upcoming interviews?
I'm not sure about the "selling" of the site right off the bat. This is a good niche to be in for revenue. Possibly you can match seekers with jobs proactively, let contextually relevant ads and targeted banners serve up high-paying clicks and impressions. Then find a way to charge for "premium" services.
What language/framework did you use to create the site?
One thing that would really feel more confident about holding onto the site and making money with it would be to have some kind of marketing plan. Right now I'm just contacting bloggers, and I'm not sure how far that will get me.
I used Ruby on Rails to create the site and jquery for the front end.
This gives me four ideas where to collect money. For the person without a job looking you can collect money from them after they found a job with a donate feature, with ads - seeing as though they are looking for jobs this can lead to highly relevant ads, or with offering them continued access to special features after they have found a job which could come in handy later on.
For a person currently employed they might be willing to pay for some premium features TBD.
Or as others have said with a job board that companies pay to post to, or some affiliate program with other job boards - could be related to you advertising scheme.
So a number of good possibilities there.
AAA+++ would use again.
You have your "interview reminders" section. Very cool. The data is entered in a * / * * / * * * style, very intuitive for entry. However, I would RENDER the information in a set of nested ul tags.
Just my $.02
Thanks again!
Business model options (non-exclusive):
- Advertising: You have a wide range of options for sponsorship, display or performance advertising. I could write all day about them. Happy to give you more info.
- Subscription/"Freemium": Pay to use. Pay to use certain features. Pay not to see ads. Tip jars. Tons of options.
- Leap of faith: Focus on scaling up the user base (with or without other revenue) and sell it to a monster/dice/etc
Good luck!
One suggestion: It would be useful to cache the job listing the user links to. During my last job search I remember finding a lot of my bookmarks to be invalid because the original post had expired and the recruiter reposted it.
You'd also be surprised at the recipient lists behind the "contact us" forms on a lot of the major sites. e.g. http://www.indeed.com/jsp/contactus.jsp
One thing I'm wondering about is, should you email them with your price or ask them for an offer?
When I run across any sort of site like this normally, one of the first things I look at is news items (in this case the blog) and the forum. If there aren't any posts in either in the last couple of months, I usually assume it's been abandoned, so I don't dig any deeper.
Even a one or two line post every month or two reassures me that some sort of active maintenance is going on.
Another reason I went with Happy Job Search was that initially I was hoping to add more to the site, so it wouldn't just be about being organized. That's probably a bad idea though.
Seems like a solution to a non-existent problem.
* The data to capture has already been figured out for you. When you're first looking for a job you might not really know what to record about each listing.
* The approach has been figured out for you. I did not follow the GTD-esque approach initially, and I'm sure most other people don't. That in itself is useful, as is the site's ability to facilitate it.
* There is a bookmarklet for adding job listings. This saves you time.
* You can subscribe to an ical feed of your next actions, which you can't do with a spreadsheet.
* You can subscribe to RSS feeds from your favorite job sites so that you can easily review new postings in one place.
If you're ever looking for a job, please do give it a try and decide for yourself whether it's better than fiddling with a spread sheet :)
I actually have a project I had made initially for B2B sales leads, but there are certain features of automation that I've been thinking lately could really be used for job search. Perhaps we should talk?
I've found that the networking aspects of jobseeking are not only critical in breaking past the resume firewall but are also among the hardest parts to manage, particularly trying to balance several open opportunities and inquiries.
The approach of systemizing all open opportunities, though, is brilliant. I'd suggest finding a way to integrate contacts & contact history within the site, almost making it more CRM-like, to make it a jobsearcher's dashboard.
As to a business model, I'm not sure it's immediately robust enough to begin as a subscription service and I'm no longer sold on advertising as a sustainable revenue stream, particularly with niche web apps.
Frankly, partnering with a LinkedIn might be the best outcome, but it's a real longshot. With the market for unemployed jobseekers outnumbering employed jobseekers, it's going to be a tough opportunity to make money on.
That said, best of luck - it's really quite brilliant.
(BTW guys, time to upgrade to Passenger 2.2.5!)
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I've never seen a site with that feature.
Granted, web 2.0 has proven that a pastel color scheme can work, and I do think it can work for you too but you either need to pull back on it or take it a step further and support it with some more stylized design elements.
Specifically, if your site name in the header felt more like a logo and felt a bit playful, you'd be signaling that this lightweight, airy feel is part of your brand identity. Right now there's some disconnect there.
The dark blue you are using is nice, I think maybe just making that a bit more prevalent in your design would serve to ground the overall design a bit more.
Its a great site, you just need some digg/reddit front page or stumbleupon on it, good luck.