Whenever possible, buy a used job board.
Lately I have been on a small buying spree having picked up 3 “used” job boards. WashingtonDCjobs.net, PhiladelphiaJobs.net and Baltimorejobs.net. The previous owner had tried to make a go of it by putting Jamit job board software on them and offering free postings. But he put no effort into design so the sites really never took off.
But I saw value in them. Why you ask? Because they were already indexed by Google and each ranked on the 1st page of google results for their respective keywords:
“washington dc jobs”
“philadelphi jobs”
“baltimore jobs”
So these sites had already ‘aged’ in the eyes of google. They had been baking their seo for over a year by being online. To get really good SEO, its important to have an aged site. I have always seen seo get better in the 12-18 month timeframe with my newest sites. So by purchasing these used boards (for about $800 each) I was able to sidestep the aging process and pick up a job board that was ready to go.
After installing Jobamatic on them each site has now moved up in the rankings. They have been on Jobamatic for a few months now and I am seeing great results. Each site has already gotten a paid posting and the traffic is slowly growing.
I am really excited about the DC job site. Washington DC is the country’s hottest job market and has been for a while. When I bought the site it was the 5th result on google, today its #2. I achieved this result by adding some backlinks and installing the very seo-friendly Jobamatic software. Traffic has gone from a thousand monthly uniques to over two-thousand. Traffic has been steadily climbing each week.
So the lesson here is simple. Seek out used job boards and buy them before you consider starting a new one. Doing so will let you jumpstart your site and you’ll start earning money that much faster.
