A lot of job board owners today work at full-time gigs while running their site on the side. I’ve done this at times in my past as well. When I started my first job board in 1999 I worked full-time for 2 years until I got laid off in the dot bomb era. But by then my site became a 2nd income, large enough to support me full-time. I never looked back after that.
Recently, after counseling a client, he asked me how he should structure his day when it comes to running a site and having a full time job. So it got me thinking about some specific aspects for how to do that. Here’s what I told him.
- Morning. Spend your mornings doing lead generation. Get up an hour early and email your employer leads for the day. Leave a few voicemails if you have the time. Send 20-25 customized emails. Take a quick look at each employer’s career site to see what they’re hiring for. Mention it in your email. Tell them how your site can help them hire those people.
- Lunch. Got an hour for lunch? Take 15 mins to share your latest blog content on social media, do some tweeting and check your emails. Respond to any email that needs attention. You may need to make a call or two to clients or prospects.
- Evening. Depending on your schedule I’d recommend putting in at least 1-2 hours per night. Respond to any afternoon emails that came in. Review your content schedule. Share your content on Facebook and LinkedIn groups to get free traffic. Find more leads for the next morning.
- Weekends. I don’t recommend doing lead generation on weekends. Use this time for content creation and site maintenance. A new job board should be blogging regularly (3-5 times a week). Write (or pay someone to write).
NOTE: Save your sales efforts for Tuesday-Friday. Don’t bother recruiters on Monday morning, they are much too busy reviewing resumes from the weekend.
Use tools like Monastic to monitor your server status. It will email you if your site ever goes down. Find a social media tool like Buffer or Edgar to automate your social media. (but you should also be doing social yourself at times).
If you do the above consistently and stay focused your site will slowly grow and prosper. After a few years you may even be able to make it your full-time job. That will depend on your niche and your effort.
Good luck.
