4dayweek.io is a great niche success story in the job board world. Started by Scottish developer Phil McParlane, the site has attracted a massive email list that serves up content and jobs for those seeking a four day work week.
Full Interview Transcript
I have one question of interest. I’m kind of new to the job board space, three years. Has the hiring market been a tough one, would you say, in the last couple?
Yeah.
Or has it been pretty normal? It’s been tough?
Yeah, it’s definitely been a tough year for job boards, particularly the big guys, the Indeeds, the ZipRecruiters, down like 30, 40%. Companies here are really just, they pull everything back. They’re just waiting and seeing, and doing more with less. And that’s been the market over here.
In tech, too, lots of layoffs in tech. All the tech job boards definitely have been hurting this year, because of that. So, it’s been a rough year. But one thing I’ve learned is that this business is cyclical. And the tide will turn, eventually, because that’s the way the economy goes.
Yeah. Tell me about it.
The economy ebbs and flows, so do job boards. So, as a job board, if you’re going to be in this for the long haul, you have to expect downturns. You’ve got to make sure you’ve got multiple revenue streams. You’ve got stuff for the hard times to do, and to make money with.
So, things like monetizing seekers, I want to get into that with you, because I know you’re a client of WriteSea. And yeah, it’s really important that you’re going to have multiple revenue streams, if you’re running any kind of job marketplace.
Yeah, sounds good. I’m glad I’m not the only one, then.
Awesome. Well, let’s talk about your 4DayWeek. Hey everybody, Chris Russell here from Job Board Secrets. I’m a job board consultant who help companies start, manage, run their job boards. And I like to talk to new job boarders here.
So, we’ve got Phil McParlane, he’s from Scotland. And he’s the owner and founder of 4DayWeek.io. It’s a job board that’s been around since 2020, I think. And we’re talking to him today about his journey into the job board world. How’s it going, and all that good stuff.
So, Phil, give me the origin story here. I know we did a feature article on you, but give me the verbal version of that.
I mean, honestly, I’ve just always had an interest in jobs with kind of a better work work-life balance, but more so just more time for myself, if I’m being honest. I’ve always had this interest in building things on the side. But when you’re working 9:00 till 5:00, there’s just not enough hours in the day.
So, yeah, I mean, I’ve worked in many jobs as a software engineer, data scientist. And the days are long, the weeks are long. So, at one point I just looked into some reduced working hours, but there really wasn’t much. And I didn’t even know what to search for, to be honest with you.
This was during a period of my life, and I should say, I was traveling three hours a day. I was going to Edinburgh. And on Fridays, it would be like a table tennis tournament. That’s what I would always say. And it’s just a long way to travel, to go and play table tennis. I just felt a lot of work can, not be a waste of time, but there’s a lot of slack, I would say.
Downtime. Yeah, downtime, maybe.
Definitely. And yeah, just more interested in something a bit more like four days, three days. Did a bit of research online, and came across the four-day work week. And there was a real push through COVID to new ways of working. And that was one of micro trends that took off.
Obviously, remote work was the big one. But a four-day week, and just working hours was one of them. And yeah, I put a very quick website together, and it’s still going three years later. I’m sure we’ll get into all that.
Yeah. So, let me pull up your site here on Zoom here, so we can take a quick look at it. I think you custom-built it, right? Is that correct?
It’s a custom build, yeah. So, I’m a developer. It’s probably not what I would suggest for someone, to do a new website, but c’est la vie. I didn’t know much else at the time.
Yeah. First of all, what’d you build it on? What’s the technology behind it?
So, it’s in React JS.
Yeah. Okay. Now, it’s got a nice clean look to it. And I think a site like this today has to have a lot of clean look. So, you got all your SEO links down here. Okay. So, receive weekly alerts for four-day a week jobs, 32 hours a week, basically. And I think you expanded on that niche a bit. Talk to me about the niche, first, in terms of the types of jobs here?
So, when I first started off, it was very much the gold standard of a 40 week, which is specifically four normal length days, not long days, four eight-hour days. And for no drop in salary. And trying to maintain 100% output, despite the 20% less time. And there’s many reasons for that. I won’t get into that just now.
But the four-day work week is a very interesting topic, when you read into it. Because when you think about it, it’s 20% less time, but you get 50% more time off, because you’ve got a three-day weekend instead of a two-day. So, it’s kind of an asymmetric thing going on there.
Anyway, so, I’ve expanded beyond the four-day work week. There is now jobs like, four-day week every second week, 90-day fortnight, which is a compressed four-day week every second week. And then you’ve got other things like Summer Fridays, which is when the company shuts down every Friday in the summer.
Four and a half days a week, any kind of variation on not the five-day week, essentially. I’ve even started including some jobs that are like five day a week jobs, but they have tons of vacation, like 45 days a year, or something.
So, yeah, it’s still kind of a niche. The four-day work week, there isn’t that companies doing it. So, I’m trying to expand it a little bit to give the job seekers some jobs that have a good work-life balance that might not specifically fit in the four-day week model.
Yeah, I think it’s an interesting niche there. And I think it’s one that’s, it’s only going to grow, I think, in the next few years. So, I think you’re definitely onto something.
You know, starting a job board, picking the right niche is always important. And it’s always good to get in early on any kind of trend, or whatever it is. I know the guy from Remote OK, which is one of the most successful kind of [inaudible 00:06:31] job boards, started back in, I think, 2015, maybe. Way before the whole remote thing took off. So, he had great timing on his side. And timing is definitely a part of this.
I started my local job board back in 1999, right before the dotcom boom happened. And once the bus came, it was kind of established enough to go on its own. And I was able to quit my full-time job at that point. But yeah, I think this is pretty cool, and its one that’s going to grow overall.
Definitely, you do have to educate the market, too, with a niche like this, though. Do you get a lot of questions about what types of jobs have to go on here? Or from companies?
Yeah. I mean, more just trying to understand what the four-day week is. I mean, it’s called 4DayWeek.io, and the movement is four-day week. But honestly, the movement has a little bit of a branding issue, in my opinion. And that’s hypocritical, because I named the company 4DayWeek. But the reason is, is four-day week means different things to different people.
Some people it’s four long days. Some people it’s four normal days. Some people it’s less salary. Some people it’s the same salary. So, it’s really hard to educate, and maybe it should be more like reduced work week, or something, or 32-hour work week.
But unfortunately, that’s not what the SEO says. People search for four-day week jobs, hence the name. Yeah, that’s the main education. I’m trying to include all these things, and be very, very transparent on the website. That’s the main thing.
Yeah. I want to ask you about SEO, but let’s talk about your first paying client. Tell me that story. How long did it take? That kind of stuff.
Yeah. So basically, for the bit of background, I put the website together, so, version 0.1. Honestly, it was like one day. Because all the website was, was an image, which was the concept, and it was made-up jobs. It was jobs that didn’t even exist. It was just like, “This is a 32-hour work week at 100% salary,” or this one’s… et cetera. Just an image of a concept and a sign-up form.
I had already done the research, and found that there were some companies offering these jobs. I knew that it wasn’t going to launch with nothing. But yeah, put something very simple together. And posted it on Hacker News, which, for anyone who knows, it’s a forum for developers. And 400 people signed up within two days, or something. And honestly, I’ve done tens of projects, and that hit faster than 99% of them.
So, yeah, put it together very quickly, very rough and ready. Didn’t do very much. And honestly, it was like six months later before I even got a paying customer. It was just me, emailing all of the companies that had a four-day week, which was in the tens, probably. It wasn’t even a hundred companies, I would say, that were hiring remotely, and had a four-day week. It was very, very niche.
So, I was just emailing them, trying to get them on a Zoom call. And yeah, eventually, one just said, “Yeah,” $200 a month, or whatever it was. It wasn’t going to make me a millionaire or anything. But it was good to just get some validation.
And I remember being on the call two weeks later, just to see how they got on, and I had no tracking. I had no idea how many applications they got. I knew nothing. So, I was going into this call blind. And she was like, “Yeah, we got 50 applications.” And to me, that was like, “Wow. I cannot believe 50 people applied.”
So, yeah, that’s how it was. And then as the weird thing happens, I got one more sale two days later, or something. So, it was a lot of variance in this game, I think.
Where is your pricing, by the way? In fact, here’s one tip for you, Phil.
Why don’t you have the pricing being on top up here, for employers? If I’m an employer coming to the site, and I want to post, you’re making me hunt here for the link. So, where is it?
So, it’s funny you say that. So, there’s a few reasons there’s not a Post a Job button, which is the absolute elephant in the room on the website.
Two things. I’m working on it just now, it’s going to be launching soon. But the main reason, if I’m being honest with you, is that there were so few companies, and I mean, I knew by name all of the hiring managers at all of the four-day week companies.
So, having the Post a Job button was kind of just like, “Well, if I know them all myself, I might as well just speak to them, and get in a personal relationship with them.” That’s how niche the niche was. I would not recommend this for 99% of job boards. You should definitely have a Post a Job button. But yeah, just because I knew them all and it was very niche, there was kind of no point, I felt. And also I was testing different strategies on pricing, such as commission only. As I was saying, prequel. It’s been a tough market the last couple years. So, I was experimenting with stuff like that. But as I say, the pricing is coming. It’s just a strange job board niche that I’m in, that I actually knew everyone in the niche.
Okay, fair enough. What is your pricing?
So, it’s going to be something similar to Remote OK, which you mentioned. It’s going to be like, you have a base price. And then you have add-ons, if you want in the newsletter. You have add-ons if you want featured or sticky, a sticky post at the top of the website, that kind of thing.
So it’s still to be decided. It’s a little bit flexible at the moment. But as I was saying, I was previously doing pricing on a commission basis, where I would promote the jobs for nothing, and there would only be a fee if they hired someone, and then they stayed. So, it was a percentage of salary, a very small percentage, albeit. But, yeah.
You can also just advertise regular advertising, too, on this page here?
Yeah. So, that’s more streamlined, that process. This is actually most of my income, to be honest with you, at the moment, is advertising and the newsletter.
So, I send out a newsletter twice a week. And it’s kind of like thought leadership, although I hate that phrase, on the 9:00 to 5:00, that kind of thing. And I also include jobs that have a four-day week, or companies that have a four-day work week.
I know this has really good engagement. People really get behind the movement. And it has a good open rate, and all the rest of it. So, yeah, I just advertise. I offer advertisements in that for any companies, really. Well, any tech-relevant companies, obviously. And yeah, I’ve got someone doing sales. I’ve opened an outreach for that one. So, yeah, that’s been my-
You have 45,000 people on the list?
Yeah. There’s about 110,000.
110,000 people on your newsletter?
Yeah.
That’s amazing.
Thank you.
How quickly did you get your first thousand? How fast did that happen? Give me some sense of the timeline there.
So, the timeline was, as I say, I got kind of lucky that I had a post go kind of semi-viral when I launched. So, as I said, the website was just an image, a JPEG, and a newsletter sign up form. That’s all it was.
And when I posted it on this forum, people really got behind the movement. There’s obviously that feeling of being burnt out, especially during COVID. Just very lucky timing, if I’m being honest with you. Timing is everything.
So, the first 500 people honestly signed up within a few days. I can remember sitting on the couch with my wife, and I got a vibration every time someone signed up. And it was just like every 10 minutes or something.
Wow.
Yeah. So, the first thousand maybe only took a week or two, and then it tapered off, because I had no SEO, I had nothing, right? And then after that, it was just building the website out. I was learning SEO. If I’m being honest with you, I didn’t know much about it.
And then I just had a blog post that went pretty well on Google, and that just gave me constant signups every day, from there on.
It’s interesting. Yeah, you’re definitely, you’re a COVID startup here, which is interesting. Without that event, probably wouldn’t have started this, right?
Yeah.
It’s interesting. So, the traffic here is pretty big, too. Talk about your traffic? What’s your average daily, monthly visitors?
Monthly visitors over 200,000, something like that. So, it’s a little bit off on this.
That’s like, I tell new job boarders, “If you get the 10K a month, that’s a good starting point.” You have 200K. I mean, that’s really it, man.
Oh, thank you. I mean, it’s not been an overnight thing, after three and a half years until now. But it’s been a pretty steady growth. And yeah, fingers crossed it continues.
Now, at this point you’re still working full-time, or no?
No, I haven’t worked full-time since two years ago, or something.
So, about two years [inaudible 00:15:15]?
[inaudible 00:15:15]. Yeah, I’m full-time on this.
So, it took you about two years to turn it into a full-time gig?
Yeah, something like that. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. That’s basically my timeline. I tell new owners, “Look, it’s going to take you one to two years just to establish yourself in the market, and also prove that the need exists for whatever niche you’re going after.” Right? So, you’re right in that timeline.
It always takes longer, I would say, than you think.
Yes, exactly.
Yeah.
Exactly. All right, let’s talk about SEO. You said you were new at it. I know one thing I want to point out here is, this company link. And you’ve got some really nice SEO pages here, for 4DayWeek. I assume these are all top phrases people are searching on.
Very much, yeah.
So, it’s something like Summer Fridays. So, you’ve got the URL, “Summer Fridays,” “Companies with Summer Fridays.” Your on-page SEO there.
That needs a little bit of tweaking, maybe. But yeah, I’m working on that as well.
What are some of your big pages, as far as SEO goes? Can you mention those?
I mean, it’s a bit of everything, to be honest with you. The homepage, 4DayWeek, I’m number one for that. Four-day work week, I’m number one for that.
Oh, yeah?
And then, honestly, for-
[inaudible 00:16:30] Google here.
Hopefully it works for you. Maybe two or three. It does vary a little bit, but I should be in the top.
There you go. Number one.
Yep.
That’s pretty good, man.
Thank you much. As I say, that’s been a long time coming. But yeah, honestly, I started doing blog posting. I ended up outsourcing blog posts, right, because-
Yeah. Two of the top three, actually.
Yeah, that’s nuts, right?
Cool.
Yeah, so I did a lot of blog posting that has really built… I feel like, blog posting, sometimes it might not get the traffic, or the conversion that you want. But it gives Google the topical authority. It lets them know what you’re into. Even if it doesn’t maybe directly send traffic to those pages, I think it’s good to just build up a kind of context or topical authority on these topics.
So, I’m still continuing to do these blog posts, even though most of them don’t convert very well, to be honest. It’s the conversion rate into a newsletter subscriber is usually less than 1%. So, it can feel a little bit like a waste of resources. But I still think, overall, it just brings everything together. It’s good to balance that.
How much content are you doing now, versus the beginning? Can you give me a sense of that?
So, I started off doing maybe, I was writing the posts myself, initially, which is very tough. Even doing one or two a month was tough, when you’ve got everything else going. And then I got an agency, and I basically just funneled all of the revenue, and also some of my personal money, into just blog articles. This was pre-AI tools, by the way. This is pre-Google changing all their algorithms.
So, it’s maybe an easier time, I’m not sure. But it just seemed like the articles got a little bit more traction if I hit the topics right. So, I got the agency doing, I think, maybe four articles a month. And then eventually I came off the agency, and got my own freelance content writer.
And because, like AI tools now, you can really put out quite a bit of content quite quickly. So yeah, I don’t know the exact numbers, but it’s in a range single digits per month. But maybe closer to 10? 5?
Yeah, I tell new job-board owners, you need to be a content machine that first year, to help your… It’s one of the ways you can get free traffic. So, if you’re not leveraging that, then you’re not maximizing your traffic opportunities there. So, that’s pretty cool.
So the blog post that I had that did really well on Google was super, super, super relevant to my niche. Which was just 10 tech companies that have a four-day work week. And because I’m 4DayWeek.io, and I’m blogging about the 10 tech companies that have a four-day work week, Google just instantly respects it, kind of thing.
It’s so niche. It’s in my niche. It’s so relevant. So, I would say, first job, maybe the first blog posts, really go super deep on your niche, just try and hit this super long tail. There is some other weird stuff in there that was kind of the agency that was suggesting stuff.
You have the blog, but you also have advice. Why do you separate that?
So see, if you go to the bottom, actually, go to the footer of the page. If you go down.
Of the footer?
No, the footer of the whole page. So, at the top of the footer, there is different categories. You see them here, resources, blog, advice and guides, work-life balance. And they’re all just kind of putting the content in folders, essentially.
Gotcha.
Yeah. And it seems to be… Google likes it, I think.
Discovery guides. Interesting. Yeah, I mean, okay. It’s a lot of content. You really broke it out, and organized it. Yeah.
You mentioned the Google updates. So, I had a client, I’ve had multiple clients back in April, there was a big SEO algorithm change. Did you see that yourself? Did you get hit? Did you get more traffic?
I would say, slightly less, but nothing terrible.
[inaudible 00:20:30].
[inaudible 00:20:29] or something. It’s really minor, I would say. I’m probably nitpicking.
Yeah. I had clients who have lost like 50%.
Yeah. Yeah. I got hit very small, I would say. I can’t even call it a hit, to be honest with you. So, I was lucky on that front. It’s been tough, right? It always changes.
Everything’s changing so fast now, it’s crazy. It’s what you-
So, out of interest for those people, was it like blogs that got hit? Or was it home pages? Was it everything? Was there any kind of…
It was everything, I think.
Everything?
Plus, a lot of them, if your site has duplicate jobs, too, that was a big part of it, too. The Google Jobs stuff. Because, there’s basically, with job boards, there’s two types of SEO. There’s Google Jobs SEO. And then there’s the content piece.
The Google Jobs SEO, they definitely crack down more on duplicate, scraped jobs. If you guys had a lot of scraped jobs, they’re just not going to send you much traffic. They want unique jobs. And very few sites have that today, so that’s why they lost traffic, I think. That was a big piece of that.
It’s interesting, because I get almost zero, in fact, I get zero traffic from Google Jobs. It’s very weird.
Yes.
I’ve never been able to track it.
It’s because it is so, it’s seven years old now? It is so saturated with the big sites, they just took over. And for a niche job board like yours, or mine, or one of my clients, they don’t have enough jobs. They don’t have enough unique jobs. And Google likes that brand name.
So, that’s why Indeed, ZipRecruiter, LinkedIn, get all the traffic now. In the beginning, yeah, a lot of sites saw a 20% bump in the first year or two. But since then, it’s been saturated. Even employers have their jobs in there now through ATSs. So, it’s just way too many sources in there now, to rank for anything.
Okay, interesting. Yeah, we go for more categories and organic Google traffic, I would say.
That’s why content like yours here was a really good play, because you don’t have a ton of jobs on there. I think you only have, what is that, 1172 total?
Yeah. And to be honest with you, 1172, but the vast majority of them are not prime jobs I want, a four-day week. It’s really a struggle to even get over a thousand.
Yep. Yeah, so that’s interesting. Cool stuff, man. What’s your advice for a new job-boarder today? People ask you, “How do I start a job board today?” What kind of advice do you give them?
Well, I would say, as you just kind of mentioned, picking your niche is the most probably important thing. That’ll dictate everything. Going for something that’s low competition, got some volume. It’s not easy. It’s not easy.
I probably wouldn’t do what I did to where I built everything custom. I probably would just use something a bit more off the shelf. But then again, I’ve never used these tools. I don’t know how good they are, or what the pros and cons are. But yeah, identify the niche.
You could have built this on SmartJob, or something like that, because it’s pretty flexible, in terms of the content creation, stuff like that, and pages and stuff.
Yeah. No, definitely.
You can code on top of it. But you definitely could, 95% of what you did here, I think you could have replicated it in a tool like that.
Yeah. No, definitely. I mean, I’m sure they give you all the AC out of the box. I’ve done it myself. I mean, what’s worked for me, as you said, was writing content. Content got me my first thousand or a few thousand users. And then I just iterated from there. Making sure all the SEOs… SEO is a constant battle, I find, like it’s never completed.
You’re constantly fixing issues. Checking Google Search console, Ahrefs, whatever tool you use. At the end of the day, you’re just trying to get pages on your site that are relevant to you, and that have low competition. That’s kind of the name of the game. So, you want to just give Google an opportunity to show you to their audience.
And yeah, I would say, niche down pretty hard, and maybe expand out from there overall. But give it time, as well. It does take a damn long time. It really does. Especially with SEO. It can take even over a year sometimes. But consistently keep with it, and you should get there.
Good stuff, Phil. Hey, I wanted to ask about WriteSea. So, they’re a brand ambassador for them now. You’ve got WriteSea installed on here for a resume review. How’s that been going, once you sign up with them? Give me some details there?
Yeah, it’s been great. Got a good relationship with WriteSea. So basically, you just check that box, you upload your resume, and then it gives you feedback on your resume. And if you want to get it rewritten by a human, with an expert, that’s what they offer.
And yeah, it’s a great way to monetize a job board without a lot of effort. Because I just have to add a checkbox. I just had to code this thing up, which only took a few days. Integrate with an API. You do have to be a little bit technical. It is the only downside. But I guess it’s same for all.
Yeah. Well, they have the widget, too. So, I’m on Smart Job board, and I have WriteSea integrated there. They just created a widget for me, I just cut and paste.
Nice. I see.
So, it’s on the sidebar. Yeah. Little side over here. And that’s how they implement it for that kind of platform. So, if you custom build your own site, you can certainly do it like you did here. But you can also get a widget from them, as well.
Interesting. Oh, that’s a great way of doing it, then. I mean, it’s great when you get it in the signup flow, I find as well. When I got this, because the signup flow is my main thing, this is where most of my eyeballs hit, this is where most of the input and the interaction is with this signup form.
So it’s given me ideas almost, because it’s such a great way of adding revenue to your job board. You’ve got a resume review, but maybe there’s something else I can offer. I’m still thinking about this. Other things I could layer into my signup process, more offers or products. I’m not really sure yet.
But honestly, WriteSea has been great. It’s really easy to get going. And yeah, if you want to monetize it with a few clicks, that’s the way to do it.
Awesome. Well, Phil, we appreciate your time today. I think we’ll end on that note.
And yeah, dude, I’m impressed. You’ve done a great job. You’re probably like my ideal success story for this business. I’ve been doing this for a long time. And I love solo stories, because I’m a solo entrepreneur myself, and that’s how I started, too.
So, it just takes hustle. It takes grit, effort. And you can get there, and you’re definitely proof of that. So, I give you a nice clap.
Thank you very much. I appreciate it, Chris. And yeah, thanks for having me on.
Keep up the good work. And 4DayWeek.io is the site, guys. Check it out. And we’ll see you next time on Job Board Secrets. We’re out.
