A reader asks…
I remember in a video you said that you shouldn’t expect to make a lot of money from a job board, you should only have it as a side income. And I was wondering why is that?
I want to start a job board for marketeers and I need to make about 1 million a year to be able to run it as a real business, where I hire sales reps etc. Am I being realistic?
Firstly, a job board can be a million dollar business not just a side income. Smaller sites are generally more common but there are plenty of large successful boards that earn six figures or more. (RemoteOk.com may be the best example of that at $2-$3 million per year)
Most niche job boards are usually better suited as lifestyle businesses if just being run by 1 or 2 people. I have solo founder clients who make $50-$100k/yr while others with a team of 5-6 typically can earn $400k-$500k.
It just takes time to get there. A job board, like any other internet business, needs a longer time horizon to succeed. Expect to only make a trickle of revenue in your first year of existence while you focus on building an audience.
It would probably take you take 3-5 years to get there ($1 million in sales) and you’ll need to have deep pockets for promotion to buy traffic as well as being great at internet marketing.
Sites that earn millions are typically custom built, so you’ll need to shell out $$ for development. You won’t be ale to make seven figures using off the shelf software.
~ Chris
