This niche job board wants to help people earn the same while working less. There’s a novel concept! Here’s the story of 4dayweek.io founded by Phil McParlane.
1. When did you start your job board?
The job board launched in December 2020 during the height of the pandemic. The initial launch of my site (called 28hrworkweek.com) contained no jobs though… only an idea and a newsletter signup form.
2. What’s the origin story?
I’ve always thought the 9-5 workweek is long, and this feeling only heightened when I got a new job in 2019. For this position, I was traveling 3hrs per day to my job and felt exhausted by the time the weekend came. To add to this, Friday afternoons were essentially a table tennis tournament… fun, but a massive waste of time!
With the changing viewpoint on work culture which happened during the pandemic, I felt that a shorter workweek could be the next logical “killer benefit” that companies would offer. Given that everyone was now working remotely, these previously remote companies would need to offer new benefits to attract talent.
I started looking for jobs with a shorter workweek, both for research and personal reasons. I didn’t really know what to call these jobs though, so I searched for “reduced workweek jobs”, “part time jobs”, “near full time jobs” and eventually “4 day week jobs”.
This sent me down the rabbit hole that is “research on the 4 day work week”.
After realising that the “4 day work week” was actually a thing, I decided to put a simple website together. I’d had ~10 failed startups to this point though, so I wasn’t going to spend much time on the design. A logo, mission statement, and sign up form was enough.
When 300 people signed up in the first few days ( I posted on hackernews), I knew I was on to something and started looking for jobs / companies to add.
Since then, the number of companies offering a 4 day work week has only increased and continues to do so.
3. What niche do you serve?
While the website initially only focused on jobs with a 4 day work week (32hrs @ 100% pay), the site has expanded to including other jobs which offer some form of reduced working. Now we accept jobs which fit any of these categories:
- 4 day work week (32hrs @ 100% pay)
- 4 day work week (32hrs @ 80% pay)
- 4 day work week every 2nd week
- 4.5 day work week
- 4 day work week during summer months
- 9 day fortnight e.g. 9/80 schedule
- 5 day work week with “flexible fridays” i.e. “no meetings + rest if you like”
- 5 day work week with 40+ days vacation per year
- Part time
Most of the jobs are tech, marketing, product, sales, finance etc with the majority of job seekers based in the USA.
4. How long did it take to get your first paying client?
I had 0 sales for 6 months, then got 2 in 2 days … “London buses” as the saying goes…
To get these sales I emailed all the companies that I could find that offered a 4 day work week. The first two payments were for $199 – this included a featured job posting at the top of the site and newsletter for a month.
5. What is your pricing/revenue model?
I’ve experimented with different pricing models, notably:
- Pay per listing (traditional job board style)
- No hire, no fee (pay a % of yearly starting salary if they hire someone)
I’ve had some decent results in both models but ultimately it’s been a difficult hiring market so I’ve mostly focused on monetizing the website via other channels:
- White label resume reviews
- Newsletter ads
- Affiliate deals (notably AI powered resume writers)
- SparkLoop
- CPC jobs
6. Do you sell other products beyond job postings?
My main two products are:
- Newsletter ads (not job ads, just “ads”)
- Featured job postings
I have plans to offer other products however such as:
- Extended company profiles: which feature a company’s great work-life balance (aka employer marketing)
- Resume tools e.g. a “resume scorer” etc
In the meantime, I’m mostly focusing on building the “passive” revenue streams, such as my affiliates, SparkLoop etc.
7. Is this a side gig or your full time job?
The job board started as a side gig but I quit my full time job (data scientist) almost 1 year after launching the job board. Aside from myself, I work with 5 part time contractors to help me run the site (e.g. social media content, admin tasks, blog post writing etc).
