Should you build a job board business from scratch or just buy an existing one? Here’s what I think.
I recently sat down with a client who was thinking of getting into the job board industry. He was a newbie but ran a recruiting firm in a certain industry for the past few years. As we drank our coffee and ate our bear claws we began to analyze the competition.
Exploring the niche/sector you want to target is the first step you should take before deciding to even start a job board. You need to understand how mature that niche is. How many competitors are there? Is it a growing industry? What are the price points for each board?
What we found was not good news for him as I perused the google results. There were a cadre of sites targeting his niche. Perhaps 15 or more!
With that many competitors in his space I suggested that it would be a tough nut to crack. It would take years to overtake many of the existing boards and thousands upon thousands of dollars. Time was not on his side.
But if he really wanted to enter this space I suggested two possible alternatives.
1. Go mobile. Rather than build a website that just another job board I suggested he build an app that contained its own job board. It could be the first job board app for that space available on the iphone/Android. It would be first to market and he could charge .99 per job posting and backfill it with jobs to earn additional revenue.
Apps are the new websites and mobile platforms like the iPad are perfect platforms to experiement with. Especially for job boards. The opportunity is there. Just post a project on elance.com and get a developer to build it. It would only cost $5-10k.
2. Buy existing site. Instead of building a new job board business from scratch consider buying an existing one. I told my client to visit the job boards we found listed on page 2,3,4 of the google results. Chances are these sites have little if any traffic or sales and may be able to be bought on the cheap. He could probably pick one of them up for anywhere from $3k to $15k if he was aggressive in contacting them.
Buying an existing job board that already ranks in Google is the better way if you want to get into a certain niche. You have to spend some money up front but that site already has a foundation for the business. Then after you buy it you can build the rest of the house!
