advice on hosted job board vs. indeed vs. job-0-matic?

Hi all,

This is a variation on questions that have been asked before, I know. But, I have a site here which is focussed on the Bakken oil boom in North Dakota:

http://www.bakkenoil.org/

It's not just a job board, and I plan to continue to create content on news, companies, etc. But, it gets good traffic (about 90,000 page views in the last month), and a lot of that is from job seekers. I know, because they email me on a regular basis to ask if I'm hiring.

I've been using the Indeed.com API to create individual posts for jobs in the region. I also recently bought WP-Jobboard to create my own hosted board. After working on that a bit, it occurs to me that it's probably a lot of work to market it, get employers post jobs, manage it, etc.

I'm really more interested in the internet marketing side of things, and want to build several quality niche authority sites like this. So, I'm thinking I might be better off sticking with Indeed, or trying Job-o-matic.

Does anybody have any thoughts on this, or on using Job-0-matic vs. Indeed, in terms of indexing, monetization, etc?

I appreciate any feedback. Thanks.

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Permalink Reply by Jonathan Duarte on March 23, 2012 at 2:31pm

Hi Erim,

I guess the biggest question should be how you plan to integrate the job board and how much active sales and marketing you are going to do to bring in job postings and revenue.

If your not going to actively market the site, other than have a "Post a Job Now" button on the site, your not going to make much money directly. As a result, you'll need to partner with the aggregator that has the most number of paid job postings.

I see on you site, you already have some Indeed postings. The question is whether you are making much on those postings versus other postings. On average, a click to an aggregator could be worth anywhere from $.03 to $.12 per click... Not much, so backfill really only works with a high traffic site.

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Permalink Reply by Erim Foster on March 23, 2012 at 2:47pm

Hi Jonathan,

Thanks for your response. I sort of answered my own question in the process of asking it. I think I'm probably more interested in marketing the site, as opposed to the job board, at least at this point. For one thing, it sounds like a lot of work to manage a job board, marketing, customer service, etc. Like I said, I'm more interested in internet marketing itself, with this and other sites, than I am marketing to employers and dealing with what I am sure is a lot of hands on work managing those relationships.

I think I'm going to go more in the direction of offering an aggregated job board to provide lots of jobs as a resource for visitors. Having said that, I was looking at Job-o-matic on simply hired, and I'm wondering if anybody has any thoughts on Job-o-matic vs. Indeed in terms of monetization and SEO.

Thanks.

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Permalink Reply by Jonathan Duarte on March 23, 2012 at 3:05pm

Erim,

I use both Indeed and SimplyHired sites.

The "jobboard software" sites themselves are probably going to be pretty equal, as far as functionality.

When it comes to revenue, though, I suggest doing searches on Indeed and SimplyHired, in the locations and keywords you are considering, to see how many jobs they list on their sites.

Indeed, has a much bigger sales force, and therefore might be able to provide more paid jobs for your backfill.

Additionally, with the recent SimplyHired layoffs, I'm not sure what that's going to do to their partners and potential future revenues.

On jobboarders, you'll find advocates of both Indeed and SimplyHired. Each has their own reasons. Quite honestly, it will all come down to the best integration, support, and revenue.

Good luck with your efforts. Your site looks like a great asset to job seekers in the area.

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Permalink Reply by Erim Foster on March 23, 2012 at 3:50pm

Thanks a lot for the feedback, Jonathan. That's very helpful.

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Permalink Reply by Nate on April 4, 2012 at 2:32pm

Hosted job boards are great when someone else is doing all the work. A great solution is a full service job board which will host it on their servers, post jobs that match your audience (based on filters and your site content), do all the sales and marketing, customer service, and design to match the job board to your site.

A great example of this is jobs.wired.com which has a job board but they aren't hosting it themselves, they are actually using JobThread ( a full service niche job board for publishers) which posts the jobs relevant to their site and runs the entire job board. It is a great solution to have a branded job board to your site with relevant content and no maintenance concerns.