by: AskPat 647 Episode Transcript
Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode number 647 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always, I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions five days a week.
We have a great question today from Tim but before we get to that I do want to thank today's sponsor, which is DesignCrowd.com. DesignCrowd.com helps entrepreneurs and small businesses outsource or crowdsource custom graphic, logo and web design from designers all around the world. They have more than 500,000 designers from over 100 different countries ready to help you with any creative, really, anything, any creative and design products you might have. Check out DesignCrowd.com, that's D-E-S-I-G-N-C-R-O-W-D.com to learn more and get started today at DesignCrowd.com/askpat, where you can get a special VIP offer, just for you guys, DesignCrowd.com/askpat.
Now here's today's question from Tim.
Tim: Hi Pat, this is Tim from AgGrad.com. My question to you is about job boards. Do you think job boards are a good way to monetize a website? Right now my site is career resources for free for students and recent graduates pursuing agriculture as a career and I'd like to monetize it through the job board. I know you've had job boards in the past and was just curious if they worked for you in terms of monetizing the site. Thanks, and keep up the good work.
Pat Flynn: Hey, Tim, thank you so much for the question. I love the niche that you're in. I think it's very specific and you're helping a lot of people and I think it's cool, especially those who are recent grads. My wife went to Cal Poly, Pomona and I know they had a huge agricultural program with a ton of students, so this is really cool. It's awesome when you want to help people get jobs. I think that's a very big paying point for people and I think when you can be there to help people through their careers in one way or another there's a lot of opportunity for you to reap the benefits of that.
For instance, when I started GreenExamAcademy.com to help people pass a particular exam in the architecture industry, that worked out very well. That was a big paying point that people were willing to spend a lot of money on because they just really wanted to pass that test. Similarly, when people graduate they really want to find a job, so this is great.
Is a job board a great way to monetize? I've monetized job boards in the past. I've done it in two ways, one is much easier than the other and I found a lot more success with one over the other two. There's two ways to do it, I feel. You can set up your own job board where essentially you would have both people who are looking for people to hire and also people who want to get hired. They would put in their information on your own site, you'd own that information, and you would essentially be connecting them there through people signing up and you would monetize that mostly by having employers, who are looking for people to hire, pay you to get access to a directory or to be a part of the directory. I've tried that before and it's a little bit more difficult to do it that way than the other way I'm about to tell you because when you're starting from zero, you're starting from zero. Why would employers sign up if there are no people looking for jobs there? Why would people look for jobs there if there are no employers? It's a little bit more difficult to set it up that way but it can be very profitable because companies spend a lot of money to make sure that they get the right hires. That's one way to go about it.
The way that I found that is much easier and I've found some pretty good success with is through using a publisher tool through something like Indeed.com, I-N-D-E-E-D, essentially a job site where there are a ton of applications, a ton of employers. It's that site that, like I said, that exists that already connects people looking for jobs with people looking for people to fill in those roles. You can sign up as an Indeed publisher, which is what I did, and what's really cool is you can get these certain tools that you can place on your website, just put the script on your website, in the back end, in the code, and then it serves up a search form.
You can even have it be very specific, related to your particular industry, which is what I have at SecurityGuardTrainingHQ.com. I would recommend checking out the job board over there. SecurityGuardTrainingHQ.com, you can see how it works. It's very nice and it just pulls from their data base, Indeed's data base, of millions of records. It makes it really easy for people, if there are people on your website, to find jobs, there, find employers. They can search through different regions, through different parts of the country and even different parts of the world, too, which is really awesome. In the beginning that was a little slow because I just think people didn't even know the job board existed, so I would recommend that when you do come out with a job board in one way or another you make a big deal out of it. I found that over time, that's site's been up for about, four, five, maybe even six years now, about six years, actually, the job board has been getting a lot of steam. What's really cool is it's fairly passive, so it just happens sort of automatically and I've seen the numbers grow, quite small, but every single month it grows. Now we're at a point where we're making, on that particular site, about $200 to $300 a month with hardly doing anything at all. I love that because it shows that people are using the site, people are getting value from it, I'm connecting people with prospective employers and when you know that you're helping people with something like that, you know that you have a site that's actually working.
I wouldn't make your entire site about the job boards because there are tools out there that exist, like Indeed.com, that you could become a publisher for. If you want to figure out how to do that, just look up Indeed Publisher in Google and you'll find exactly how you can sign up for that. I believe Monster.com would likely have one of these directories, too, that you can sign up for and be publisher for. It's really easy to set up, but I wouldn't make your entire site just the job board. You give a lot of value, you talk about a lot of things related to the industry and the job board just happens to be there. Over time you're going to see that it's going to begin to monetize itself. I get a check from Indeed.com, or an ACH transfer, from them every single month, which is really cool. It's just a couple hundred bucks but that goes a long way and it adds up over time for sure.
A job board is fantastic because you are helping people and if you can be the one that makes it easy for them to find a job or make it easy for employers to find people to hire, you're providing value and you will be rewarded, too, not just in the immediate sense in terms of the money coming from connections in the job board, and the money comes from when people find prospective employees. It doesn't happen every time somebody searches or every time somebody clicks through, but when there's a connection made, that's when you earn some dollars. The long-term effect of you providing value in that way, people coming back to your site, people recommending your site to other people, it can make a big effect on your bottom line overall, especially if you have other products to serve them with, too.
Tim, thank you so much for your question. I appreciate it, really awesome, and I wish you all the best of luck. We're going to send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show. Anybody else out there who has a question, please ask a question yourself and you might be featured on the show just like Tim. Just head on over to AskPat.com, you can ask right there on that page.
To finish off, as I always do, I love to end with a quote. Today's quote comes from Deborah Lee. She says, “The importance of gratitude is never forgotten.”
Cheers, take care, and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Bye now.