Start a Profitable Job Board Website in Just One Day

People are always going to need jobs. Starting a niche job board can be a great way to reach some of the millions of job seekers out there! More than ever, job seekers go online to find work — an estimated 180 million unique visitors make their way to Indeed each and every month.

What if you could get even the smallest slice of the online-job-seeking pie? You could end up making a pretty good living! Many niche job boards charge $50 to $500 for each 30-day job listing posted. Even if you could get 10 new listings a month (to start!), that’s not too bad for a business that has little startup costs or monthly maintenance fees.

You won’t be able to compete with the large job boards like Indeed, CareerBuilder or Monster. That’s okay. You don’t have to.

You can carve out a nice little spot for yourself in the job board market by picking a targeted niche.

ProBlogger, AuntMinnie, and Dice are all good examples of how a job board can thrive by providing industry-specific jobs to a certain market.

So, what kind of niche job board will you have?

You can target your local community or focus on a specific industry. You could even establish a job board for certain professionals, say virtual assistants or graphic designers.

The kind of niche job board you set up is entirely up to you. It’s a good idea to play to your strengths and pick a profession you are experienced in or have worked in before. Why?

To bring in organic traffic to your job board, you’ll want to establish a blog on the site. Blogging is one of the best ways to bring in visitors from search engines like Google and Bing. It also happens to be a great way to get social shares.

The more traffic you can bring to your site, the more you can charge for your monthly job listings. Plus, when you provide job listings AND helpful industry-related news and advice, you become an expert source of information as well as a great place to find a job.

Without experience or at least an interest in the field, you’ll quickly burn out and lose your gusto before you even get started. That’s why you should aim at an industry you actually enjoy and can provide valuable insight into.

Still Stuck?

Picking a niche for your job board will probably be the hardest part of this process (and one of the most important!). Don’t rush and pick something just for the sake of getting started. Take your time and think of something that actually resonates with you — something you know you can sustain for some time and turn into a profitable business.

For a little inspiration, check out this list of 100+ Niche Job Boards. You’ll see that there are plenty of opportunities to launch a job board that is highly focused and targeted — and be quite successful!

Getting Established

Got your niche? Great! Now you need to get your niche job board up and running — don’t worry, no technical skills required.

First things first, you need a name. Ideally, your name will have something to do with your job board’s niche. This can be an industry term or directly reference the profession.

Look at AuntMinnie — it’s a job board for radiology professionals. What does Aunt Minnie have to do with radiology, you ask? It’s a term often used by professionals in the industry to refer to a very obvious radiological finding — something so apparent even your Aunt Minnie could see it!

While the term may be lost on most, radiology professionals get it. And so it works!

The ProBlogger job board is another very successful example. It’s a go-to spot for those looking for professional blogging and writing jobs — ProBlogger. The name directly references the types of jobs listed and is easy to remember.

The takeaway? Choose a name that professionals in the niche you’re targeting will understand OR directly reference the types of jobs being posted.

Niche and Name. Now What?

You’ll need to purchase your domain name and pick a hosting provider. If you’re new to the world of web properties, your domain name is the actual address visitors use to find your site. Here at Work from Home Happiness, the domain name is WorkFromHomeHappiness.com.

Your domain name should be your job board’s name — ideally with a dot com ending. Why? Most people will automatically put a dot com at the end of a web address, no matter what. Don’t miss out on valuable traffic because you opted for a .net, .org, .ninja, .family.

What’s a Host?

Every website needs to be hosted in order to be visible on the internet. Hosting is like your website’s monthly rent — a place for it to live. Like a good or bad landlord, your host makes all the difference in your experience as a website owner each month. That’s why you’ll want to choose a host with reasonable rates and a great reputation.

One of the best hosting companies out there is BlueHost. They have 24/7 customer support and make it easy to get your website up and running — all at an affordable monthly price. When you sign up, you get a free domain name to go along with your hosting plan. This eliminates the confusing step of buying a name somewhere else and then transferring it over to your host.

Getting Started

Ready to get started? Before you do, I suggest setting aside one day to devote to this process. That’s it. Just one day. How can you get your own niche job board set up in just one day? WordPress.

When you choose WordPress for your job board, not only can you get up and running quickly, but you also get a very professional and functional site. The best part? You can do it all yourself. You don’t need any special skills or coding knowledge. Using a WordPress theme and a combination of plugins, you really can quickly and easily get your job board set up by the day’s end.

Ready? Let’s go!

First up, head on over to BlueHost to get started. Through BlueHost you’ll be able to:

• Get your domain name for free
• Establish your hosting plan
• Install WordPress quickly and easily (also for free!)

When selecting a plan, the Starter Package will have everything you need (and more!) This package comes with your domain name, email accounts (YourName@YourWebsite.com), and even $50 worth of marketing offers.

Now that you’ve picked your plan, type in the name you carefully selected for your job board in this screen. As I mentioned, when you sign up for BlueHost, you’ll get a domain name completely free. In the event you already purchased a domain name elsewhere, no problem! You can transfer it over to BlueHost.

Make sure you provide up-to-date contact information. This is how BlueHost will relay important account information to you.

The next page will ask if you’d like to add any additional items to your monthly hosting package. In all honesty, you don’t need any of these things. They are all completely optional.

Note: Whenever I purchase a domain, I always opt for Whois Privacy. Why? Every domain that is purchased goes into a database. This database stores information about the domain, including contact information of the owner. Whois Privacy Protection keeps your personal information hidden from public view. You don’t need it but it is a nice option if you prefer to keep your information private.

When you’ve selected the options that make sense for you, it’s time to make yourself an official domain owner. All you need to do is put your payment information into the secure checkout form, read and agree to the Terms of Service, and click next.

Congrats! You’re now an official domain owner and super close to having your niche job board up and running. Now you’ll  need to install WordPress. Navigate to your cPanel and find the “Instal WordPress” button like the one in the screenshot above and click on it.

 

You’ll be given more information about how awesome WordPress is and also be able to start the installation process. When you’re ready, simply click the “Start” button as circled above.

Make sure your domain name is listed in the box and hit “Check Domain.” This ensures WordPress is being installed on the domain you just purchased.

Don’t forget to jot down your Admin Username and Admin Password. This is the information you’ll  need to access your site in order to make changes. Once you click “Install Now” this will initiate the process of actually installing the files needed to have WordPress on your site. Don’t worry — BlueHost takes care of all that for you. You just need to hit “Install Now.”

That’s it. You’ll see Status: Installing and then a success message — you’ve now got your own niche job board with WordPress installed. Now what?

Picking a WordPress Job Board Theme

There are thousands of WordPress themes out there. The theme is what gives a WordPress site it’s overall look. Themes can be easily installed in just a couple of clicks. But before we get to installation, you need to actually pick a theme.

Where do you start?

Head on over to ThemeForest.

Type Job Board WordPress into the search box. You’ll be presented with some really great themes that are specifically built to give you a beautiful and functional job board.

My personal favorite? Jobify.

Jobify is great because of the support that comes with the theme. When you purchase Jobify, you get SideKick Walkthroughs. These step-by-step instructionals can walk you through just about any task. When you purchase Jobify, you get an entire year of access to SideKick premium — for free!

On top of the 24/7 help and guidance, Jobify also integrates with all the great job board plugins you’ll need to monetize your site right out the gate.

Which Plugins Do I Need?

WordPress plugins complement your theme. They also provide specific functions to your site without having to write a single line of code.

The main plugin you’ll need is WP Job Manager. This is a free plugin that gives you a functional job board that allows employers to submit jobs and job seekers to easily search through your job board.

But if you want to monetize your job board, you’re going to need premium plugins. These cost money. At the very least, you’ll need Simple Paid Listings.

With Simple Paid Listings, you can charge a flat fee per job posted. Employees can pay through Stripe or PayPal before their job goes live.

 The cost of Simple Paid Listings is $19. Having this plugin allows you to easily accept payments from employers when placing a job on your site.

There are some other pretty amazing plugins you can purchase to help build different revenue streams — this includes Indeed Integration, WC Paid Listings, and Resume Manager.

You don’t need these plugins. But they do expand your job board and give you different ways to monetize. For example, with Resume Manager you could charge candidates to upload their resumes to the database or charge employers to browse through resumes in search of candidates.

And with WC Paid Listings, you can set up Job Packages which can be priced at different rates depending on what the package includes (featured jobs, 30-day listing, 60-day listing, etc.)

When just getting started, you may want to seriously consider the Indeed Integration plugin. Why? Your job board will look pretty empty at first. When you have the Indeed Integration plugin, your job board will be backfilled with listings from Indeed. This gives the illusion of an active job board even when you haven’t sold your first listing yet.

And the best part is, you can sign up to be an Indeed Affiliate through their Job Roll program. This lets you make money every time you refer a user to Indeed who then generates revenue for them. Pretty cool, huh?  It’s a great way to make passive income just for having Indeed jobs listed on your board.

The Indeed Integration Plugin is $39. If you think you may purchase two or more plugins to go with your job board, you may want to buy the Core Add-On bundle.

At $125, the Core Add-On bundle gives you all of the money-making plugins already mentioned and some other valuable ones as well but at a greatly discounted price if bought separately. I’ve got the Core Add-On bundle and use it here on Work from Home Happiness. You can see what it looks like by visiting my Job Board and the Upload a Resume page.

While this may seem like a huge, time consuming undertaking — a theme to pick out and plugins to install — it’s really not! In fact, Jobify and the recommended plugins can easily and quickly be installed. And, if you run into any trouble, remember, they all come with great support and documentation — it really is the no-fail way to get a job board set up quickly, easily, and frustration free.

While I suggest you do the work yourself, so you get a really good feel of how to navigate your site as an Admin, you can have someone do the installation and setup for you.

Fiverr has some amazingly talented freelancers who can get your site up for as little as five bucks. So, if you’re really not the DIY type, know you can outsource the work.

Create Your Own Niche Job Board Website

There you have it — the simplest way to launch your very own niche job board website thanks to BlueHost, WordPress, and Jobify (and Fiverr too, if you choose to outsource!)

There are plenty of opportunities to reach the millions of job seekers who head online each month to find and apply to jobs. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments below. I’d be happy to help (or track down the right person who can!)