Build it and they'll come they said

If you build it, they will do absolutely nothing.

https://stripe.com/atlas/guides/starting-sales

What are you having trouble with? Finding companies to post job offers or people looking for jobs?

I think employers don't know what they are getting for $99, e.g. what's the volume of your site, do you actually have people who are looking for jobs on your site? It's easy to say pay me money, but nobody wants to pay money just because they can.

I think job boards are much easier to monetize once you have people visiting your site. I know a lot of IH in here say to build a community around something job related, that could be useful. E.g. have a forum where people can discuss job interviews, the process, and what works and what doesn't. Just an idea to attract people to your site.

Think of yourself as a marketplace. You need to build both sides for this to work.

Hello @SoftwareJobs.

Congratulations on the launch, and you have every right to be positive. You should remain positive as well, and stop looking at the web analytics every 5 minutes, if you are, haha.

Alright seriously, there is no reason to not remain positive, it's only been a few days, there is competition in this niche so it's not like this is a dead-end, and it's a long road ahead.

First thing I would do is scrap the coupon for free, you want business validation, but this type of ball rolling is deceptive. Coupon for discount I can stomach, barely. I say barely because your competition charges significantly more than you (if it's the one I think it is). I'm not saying never do free, but when we know the demand is there, competition doing well, why do this?

Filter jobs by interview type? This is a feature, what was the demand for this feature? Enough for it to take prominence over your cost being the UVP?

You being significantly cheaper than the other one is a far stronger UVP than filter by interview, unless there is more than meets the eye on this, but if it is (filter by interview), there is no way to appreciate it via the homepage, so you may need information about that on the homepage.

I would go to the competitor, and contact the job posters on there, letting them know of your existence. Use LinkedIn to get their Human Resources manager or whomever at those companies.

No need to reinvent the wheel at this stage. So, I would also do a deep dive on the competition to get their traffic sources, and see what other things I can pick up. Too many routes to consider once that info is in, so won't say more on this for now.

As for sellers, they will typically wait around longer, again will be un-scalable forms of acquisition to provide growth spurts. Where are they hanging out online?

Cheers, Ace.

Build it and they'll come they said

This advice is kind of obsolete. These days when one can find any site or app on any topic for free we have to convince people to come and spend 2 or 3 seconds of their life for what we've done.

Decent looking site. The blue of the text is a little on the pale side for easy reading.

You might change the subhead "Filter jobs by interview type" to a slightly contrasting color as it's a key selling point.

The site simply needs more job listings. You've not reached a critical mass for most job-seekers to stay on the site more than a few seconds. And the more listings you have, the more valuable the tagging becomes.

After you get some more listings up, maybe do a blog post with evidence about how some devs do better in one type of interview than another, or something like that. Good luck!

create content

Man, I feel you. Don’t lose heart. Do a little bit of marketing everyday - these efforts compound over time without you realizing it.

Ok, enough back patting - here are some ideas...

1. Have you offered to upload your target customer’s job posting on your site? Like someone said, it’s not the fee that’s holding them back - it’s the ROI on the 10-15 minutes it’ll take to post on yet another jobs board. You need to reduce that friction.

2. Hang out where recruiters hang out. Sadly for you, they don’t have a forum for recruiters that I know ofbut you could try Quora. Someone had reported good results from Quora ads - this might work for you.

3. People like going where everyone else is going - do your emails emphasize that aspect of softwarejobs? You should tell them why they’re missing out on a good thing by not using it because their competition is on there already!!!

If you are trying to attract businesses to post their jobs, It's all about their return on investment. If they think that $99 is going to find them their next great employee, yeah they'll signup in a heartbeat! But, there are a few problems with your site presentation.

In most cases "Time is Money", even if you are offering a free listing, they may not want to spend the 15 minutes if it's never going to be seen.

Here's what I'm getting at... The message needs to be stronger. "Why post on your site as opposed to the others out there". You may also need to give some details about fulfillment "80% employee fulfillment for every listing", something that really makes them feel like they're going to find their next employee on your site. Lastly, add some metrics about your site traffic, this will help them feel like they're going to get a big response from possible applicants.

There's one final issue that you'll need to fix. If your site is not getting any traffic then companies are not going to want to post their job listing on your site, plain and simple... And this will result in a non-profitable SAAS. I'm not trying to be rude if it is coming off that way. I am being trying to be genuine and offer a little advice.

If you need a way to get more traffic, start creating more features for the Software developers to post their profile (this way you will have a new section of your site and an email list of developers).

The site also needs a very different and unique look. It looks fairly bland, just being honest.

Keep at it though. Keep chipping away and eventually you will have crafted yourself a profitable and satisfying SAAS business :)

You have beautiful template. Very simple. Very modern. Very unique. I love templates like that. Marketing is still my major issue. I am actually attempting to work on something to solve that pain point. https://www.indiehackers.com/forum/feedback-on-marketing-acbd0a347b

As for now...

Blogging has helped me, specifically on Medium.com. Hacker News picked up one of my articles and added me as an Author. I've since written about 2 or 3 articles that have been featured on their site which has driven thousands of visitors and traffic, not specifically to my products, but to the awareness of my products.

I don't outright write: "Go visit my website because it's awesome!"

I talk about pain points and lead to links back to my website. I talk about why I created it and how it is helping me and why it's important to use such a product. I talk about the steps I took to get there, to build the product, what is lacking for every similar product out there, etc. For example, I built a web hosting solution for the past 3 months and released it. I got about 5 signups and one paying customer who paid me and churned. I even posted on one or two Facebook groups that were for web hosting and both times, it got flagged, but it did get me that one paying customer.

I did what you did and posted on hacker news, indie hackers, producthunt as well as paid for a listing on places like BetaList, StartUpList, etc.

I'm currently writing a series of articles as to why I created a web host. There's not too many people who develop a customized web host with web developers in mind and nearly everything is automated, because they didn't like what was on the market and still just seemed to be lacking. So it's like I'm trying to appeal to an audience who is looking for a new web host as well as provide insight into: well if you don't like any web hosting solutions out there, including mine... it is possible to build your own.

I'd say you can appeal on Medium.com and other forums to get companies interested in posting on it, maybe giving them a discount, or even try Craigslist (you'll be flagged, but if you can get a post on the major hiring cities (Austin, LA, Chicago, NY, Seattle, Silicon Valley, etc.) and at least have some people see it, it'll get you some traffic and notice for a few days.

The moment I knew I wanted to build a business and not yet another app, I took marketing seriously. But still, that's easier said than done. Marketing feels unnatural if you are a product person because you want to do what's best for the user. Marketing is tricking people into thinking that your product is the best. Wrong!

Taken from my article here on Indie Hackers.

There are tips to approach marketing differently, to write useful content and such. You might want to check it out.