Chance of monetizing?
Hi there,
last week I launched https://jobbuddy.app , thanks for all the feedback I received here on IH! What an incredible community :D
I was thinking on a way to monetize this web app, someone once suggested a short-term subscription model, like 1 to 3 months, since job hunting eventually ends.
What do you think of this pricing model? Would you buy it? Too high, too low?
Junior - Free - 7 days
Senior - 3,99$ - 1 month
Manager - 7,99$ - 3 months
The features you get with all 3 plans are
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Save job offers in your dashboard
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Update Applications status (applied, rejected ...)
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Review Applications (link to career pages)
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Chrome Extension to track offers from any website
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Save searches performed on the Launcher page
Basically, all you can get now when signing up.
Any feedback is really appreciated :)
There's a fundamental problem with that pricing model in that it runs inverse to the amount of value users are getting. People want to find jobs faster not slower, so your revenue is aligned with an outcome that is actually worse by having monthly pricing. I think instead you might be better off figuring out a way of charging for an outcome. Ideally you want to charge people when they actually get a job but I imagine that would be pretty difficult in practice (maybe if they sign up with LinkedIn you could schedule a charge when they update their profile? I don't know).
I also think the plan names are an issue, I see where you are going in implying the value of each plan with the title but it seems like that would be confusing in practice.
Check out the Citru case study in this Stripe guide: https://stripe.com/atlas/guides/saas-pricing, it's not quite analogous to your product but it's reasonably close.
Thanks @Jefro118 that's a great article, I recommend everyone read it carefully for Patrick's nuanced recommendations on their wording as well as the pricing.
I'll check this out, thanks for sharing!
Thanks for the feedback! The names are a way to possibly increase sales; like I'm a manager hence I'm not gonna pay for the Senior plan :D, but it's almost a joke, I mean if that's confusing for users they can be changed!
About what you said, it's actually difficult to charge for the outcome (at least I don't have in mind a way to do so easily), but I see what you mean.
What if the pricing model was about how many jobs you can "save"? like 5 / 10 / 100 for the same tiers? What do you think?
Yes, I thought that's where you were going with the names and I believe that can work but my intuition is that any benefits will be outweighed by the confusion created, maybe something worth testing though.
I think that tiered model is better than monthly pricing but it's still not aligned with the success of your users. Maybe you could have a one time charge upfront or after a short free trial, if they don't find a job within X amount of time they can get a refund, and if they don't sign in for a while after X time has passed you can reset their account in case they come back for another job search in the future. (Mostly stealing this from the Stripe guide btw).
This is a really neat app I'd have loved to have a few months ago on my job hunt.
As I understand it, you are currently trying to close down the existing features of your app and put them behind a paid account. I'm not sure this is the way to go. I think it is always a good idea to provide more value for the money, rather than take something away. If you decide on going this path, do include a trial period of 1-2 weeks just to get familiar with the tool.
If I were you, I'd leave the current features for free, since it's the basic functionality of your app and add premium features gradually. These might include:
A way to save your CV / Cover Letter and other information and use the chrome extension for autofill
A quick way to personalize a cover letter for each company
Access to a variety of niche or additional job boards, (going to plug remoteml.com here)
Showing new results for saved searches
ALSO, look into referral programs for the job boards you are listing. I actually assumed that you monetized your site like that already.
Hi @dqmonn, I'll answer with a bullet list
Thanks for suggesting remoteml, didn't know about that
Atm I'm not monetizing, I built jobbuddy for fun and just now I'm thinking about way to monetize it
I actually don't know to be "yet another aggregator" even because with referral programs you usually get only low quality feeds, hence it's always better for a user to get to the real website
Interesting suggestion about the CV and cover letter
thanks for the feedbacks
Are you participating in any referral programs for remoteml.com?
I have been thinking about starting a similar niche job board, I really like what you've put together there. I'd be curious to know more about how you got started and how your revenue growth has been.
I'm going to soon, since RemoteML is transforming into a community more than a strict job board. We actually got our first sponsor for a giveaway which is awesome.
App doesn't load on my end. I hit a warning from Cloudflare that the site is down.
Without having seen what the app looks like and what it does, $3.99 sounds a bit low to me. If it really saves you time tracking all your applications (and I know it's a pain, especially if you're the guy who submits application "in bulk" trying to get a job asap) then maybe it's worth a bit more.
I'd be interested to see what other think of the pricing tiers as well.
Hi, @BetaPeak thanks for the feedback! p.s. do you still see the website down? I checked and all the flags are green D:
That's what I get:
https://pasteboard.co/HtPp5Ws.png
mmm really odd D: Could you please try with another browser if you have any? I've tried Chrome, Opera, Firefox and Safari and all seem working D: Maybe a cache problem?
That's great
Pain points you could add value on.
Consider that remote work is booming and is now vastly more acceptable than it was a few years ago.
Many so-called "remote" jobs aren't really remote they are remote-with-limitations of must be in USA or must be in certain GMT time band.
I want to know if people with similar profiles of age or skills are being accepted or rejected by a company - this is a big data thing to aim towards. In particular, as a programmer over 50 this is a concern.
Re-skilling is a huge issue. I have found it much easier getting remote work than here in my home city of Perth partly because they look for experience in a given tool/lang/framework regardless of how quickly you can adapt. Without writing an essay on this, something to think about is how close given tools are to someone's existing experience and so they can plausibly move across with minimal training, especially if they have already put in that training.
(note that I'm working on my own startup, not looking for work at present, this is from remembered issues)
And yeah, your pricing model seems too cheap and skewed wrong. Find ways to make it charged per-job or reward quick results.
Final thought - in the US in particular people seem to move on within two years so don't ignore a repeat market. Can you charge headhunters for some of your pattern data and use that to monetise whilst delivering the rest free?
Thanks for the feedback @AndyDent ! Yeah, I should probably give dedicated features for remote jobs, thanks for suggesting. To answer also your question:
About charging headhunters: atm the users subscribed are just email addresses, not name, age or location, hence there is little info I could provide. Moreover, my userbase is too little. But yeah in the future this can be an interesting feature! Thanks for sharing, I'll "save it for later" :D
$400 is far too much for just about any app, and definitely a consumer app.
400$ ?
Nvm, looks like a language-related issue. In English (US, UK... even India, Japan and China), we use a period for decimal places and a comma as a separator (and put the $ in front of the number).
I parsed what you wrote as $399 rather than $3.99, which is a large difference! Depending on the language market you're targeting, your formatting may or may not have a big impact on conversions.
Ahhh, didn't know :D thanks
Hi,
Based off of Emile Paffard-Wray's comment of your pricing not aligning with the value your users are seeking, I had a different idea about monetization. Leverage your customer's pain point of wanting to "get a job quickly" and base your pricing on how many job board APIs you give them access to. Maybe there is a free model which supports 3 common boards, a moderately priced option which supports access to several additional boards, and a premium option for access to all the boards. Anyone that needs a job quickly will likely opt for the premium option (as long as it is not priced too high.)
Anyway, just a thought. Hope this helps you in some way.
Cheers!
-Pmox2018
Interesting concept. Just a disclaimer, I'm not giving API access, it's just a link to the job board SERP! I don't want to be another aggregator :) But yeah this can be translated in how many jobs you can save for example, each tier gives you X slots.