[vaksel]

not when the service suffers from a chicken and egg problem.

Why would someone pay money to list their job on a site with no traffic?

Why would someone go to a site like that if you only have a dozen jobs?

This can be something good...but they are shooting it in the leg by being greedy

[sleight42]

To be clear, greed certainly isn't our intent. As Dave (djbrowning) wrote, we're concerned about the quality of the content on the site.

We're also giving away coupon codes right now (see my post below) to drive job posters to the site.

[vaksel]

If quality was your only concern, you'd just charge a one time $5 fee. So I'd say greed is at least somewhat involved.

And yes giving away coupon codes is good and well...but then you run into the quality problem that you use as an excuse to charge from the start.

Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with greed...provided it doesn't cause you to kill your business before it gets the chance to get off the ground.

[SoftwareMaven]

Business exist to earn money and the best way to convince others of the value of your service is to charge for it. You can argue that it isn't good business sense, but calling it greed is a judgmental call that you have no evidence of.

[robeastham]

I think a good strategy is to get your minimum viable product out as soon as possible and call it a beta. Don't charge for the beta and provide plenty of warning to existing clients by signalling early on your intention to charge for some/all features when you are out of beta. After a private beta period, this is how I'm planning to handle Mighty CV, a resumé building app with hacker leanings that I've been working on. I'm looking for private beta users to kick the tyres a bit, so if you feel inclined then you can sign up for the private beta at http://www.mightycv.com.

I always remember being impressed with the way Heroku did things in the early days. After beta feedback it must have become clear to them that it made sense for them to rewrite from the ground up. This left them with a beta platform which they gracefully continued to support, renamed herokugarden, whilst also rolling out the paid for service. They then provided plenty of info on how herokugarden users could migrate to the new Heroku platform for free too. I'm sure they learnt a lot early on about what direction they needed to take the Heroku platform. Anyone remember the web based code editor? Without the early feedback from beta users perhaps they would have pushed more in that direction instead of changing course towards the Heroku we all know and love today.

[chirayu]

I think the $75 per mo is actually a smart idea. It gives the founders lot more leeway in finding and sustaining quality traffic for the postings.

[ericb]

What about manual approval until the site has momentum?

[sleight42]

We (Dave & I) both like this. Thinking more about it. Thank you.

[random42]

Nothing is wrong with being greedy/wanting money for your effort. Just make sure to find an answer for the above mentioned "Chicken-and-egg" problem.

[RuadhanMc]

It's not greedy, it's just not a good idea to try and capitalize on a service that isn't running on all cylinders yet. Having said that, definitely a chicken and egg problem. I would worry about getting users before starting to charge for the service. Once a larger number of members has been obtained thinkings of ways to monetize it should be fairly straightforward.

[jeremyheslop]

The typical employer expects to pay to post a job listing. Yes more traffic is better, but I bet this site will start getting major traffic within a month. Being a specific niche I also predict it will get some major google SEO juice before to long. So that egg better start running or the chicken will catch up!

[danssig]

I don't think the chicken/egg problem applies here. It applies to e.g. dating sites because there are other options (e.g. other dating sites, bars, etc.). In this case, a ton of people want to work remotely and there is no central place to find that. Now I know of one place, so I'll definitely be checking it often.

[keefe]

well said on both posts sir.

I doubt running this site costs so many resources that they NEED to be charging right now.

another option would be to leave the charge now link and go out to craigslist, dice, etc and be like hey! want to have your job listed on our site for free?