[WillyF]

I ran a company in the college employment space for 7+ years. I recently shut it down. At our peak we had 150-200k unique visits per month and an email list around 10k. I was scraping by and making a living, but we weren't selling job postings directly for the most part. I've watched many dozens of startups in the space die. Although I learned a lot and helped a lot of people find jobs, I realize now that it's an exceptionally difficult space.

[m52go]

What was your differentiator?

[WillyF]

I wrote the company profiles myself. I found all kinds of companies with jobs that weren't posted on any other job boards. Growing an initial audience was the easy part for me because my site was very different from other job sites. Monetizing while continuing to grow the site was what killed me. I relied too much on SEO, and one of Google's whims essentially put me out of business. Most of the startups in the space that I saw fail couldn't even get an initial user base.

[MichaelCrawford]

that's the key - you need a differentiator. Not everyone has one at all; among job boards, it's quite common for them to be aggregators that just scrape other job boards. I don't find them to be useful.

[m52go]

Yeah. That's why I think a site bringing unique value that happens to have jobs listed might have a fighting chance, whereas a site intended to be a job board that tries to make itself uniquely valuable will struggle.

I'm aiming for the former.

[MichaelCrawford]

I have some bad news for you.

My own site is your direct competitor:

http://www.warplife.com/jobs/computer/

I don't intend to make money from my job board, rather I hope to find a job myself, in part because the job board will help my SEO if it gets organic links, and in part because some of those who get jobs through my site, might one day hire me, or retain me as a consultant.

As for your own job board, it would be helpful were you to post technical articles for the CS students. Not so many people visit job boards unless they're actually looking for a job, but lots of people like to read articles. Once they're at your site, then they'll notice your job board at the same site.

[vram22]

One thing I don't understand is about Indeed.com. I think (not sure) that it was an aggregator. 2 points: 1) was/is that legal - to just scrape other sites and use it? 2) it supposedly sold to recruiter.com for $1B. Can anyone confirm that? I was told it by someone.

[WillyF]

Yes, that's true. I was actually surprised that they didn't exit for more. Ask question 1 again and replace Indeed with Google.

[vram22]

He he, I thought of that just before clicking submit, but was also interested in your reply.