Show HN: Job board designed for freelancers | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Job board designed for freelancers

bidpeek.com

37 pointsmikelbring44 comments

Nice looking site and congratulations on your launch!

The only problem I can see is that nobody will pay to join a job site until there are lots of jobs available, yet companies won't go out of their way to post jobs on your site until you have a large pool of candidates who will apply for the work they post. Consequently, I'm worried that, by charging people right away, you're going to end up stifling your site's growth.

What if you adopted a model whereby everybody gets a basic profile and can apply for x jobs a month? Subscribers get better profiles and can apply for unlimited jobs. I know it sounds a lot like other incumbents in the space, but I think that model works for sites like this.

Nope, it is a Very Good idea to charge to join a job site. That allows to avoid sinking in a flood of spam applications from people from ugg... 'low-cost destinations' which kills most job sites. I'd even charge more, when the customer will see a site where they don't have to look through endless and endless pages of outright spam, they will flock in.

After all, there is too much free stuff on the internet now. With current bandwidth and server costs, a few bucks can go a long way, and if that makes a huge added value by itself, why not?

I don't see myself paying for the service with only a handful of jobs available, but I like the idea and I would pay for the service if it provided quality jobs.

Have you considered offering the service for free to early bird adopters? As an example: those who join now get a free pass for a month/year. It would really help with adoption in this initial phase.

Yes and I sort of regret not doing that now to help with the jobs. I may go back and add that in now and see what happens.

Its not too late!! Chuck a banner up on the HP

Just added an early bird feature :)

Awesome, thanks!

I would suggest wrapping it in a different colour div, it should "feel" like a promo right?

47 minutes old and it's already filling with spam. Of the seven gigs listed thus far, two are recruiter spam, and two are full time jobs (though at least seemingly from real companies).

I think you're about to learn what happens if you don't charge companies to post job listings.

I considered not approving the full time jobs because I wanted to gear this towards contractors, however I really need jobs to be listed.

Can I suggest that most job sites offer very very deep discounts to recruiters who post a lot of jobs - an add on a site that is nominally 2-400 bucks will barely cost 10 bucks for most recruiters - so contact a dozen or so big recruitment firms, and offer to host their jobs (for free) from their feeds.

That might help

Need a community maintained recruiter blacklist somewhere.

IP addresses, phone numbers, email addresses.

How about Awful Recruiters? The list is maintained in Git.

http://awfulrecruiters.com/ https://github.com/soffes/awfulrecruiters.com/blob/master/re...

Congrats! The site is beautiful and I hope it takes off.

Two ideas to reduce the amount of spam and reduce the amount of low-value options (from both the gig and freelancer perspective) while hopefully getting you a more scalable revenue stream:

1. Charge a flat fee to place a bid -- this will show that all of the jobs posted are serious, not "I need Facebook cloned in three days thanks." (There's a reason Craigslist does this.)

2. Charge a flat finder's fee when a bid is accepted from a freelancer. This removes a barrier to entry for freelancers while also will cut down on undercutters offering PHP work for $5/hour.

I get the idea of charging freelancers to cut out the really bad ones, but who's to guarantee the quality of projects/clients? If you had some sort of system that also filtered clients/projects, then I would seriously consider subscribing. You've got one side figured out, but you need to figure out both, otherwise you'll lose all your subscribers because of the crappy clients.

In addition to paying, you should also consider screening every freelancer and client/project (any increase in quality for either side of the pie is really important).

Aside from that, good job on the website!

Congratulations on launching!

One quick potential problem I've found: it's easy to find out who the job is for by searching for a sentence from their post and finding other places they've posted.

I'm not sure how you're going to find a way around that unless you only show a unique summary of each post—enough to give a flavour and entice the signup, but not enough to give away who the job is for.

Or perhaps I'm just tight and others will be happy to pay for conveniences sake.

I really considered having a summary of each job free members see and then one paid members see. I may go back to that.

Perhaps the summary could be automated and be based on keywords like the experience needed, location, salary etc. That might be enough to give someone the gist and get them to pay.

Right now though, I'd rewrite the current job posts on there so they're unique.

Great job on providing site for free for those posting jobs.

However how do you verify if the jobs or companies are legit?

The problem with companies posting jobs for free is that, it may attract companies who don't really value the developer's work, both in effort and monetary compensation. I have seen a lot of companies like that and companies that are legit and who really value developers don't really mind paying a fee to get good developers.

I don't really have a fool proof way yet. I do approve all the job postings before they go out. I think it might be hard to profile job posters because a lot of them are probably going to be first time posters.

I totally understand as you would need to somehow attract job postings to bring more developers to the site (or vice versa). I guess once the site picks up, and both companies and freelancers see the value, then you can come up with a way to verify jobs. Best of luck.

Whenever you're launching a product in a market that a lot of other people have already entered, you need to explain how you are different.

Perhaps you could data mine the popularity of skills - or locations - on both the supply and demand side and do something with that. For one, it would tell developers what skills are in high demand, and perhaps something could be done about that. That would set your service apart from the rest, just as an example.

Hello HN. This is what I call a reverse job board. I was hesitant in making it paid right away because of the lack of jobs but I wasn't entirely sure how I would go back later, so I did. If you are looking for a contract, it is completely free to post. Let me know if any one has any suggestions or questions. Thanks!

It's not very clear to me how one goes about getting the job. I understand that you can reply to posts, but can you PM through Bidpeek? Where can I list my credentials? My hourly rate? My contact info?

When you have a subscription, you can click "I am interested" and it will send an email to the post owner, and put a message on their dashboard. Then they can email you. Also, every one has a profile they can put all their information on, here is mine: https://bidpeek.com/profile/Michael

It's still really early, I only spent a few days building it and have a lot of ideas.

Edited to add: When you click "I am interested", you can also append a message to send.

Well I would certainly put a "tour" in because it's not at all clear why I should spend $2.50 a month on this.

Try adding a "post a job" link.

I know I have to sign up to post a job, but many others don't.

I like your idea because one doesn't need to keep "buying credits" to bid for jobs. Just one tiny monthly fee and I'm good.

Building a multi-sided platform is a lot of work but I really hope it works out for you. Good luck.

That makes sense. Marketing and engagement isn't my strong point (I am a developer), so any advice like that is absolutely helpful. My thought behind the monthly / yearly fee is, if you get one job, it's worth it indefinitely.

Could that not have an unintended effect of flooding job posters? There's no barrier besides the monthly so I might as well apply to everything.

Very good looking site! Congrats on launching. I had a thought though: if posting is free, what stops people from posting a job with an email address in it for candidates to contact them directly and circumvent your payment system? I noticed that there were some posts which did this already.

< PEBKAC > So the email verification needs to be fixed. My email is brianw.stearns@gmail.com and it won't accept the '.' as part of an email. I don't have an email that is only chars and numbers. Can you fix this? </PEBKAC>

Edit: Sorry!

Side point, but '.'s in gmail addresses are not significant so email to brianwstearns@gmail.com will still reach you.

I did not know that. That is pretty cool.

Thanks to feedback. I just added a "early bird" feature. Any one that has signed up or signs up over the next week or so will get a free account for a year.

Good idea but not always freelancers are culprits - some employees use board just to know the pricing . Best wishes - Freelance web developer

I'm going to make a plea to destroy all job boards

http://jobstxt.org/

Its simple, easy, can be harvested by Google / anyone else instantly and solves at least 50% of job searches

That's cool that you think job boards should be destroyed or whatever. But to shamelessly plug your idea to another users show HN thread is not cool.

I am assuming he spent many days/weeks/months etc working on this site and idea, and for you to come along and shit on it is not cool.

Stick to the old adage; if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.

OK, thats fair - I apologise to the OP. The best excuse I can muster is that I'm having a bad personal day, which is not much of an excuse.

I have in the past argued that Show HNs should get honest and open feedback, and not snarky stuff so here goes

1. "Subscription Signing up and posting is free but to reply to job posts you must have a subscription." I was confused - I liked the idea of getting the early bird but this wording threw me - I could not work out if I would be able to reply to posts. I nearly did not sign up because of it.

I suggest you add wording that "The early bird will allow you to apply for jobs free for a year" - at that point.

2. Try having two account type - company and jobseeker. That might make the above issue clearer. Also if I am a jobseeker why would I want to post a new job? if jobseekers accounts can do that you may have some moderation to do.

3. suggest putting name boxes into profile - apparently more boxes to fill in less sign up.

4. overall - impressive, even your css is cache-busted.

Well, my opinion on the business model is really what started this mini flame, so here is a longer explanation of why I am not a total shit:

1. if these jobs are cross-posted anywhere, there is no convincing argument to pay your subscription fee. I may as well apply to the ad that does not cost me 2.50 to apply.

2. Quality jobs on here is vital - if anyone can add them for the cost of an email, you will get spammed by idiots. And I am afraid that if you are charging to post a job and charging to apply for a job, you will struggle to make critical mass.

Finally, and the reason for the grandparent post, I think that there are a number of "industries" that the Internet should have killed a while back but for some reason are still here. Real Estate Agents (Realtors) being one, job searches being another. Frankly anything that involves being an agent between two parties where those parties can find each other through structured searching is really going to be on its last legs.

I understand the desire (finding a job is broken, lets fix it) - but honestly I do not think that another agency approach is the long term solution - and as such I would suggest the OP thinks long and hard as to whether the game they are playing has a positive end in sight.

The pond is shrinking, you clearly have the chops for this, try finding a pond that is growing.

(yeah easy to say I know)

Also, shameless nitpick, stanza #4 URL in example jobs.txt is malformed. :)

I like the idea. I agree that your comment comes across as negative, but it offers a general constructive solution related to the OP.

What was your main reason for coming up with jobs txt ?

The site is not mine but the creator was kind enough to credit me with the idea. It has always struck me that simply self publishing in an age of search ends most uses for want ads ( this was the kind of report I would write at A UK ISP in the mid nineties - lots of idealistic stuff with spreadsheets attached)

Sadly people have almost no personal webspace anymore (you used to get 10 MB free with a dial up modem! But companies have lots.

I'm a great contributor to the site already. I have just created the 'PHP' project tag.

/jk

Does this job board focus strictly on developer roles?

That was really my intention, but I could see sysadmin and such being part of the user base. I am not sure sure on Designers, but I wouldn't decline a job that has a designer focus.

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