So this is crazy.. this has never happened for any of my projects before 🤩

399 SEO clicks in 4 weeks since launching.

• 0 DR
• 0 Social Media mentions
• 1500+ programmatic pages

I started this project as an “educated” guess based on the data/trends I was seeing.

Initial signals are positive.

This is a job board I started last month - BestPMJobs​

It’s a niche job board for Product Managers.

Why a job board? And why Product Management?

Let’s see -

What’s the thesis?

I wanted to start a boring, old school, evergreen, non-AI business that I can grow with SEO.

A job board fits that criteria very well -

• Its not sexy, not fun for someone who can’t obsess over organic traffic strategies
• Its non-AI - so keeps me away from all the AI hype and distractions (I already have 1 profitable AI business, and multiple failed AI products)
  • It can be AI enabled - I’m planning to automate a lot of boring stuff with AI
• Its evergreen - People are always looking for jobs, and companies are always looking for good employees - and I’m betting that this trend will keep going.
• It’s independent - Doesn’t require much up front capital and I can self fund it, and shut it down at my own will if its not working.

Why Product Management?

• I was a product manager/consultant when I had quit my job - I know the field well.
• This is a project I’m doing with my wife. She quit her job earlier this year and started her own business helping Product Managers land jobs through resume reviews and mock interviews.(She was a VP Product Management at her last job and has been a PM for 10+ years now)

So it makes sense for us to launch this job board.

At least that’s the thesis - reality will be not so smooth, and much harder to execute.. I know that, and I’m prepared for it.

What I’ve done so far

I’m using a NoCode job board builder JobBoardly to build the website.

Its quite new, many features are being built, but I like the makers and trust them to keep improving the product with time.

Most job boards have a job "backfilling" feature which automatically adds new jobs to your database based on your preset conditions.

We’ve setup multiple backfillers based on different conditions in our job board.

Which add around 100 jobs a day automatically to our DB.

But this data is not always clean, and there are some mismatches or tiny issues in the jobs that are backfilled automatically.

So we have to manually go and clean up the data before publishing.

We’ve been setting up this process over the last 4 weeks, and have now hired a VA to do it by spending a few hours every day.

Traffic Strategies

SEO

SEO is the primary way job boards grow.

It means fresh new jobs added every day.

Google has a separate tab/UI for job searches, and all our traffic so far has been from there.

We’ve also started writing useful articles based on keyword research, but that traffic will take some time to grow.

SEO is a grind, but I don’t mind that grind.

Social Media

But you can’t ignore social media as well. Since a lot of job searches start on social media these days.

So I’m going to be setting up a LinkedIn page for the job board soon, and also start sharing the new jobs we’re sourcing on LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social media platforms.

Will also look at influencer partnerships in the area to reach more candidates and companies in this niche.

Monetisation Plan

So job boards have a few ways of monetising -

• Charge companies to post jobs
• Charge candidates to access jobs
• Upsell candidates on job search related services
• Ads

I don’t like ads, but we will be exploring the other 3 options.

But its too early to think of monetisation honestly, I’m only thinking of traffic right now, and how I can sustainably grow and capture this traffic.

Monetisation will come later.

Next Steps

Here’s my plan for the next few weeks for BestPMJobs:

• Increase DR - submit to directories, social media profiles, backlinks from my own websites.
• More content - Keyword research and SEO focused content.
• A fool proof system to add and index new jobs as fast as possible. (Our promise is that the best pm jobs will be available here before any other platform like Indeed or LinkedIn)
• Social Media Presence - Regularly post new jobs and other content on social media
• Grow and write a regular newsletter for the job board to nurture the audience
• Automate/Outsource as much of the above 5 points as I can.

I know this is a hard challenge, many veteran entrepreneurs will point out that job boards are difficult businesses. I’ve spent a lot of time researching the flaws of this business, and I still want to give it a shot.

So I’m giving at least a year to this project, I know it will not be easy, but nothing worth doing is easy 😅

At least we will have fun doing this hard challenge.

Will be sharing regular updates here whenever I learn something interesting in this process.

Cheers 🙌

Hope you found this useful.

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From the vault -

3 random post from the Superframeworks archives -

• ​$9K MRR Simple HTML to PDF Converter​
• ​$15K MRR - simple AI video editing app​
• ​$1M ARR with single page site builder​

🔗 Super Links

Useful links you don’t want to miss -

• ​Steal my process for creating PPTs in record time using AI - Soumitra Sengupta
• ​5 step strategy I used to to grow a $300k+ ARR SaaS - Baretto
• ​16 ways to monetize Directories: - John Rush
• ​Researching Ahrefs is the best way to find new startup ideas - Me
• ​The Positioning Playbook Behind Silicon Valley’s Biggest Successes - Martin O’Leary

Last week’s top link -

• ​The biggest life hack is… - Jakob Greenfeld

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Thanks,

Ayush 🙏