Show HN: Job board designed for freelancers

[hluska]

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.

[anovikov]

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?

[ensmotko]

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.

[mikelbring]

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.

[jasonkester]

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.

[harrytuttle]

Need a community maintained recruiter blacklist somewhere.

IP addresses, phone numbers, email addresses.

[mikelbring]

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

[jmduke]

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.

[Oculus]

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!

[beech]

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.

[mikelbring]

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

[csel]

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.

[mikelbring]

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.

[kmfrk]

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.

[mikelbring]

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!

[Felix21]

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.

[gregd]

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?

[flipchart]

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.

[BWStearns]

< PEBKAC > So the email verification needs to be fixed. My email is [email protected] 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!

[mike]

Side point, but '.'s in gmail addresses are not significant so email to [email protected] will still reach you.

[mikelbring]

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.

[justplay]

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

[lifeisstillgood]

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

[hello_newman]

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.

[wildmXranat]

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 ?

[BWStearns]

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

[rodolphoarruda]

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

/jk

[Djonckheere]

Does this job board focus strictly on developer roles?

[mikelbring]

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.