Japan Dev · B2B · Japan developer job board
Grow the job-seeker side with SEO and an email newsletter
Slow: ~12 months to first revenue; traffic grew steadily over years
Workedseoemaillanding-page
What they did
Candidate (supply) acquisition via SEO and an email list/newsletter, plus site conversion optimization once visitors were in the funnel. No specifics on content or cadence.
What happened
Slow: took months to years to compound; ~12 months to first revenue due to too few applicants; page views grew slowly but steadily
In their words
Pete Codes · $60k/m from a job board“the channels I ended up using were like SEO, my email list, things like that, and those all just take time”
Related topics
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New tactics from the week's founder interviews, each linked to where it was said.
More from this episode
- Japan Dev: List jobs free and charge a fee only when someone gets hiredSales converted pretty well; business at ~$60K/month
- Japan Dev: Give job seekers a ¥3,000 gift card for reporting their hireCatches unreported hires at a 'pretty good hit rate'
- Japan Dev: Collect applicants' name and email before sending them to the company's job page
- Japan Dev: Add a growing monthly fee to the contract for hires companies don't reportFounder believes cheating is rare; no numbers
- Japan Dev: Sign your own employer first, then use its name to sign othersNext two companies came relatively easily
- Japan Dev: Post jobs free and write each company's English profile and job adsEnough to land the first few companies
- Japan Dev: List only ~100 good companies and turn down most who ask to joinFounder credits curation for making the model work; no numbers
- Japan Dev: Pivot to a job board after visitors kept looking for an apply buttonLed to the first paying clients
- Japan Dev: Have companies report hires within ~5 days; refund only part in month one