Establishing niche market contractors website - suggestions?

[piersmorgan]

I'm planning to start up a website for a very specefic contractor market (nothing to do with IT contracting so won't be in 'competition' with NFP or indeed this wonderful site.

Recruitment for this market is very fragmented and contractors often visit anything from 5-15 jobsites looking for jobs (many of them don't have email alerts etc, so it can be a very tedious job for the contractor and expensive for the agencies to advertise on 5+ sites).

Please note that I'm doing this site more as a hobby than anything else but obviously wouldn't make a bit of money if I can. So I'm planning to aim this site at this particular contractor audience with relevant industry news and happenings (the usual stuff) as well as offering agencies to advertise for contractor roles. As the site gets more popular I hope to persuade more agencies to advertise jobs on my site for say about GBP5 each. I don't intend to make a killing, just a bit of pocket money (all taxed of course Mr Brown...).

Feedback welcome....

I would welcome any feedback and the usual lambasting (after all how many posts have there been on this board of similar ill-conceived ideas???).

How to 'upload' adverts to site???

I would particularly welcome feedback on how I would be able to upload adverts to the site. Please note I'm a bugger at programming and can just about get on with the microwave. I'd prefer not to have to upload an HTML file each time I get a new advert to put up. Guess for starters I could get away with that, but should I actually get a number of agencies on board I'd like a simpler way - maybe even get the buggers to post jobs themselves but how would I do that??? Obviously I would like the simplest, cheapest solution....

I look forward to the usual insults and off-topic remarks, but will be pleasantly surprised by useful suggestions...

Thanks,

Piers

[thunderlizard]

Re: Establishing niche market contractors website - suggesti

I don't think you'll get very far asking agencies to pay up front for ads on a newcomer site. There are loads of jobsites that don't have any jobs on them. Phone round them, saying it's free to try out for a few months, and make it very easy for them to put up ads. I suspect that once an agency has had a single successful candidate from your site, they'll be happy to pay £5/shot.

[piersmorgan]

Re: Establishing niche market contractors website - suggesti

Thanks Lizard,

Yes, I plan to build up the user base first, get the word out and ultimately I would like it to be the number 1 site for this niche market.

And yes, I was going to offer agencies 1 months free advertising. But just wondering on the technical side how I would post jobs. Might as well wait until I come to that bridge.

Cheers!

[oaksoft]

Re: Establishing niche market contractors website - suggesti

Piers,

1 month's free advertising isn't going to work either.

You are effectively going into competition with Jobserve and you have to have a USP.

If your market is niche then there is your ISP but to get a database worth charging for you'll need to run it for free for probably 12 months at least and then start charging through advertising.

The startup costs for stuff like this is unimaginably huge.
Just because you are only after "pocket money" doesn't remove this hurdle. It just doesn't work that way. In order to attract agencies (even for free) you'll need to appear to be a "player" or they just snub you. You can't go at these things half-heartedly. It's all or nothing.

I'm not trying to pour water on the flames here but it seems you need to truly think this through before you waste time and money on it.

Best of luck either way.

[piersmorgan]

Re: Establishing niche market contractors website - suggesti

Thanks Oaksoft,

Well I think I will go ahead with my plans and just aim it at my niche contractor market - advice, forum etc etc and then see how popular it gets. Advertising opportunities may arise if the site becomes popular.

Piers

[Vetran]

Re: Establishing niche market contractors website - suggesti

Piers as you know from your time at the Sun you need to attract the right market. Pop a page three stunner on there or the technical equivalent (articles, knowledgebase etc)and the people will come to you. Once you have the technical interest then you can show sensible figures that will attract targetted advertising.


As to putting up the advertising there are a number of tools out there.