job posting/search site

[ryans]

This is not exactly along the lines of Tim's suggestions in his book but I am currently working on a job site and will still use many of his marketing principles. I feel very confident about my niche, however one thing that largely concerns me is getting my first users. Once I have those I think the advertising, etc. will kick in, but who wants to post jobs or search for jobs on a site that has no users?

Does anyone have experience with a social networking site or similar site that depends on other users for the product? If so, how did you jump start your user base?

Thanks for your help!

[rsmudge]

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? To succeed you have to solve this problem.

One solution is to bootstrap off an existing job ad community. There are several niche job boards on the internet, what about aggregating these on your service. I don't really feel like checking out jobs.joelonsoftware.com, craigslist, and others each day. Put it all in one place and once you start getting eye balls you could let people post directly on your service charging a premium for their ad to be shown above the other results.

Good luck.