(OP) Seems that HN cut of the text, so posting here is the comments:
I started JobBoardSearch about four years ago as a simple directory of niche job boards (A static HTML file with a dozen job boards)
One particular think I'm proud of: I didn't scrape these niche job boards and add them to a dabatabase. The 800+ job boards currently listed were submitted organically by their ownres.
Lots of their job boards provide a job feed (API, XML or RSS), I fetch those feeds and use the data in serveral different ways.
Each job board has its own page in JBS, where I show jobs from that board. I call this the "meta" part of the site.
The same feed powers a few other things I built:
- A subreddit bot that automatically post jobs every hour to the /r/jobboardsearch subreddit, which has grown to 26k memebers.
- A free telegram bot that sends personalized job alerts based on custom settings: keywords, locations, industry, candence, etc. The Telegram community (@jobboardsearch) passed 6k members.
- The main job search itself.
The interesting part is that the same data creates several distribution channels (Including AI citations that keeps growing).
Over time, I turned it into much more than a simple directory. I've added muitple revenue streams: featured listings, ads, affiliates, a Direcgtory Submission Service, a Marketplace (buy/sell job boards), and SEO audits.
I've also built several free tools for founders and job seekers. They are useful but also helps with SEO and drive organic traffic.
The design is NOT the strongest part of the project :D
I started it inspired by levelsio's approach of keeping things simple: PHP, raw CSS, and vanilla JavaScrip.
I've been tempted many times to rewrite it and make it much more polished but like this is something unique.
The moat isn't the design or tech. It's the traffic, SEO authority, and realationships with the founders submitting their niche job boards.
The site passed $100K in lifetime revenue, and still just me running it (with my wife helping with the newsletter).
Also I've been building it in public all this years on X/Twitter (@rrmdp) so all it's documented there.
HAppy to answer any questions about anything :)
Thanks for reading,
Rod.