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62 Comments

How this ultra-niche job board makes $62k/mo

  1. 6

    I particularly appreciated the two bits of serendipity: 1) That you built the "wrong" thing (the list of good companies) but this ended up being helpful in getting a relationship with indeed and 2) that you were able to use your own company as customer #1. I guess this is a good lesson that you don't need to (or maybe can't) figure it all out in advance.

  2. 1

    Hey Eric, your Japan Dev journey is fascinating! Starting with a Trello board in 2014 and turning it into a thriving job board is impressive. The shift to a unique monetization model and your focus on marketing channels are insightful. I'm curious, what advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs looking to start their own ventures?

  3. 2

    This a very nice blog. I am truly inspired to keep grinding on my work, hope it can be like your startup one day :D

  4. 2

    Wonderful, easy to navigate and very clean and without distractions. If only all job boards were like this.

  5. 2

    This is an inspiring journey. Thanks for sharing. One thing I liked is that you took the leap without hesitation, which proved to be the best decision for you.

    1. 1

      Thanks for the feedback!

  6. 2

    Very information & appreciate you sharing your journey! Really enjoyed reading about you understanding the market fit & pivoting to a product actually helping people finding jobs.

    1. 1

      Thanks a lot for reading! Glad you enjoyed it.

  7. 2

    "Turns out people didn't want a "company discovery platform". They wanted to see jobs. They wanted an apply button. And I realized I had built the wrong thing."

    Great example of listening to feedback and iterating into something better. Love this article -- thanks for sharing!

    1. 1

      What I heard here, is know your base but also know the CTA your base is most reactionary 2!

  8. 2

    Great article, very clearly written. Looking into the recruitment saas market at the moment and this article provides a lot of valuable information. Do you know (and are willing to share) how much money you had to invest in this project before it started being profitable ?

  9. 2

    Currently researching the job board biz, validating to see there is not a "secret sauce" when it comes to the marketing side. Build in public, create great SEO optimized content, build your email list, add value to your community. Love it!

  10. 2

    I just want to appreciate your efforts. The story has a lot keypoints thinking about niche and creating new ideas for sustainable revenue modals

    1. 1

      Thanks a lot for the kind words!

  11. 2

    Appreciate the way you told your story since your first steps! Also, I have family members who live in Japan (not devs though) and can definitely see why it can be difficult to find a well fitting job while being a foreigner. Congratulations to you and your wife, I felt incredibly inspired by this!

  12. 2

    Great read! Thank you so much!

  13. 2

    Valuable information! Thanks for sharing.

  14. 2

    absolutely amazing story
    thanks for sharing with us

  15. 2

    This is the best article I've ever read on this site. Clear, detail and most values

  16. 2

    Great read. Wonder if there are any markets like Japan where a lot of expats look for work...

  17. 2

    Hey. This is one of the best reads I’ve seen on this site.

  18. 1

    Your post reminded me of the naval Ravikant Quote "Its not 10,000 hours but 10,000 iterations" Thanks for sharing.

  19. 1

    Great work! Tried something similar a few years back but in London but it fell flat on its a#$! Cool to see someone smash it!

  20. 1

    Great to see some of the motivation behind building job boards.

  21. 1

    Very informative. Thanks Darko.

  22. 1

    Fantastic story and a great read. I really enjoyed reading about your struggle with SEO, as its something I am struggling with now. Were there any other tools besides HREFS that you used, was blogging your sole means of improving SEO or did you ever attempt to get back links from other sites, were you ever tempted to buy google ad's ?

    And obviously the "Overcoming the Cold Start" part was fantastic!

  23. 1

    Really great story. Thanks for sharing that.

  24. 1

    Thank you for sharing your experience. Clear and structured explanation and inspirational.

  25. 1

    Thanks for sharing, it was really interesting

  26. 1

    Long read. But some really good nuggets in there. Thanks for sharing.

  27. 1

    That is awesome to hear! I was struggling with creating a job board but after I read the whole post, you've definitely given me some insights for my current project (jobora.ca). Which will be a job board for Canadian users to help find job posts in one spot rather than having to search numerous job boards across the web. Creating an API that connects everything into one. Wishing you and all viewing continued success in your efforts.

  28. 1

    this post also inspired me to build my job board: https://onlinejobsph.com/

    🔥 after 2 weeks, i got my first paying user of $75 for a premium job posting!

    hopefully i could achieve the same like japan dev soon 🥺

  29. 1

    This is a great article. Tons of detail, and inspiring.

  30. 1

    Great share ! what stack did you build Japan-dev on ?

    1. 3

      Here's the tech stack I use:
      • Rails API
      • VueJS SPA (client rendered)
      • Vanilla JS (no typescript)
      • Sass (.scss)
      • MySQL
      • Digital Ocean
      • Cloudflare
      • Kubernetes (*unnecessary but I like it)

  31. 1

    Great share ! 🙏

  32. 1

    Ey Darko, loved the story. Nice. I don’t think the article mentions this: which email provider are you using? And why?

    1. 1

      Hey 👋

      I use Bento (https://bentonow.com).

      I was getting annoyed with mailchimp. And I like the community + fact it's run by a fellow indie hacker.

      It's also cheaper than Mailchimp was for my use case.

  33. 1

    What a great read. Thanks for sharing!

  34. 1

    Great story and super resilience!

  35. 1

    Hey, https://www.indiehackers.com/product/remote-frontend-jobs founder here. I love your job board!
    Would you be willing to let us show your remote job posts in both https://remotefrontendjobs.com and https://remotebackendjobs.com?
    I only need your permission and will try setting it up in the background :)

  36. 1

    Wow! That's amazing.

  37. 1

    Very inspirational! Thank you!

  38. 1

    Fantastic! Really great to read how you adapted your business and used the data to mold your product to fit the market!

  39. 1

    Great read & source of inspiration. Very well done to both of you!

  40. 1

    Such a great read. Very inspirational!

  41. 1

    This was a fascinating read!
    Interesting how the author overcame the 'chicken and egg problem'.
    Also, a recommended read for anyone, whose revenue stream is dependent on their customers being honest with them, as a couple of interesting control mechanisms are mentioned here.

  42. 1

    @zerotousers
    great keep up your work? I like your idea? how we can generate ideas like this?

  43. 1

    Nice article, I loved that it goes into all the details on how the business runs.

  44. 1

    Great article, I like that it goes into all the details on how the business is runed.

  45. 1

    Great and detailed story! Motivational indeed. Congrats and tks.
    In the end, it seems many bootstrapped stories really stick to 'your main goal is not to quit'

  46. 1

    I actually had this idea but for Australian contractors! Good to see it's doable!

  47. 1

    That's a cool story. Quitting your job for it, got me the most. 👍👍👍

  48. 1

    It's sort of how legal firms offer "no win, no fee". It's interseting how things are more normalised in one industry, yet more unique in another. But that also gives people the opportunity to offer that something new.

  49. 1

    I like this story! This couple just research market, found some special things on it and understood how they can hack it and offer better solution. Awesome :)

  50. 1

    Japan is a country of 128 million or something, so rather underserved than ultra-niche. But indeed a niche achievement 🙌🏻. Wonder if let’s itself copy to other countries? Brazil? Nigeria? Egypt? Bangalore? Indonesia? Vietnam?

    1. 5

      Japan is a country of 128 million or something, so rather underserved than ultra-niche.

      I would count only foreigners who want a job in Japan. That's the whole user base of the website based on my first impression

    2. 2

      I'm not sure that other countries will work the same because Japan has some specific on HR-market as it says in this article. I think you need to do some research before going to another country with this product.

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