I just learned about Resumark which offers a pretty decent affiliate program.

I used to run links from Commission Junction which have some career related advertisers (i.e. Monster) and made a few hundred bucks per month back in the late 90′s, early 2000′s but was never really crazy about some of the payouts. When I came across Resumark I could not help but be impressed.

When anyone comes to Resumark.com through your link and posts their resume, you will earn $0.50 every time their resume gets downloaded

When employers or recruiters come to Resumark.com through your link and download resumes, you will also earn $0.15 from every such download.

So if you dont have resumes or just run a different type of career site maybe their affiliate program is for you. At the very least check out their simplistic site design which I absolutely LOVE!

Although the pace has slowed due to the economy, new job boards are still being launched. Yesterday I discovered Cardgigs.com, a micro-niche job board serving the ‘payments’ industry. I call it ‘micro-niche’ because they are targeting a very niche industry and I do see more of this narrowly focused sites popping up. I think industry focused sites still have much growth potential.

According to the press release: “Cardgigs is a membership-based site affording employers the choice of various service plans. Job seekers are free to join Cardgigs, build and revise their resumes, conduct job searches and apply directly to listings. Since its recent launch, companies such as North American Bankcard, RBSWorldpay, First National Bank of Omaha, Century Payments, International Payments Corp and several industry-specific search firms have already posted a wealth of job listings and been pleased with the results.”

As far as the design goes I have a lot of praise for the homepage. Its a solid interface that offers ease of use, and plenty of ways for jobseekers to interact and search jobs. The graphics are clean and professional looking. My mantra for job board design is that it has to inspire people to use it, and Cardgigs definitely does.

It has some jobs in the database although a few of the home page links showed no listings. A backfill would be useful there. I also noticed that browser titles do not change so their SEO needs to be looked at.

The pricing model is interesting and based on membership.

So its good to see niche boards coming along. Hopefully 2010 will be a much better year for those that still exist.

Here’s my critique of CleanTechRecruits, a renewable energy job board. 5 min. Free.

Here’s another freebie for my job board peeps. Article marketing is a great way to build awareness and gain traffic. Just dont spam, write informative articles that enlighten and inform. Here’s one of my recent articles on Recruitingblogs as an example.

Sites mentioned:

* PRweb
* HR.com
* ERE.net
* Recruitingblogs
* Talentbar
* Recruiterearth

Building a job board today is more about building a community. Here’s my philosophy and why I love Ning.

Sites mentioned:

* Sales Gravy
* Jobs in Social Media

I don’t hire sales reps to sell my boards. Instead I rely on SEO and Google Adwords to generate leads and sales as well as doing some lead gen on my own a few hours each week. But if you want to hire a sales person to really grow your site, here is some advice from Joe Stubblebine, CEO of Jobcircle.

-How much face to face contact do your sales people have with clients?
[Joe Stubblebine] Virtually none. We had outside reps in the past, but the market/price doesn’t support this model for us.

-What is their main lead gen tool? cold calling?
[Joe Stubblebine] competitive sites, marketing lists, etc. We rely very heavily on outbound cold calls to unique prospects – we have a database of over 45,000 recruiters that we’re working on at any given time, and we have about 6-7 reps making a minimum of 75 outbound calls a day. We monitor calls every hour to ensure productivity with our team.

-Do you put more money into sales people vs online marketing?
[Joe Stubblebine] Both. Most of the online marketing we do is in the form of PPC, and we invest heavily in commissions and contest money to motivate our reps (salary notwithstanding)

-How do you structure commissions?
[Joe Stubblebine] Target salary for reps for us has been in the $50-$80K range, and typically 35-50% of that would be base, the rest would be commissions.

I think webinars can be a money making tool for job boards but I think the key lies in how many clients you have and how well you market it.

Trying to sell these online events to job seekers is not a good idea though, they dont like to pay for anything, especially if they are unemployed. I asked my contact at CollegeRecruiter.com how they have fared with their webinars. He says;

We tried for six months and failed to generate revenue. We tried to target employers, job seekers, and career services with no success. I’m going back to a free model and will use the leads etc. which are generated from free to enhance the tools we sell for money like postings, targeted emails, sms, banners, etc.

Hmmm, guess I was wrong.

If you create a job board that is the most search engine friendly thing you can build and that “inspires” people to post, then in my experience, it will make money. Watch this to see what I mean.

Episode 14 of the Free version.

If you’re going to do trade shows and job fairs (yes you should if you can) you will need good marketing materials. In this video I’ll show you some of the stuff I use as well as where to get them.

Sites mentioned:

* PosterGarden.com (displays/signs/banners)
* 48hourprint.com (post cards/biz cards/rackcards)
* Buildasign.com (signs-metal, plastic)

Here’s a few examples of my stuff:

4x9 rack card

4x6 post card

Finishing off my series about Jobamatic, I spoke with Sr Product Manager Francis Larkin and asked him to talk about this popular job board software product. (FREE CONTENT!) 20 minutes long.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

My questions include:

1. Explain the rev share and payment terms for Jobamatic sites…
2. how many sites now use jobamatic…who are some of the more well-known ones?
3. Do you have any best practices for using/intergrating jobamatic?
4. Currently just offer just single postings…any thought to adding additional products for publishers like Packages/subscriptions or even the ability to off PPC?
5. Widgets…are we getting more colors soon?
6. XML API…how easy is it to implement…examples of sites using it?
7. What enhancements can we expect in the next 6-12 months?