Ask HN: Another job board? Need feedback on the idea

[techsin101]

So It's not ready yet, but I'm creating a new job board for developers. I'm looking to get feedback on idea itself....

So my hypothesis is that as a dev, I'd love to do some gigs on the side. But I'm not really in the mood to search for them, apply to 1000s of them and do all back and forth.

I literally want small jobs, that I can knock out in a day or two, and get paid $100-$1k.

Another extension to this idea I've thought about is, to have an expert dev on call.

Got stuck in your day to day work? Call in expert. The expert does screen share, fixes the problem hopefully. But it could be like a service that companies could subscribe for monthly N hours. (SQL expert, Wordpress, React, etc)

Which one do you think has more potential?

[monological]

I made https://www.nanojob.com, which is a job board for devs focusing on, well, nano jobs. I struggled to get people to use it. My advice to you is don't waste your time. Getting a marketplace off the ground is notoriously difficult due to the chicken and egg problem. Secondly, competition in this space is fierce. Unless you have some next level product differentiation, it'll most likely fail to achieve critical mass.

[high_byte → monological]

I disagree about product differentiation. it can be exactly the same product but you got the community right.

[high_byte → monological]

also could be because "only 7% flat" isn't flat at all, it's a significant hole in your packet.

[monological → high_byte]

Upwork does 20% for first $500, then 10% up to $10k, then 5% more than $10k, but it's per client. So I figured 7% flat rate isn't bad.

[techsin101 → monological]

this is almost what I had in my mind. Gonna brainstorm tons of things. How long have you had this website up, what marketing have you done?

[monological → techsin101]

Google/Facebook/Twitter ads, got featured on ProductHunt and HN launch

[manx]

I like the idea of earning money by people calling me and helping them with the topics where I consider myself to be an expert.

The other way round is probably als true. Got an algorithm design problem where you're stuck? Call a computer scientist.

[codegeek]

I have this idea for a while. I even got the domain name experthours.com (since 2015) where I wanted ppl to find and talk to tech experts. Say u r looking for an expert in kubernetes and want to hire them for a 3 hour consulting project . Later on may be expand to other fields.

The challenge is how to ensure someone really is an expert. Barrier to entry needs to be high otherwise it will attract wannabes. But then how do u get enough experts ?

Just never got to it :) May be I should. U wanna partner up ?

[techsin101 → codegeek]

yea that would be great to bounce ideas off each other and figure out new things... we could talk over discord.

I was thinking of manually filtering people and then having a point system. Also really hone on skills.. i.e. you can't be just a frontend developer, you have to be react expert, a sub-specialist. So you can select up to 3 stacks. i.e You are an expert in postgresql, bash scripting, aws RDS. Or Typescript and Reactjs, Or D3js and CSS.

Like any given developer would know many things, we want only the thing you're MOST expert in.

We could allow even smaller chunks of times for stuff like webpack, npm, composer, rack... errors.

There are two sides right, experts and users. I think it'd be best to target b2b companies. As they can only pay and will pay to attract true experts. Otherwise, why would I pay out of pocket until I'm really desperate. Companies would pay to keep productivity up.

I was thinking of targeting startups who don't have a budget to hire a top devs in many skills and their dev is wearing many hats. Usually they are struggling in space of Devops, DB admin, maze of AWS, or some weird library like mapping library that usual fullstack dev normally won't be good at.

[techsin101 → codegeek]

I was thinking about potential customer segments that can be tested...

1. Startups (5-50)

2. Regular offices (excel, salesforce,...)

3. Bootcamps/Universities (kind of virtual tutoring. hired by institutions, not students, they wouldn't pay enough)

4. General Open Market of Everything Expert (would be hard to get started...)

5. Scientist looking for coding help (probly wont have money like students...)

[gus_massa]

Pleas change the title to "Ask HN: Another job board? Need feedback on the idea". For a "Show HN" you need a minimal implementation or something equivalent. Rea the details in https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html

It looks like a job board for freelancers and consulting instead of permanent job positions.

[cpach]

Both ideas are interesting! The first one might be more bang for the book in terms of profits vs. effort to implement.

FWIW, you might want to read this book before proceeding: http://momtestbook.com/

Best of luck!

[cpach → cpach]

Correction: I meant “bang for the buck” (^_^)

[readonthegoapp]

i generally dig both.

i think i like the expert one better. in theory, because it is _much_ more focussed.

like, the problem space is just so well-defined, or should be.

kind of like how Fivvr started, and Amazon, Tesla, etc. just offer one well-defined thing, then try to be successful with it. then expand over time.

[techsin101 → readonthegoapp]

True, I can also see it expanding into non-tech. Like Excel, Salesforce, Google Analytics Experts... or Video Editing / Adobe Premiere experts..

[readonthegoapp → techsin101]

actually, your comment made me think

actually, i'd prob try to take well-defined to a new level - maybe looking for other examples and see how they gained traction, etc. if you don't have a big marketing budget, it might be a grind, but i think it could legit work, if only because i would have gladly paid for programming or other tech help -- and have -- at various points in my career.

a few times it's been really hairy situations with open-source stuff, but i have even paid for a _suggested_ fix -- just like going to the doctor. :-D

so, maybe instead of, "hire a programming expert for 1 hour", it might be "hire a python expert for one hour", then slowly expand outwards.

basically, a StackOverflow, but paid in real dollars instead of 'just' karma.

[sizediterable → readonthegoapp]

Preferably you'd preserve the best aspect of StackOverflow; others being able to learn from others questions. I don't know what the best way to achieve that would be. Recording the sessions and making them public would probably be uncomfortable on both sides. Perhaps incentivize the expert to do a short write-up on the problem and solution in some way.

[techsin101 → readonthegoapp]

yea that makes sense. This way it'd be less stress for both sides. If I'm really good at CSS, I'd want to be hired for THAT. Not just as frontend dev and asked to debug some typescript error, sure I could do that in time, but not in an hour, unlikely. Too stressful. But If someone else was passionate about Typescript they could sign up as TS expert.