Name of your website?Toronto Job Classifieds
Your name?
Vin
Your Location (city, etc)
Toronto
What inspired you to launch your own website?
Working with small businesses, it seemed like employment ads (both print and online) were so expensive they became a real hardship for a small company. Free sites that were available seemed not so great, so we decided we could make a difference by creating something free.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
November 2006, an employment site serving the Greater Toronto Area and surrounding regions that draw their labour pool from one another--there is a great deal of regional commuting that goes on in our area.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
We wanted our site to be like browsing through a newspaper, with job categories broken up in to more detailed 'classifications' therefore we ended up with Toronto Job Classifieds
Please give us a short summary of your website?
The website offers free emloyment ads for anyone offering employment in the Greater Toronto area, or seeking to draw employees from the Toronto region. The site is paid for low cost advertising of products and services aimed at Job Seekers and Employers.
What makes it different from other, similar offerings?
It is human edited, we try to make sure that the jobs are legitimate as much as we can. We try to separate 'business opportunities' which would require an upfront investment on the part of the job seeker. Also, we don't leave the jobs on there forever, we update the jobs daily and remove stale postings regularly.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
We would like to expand the service, while keeping it practical and relevant
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
It is the early going still. We could certainly use some advertisers, but we are happy with the success. Users seem genuinely happy with the service and let us know this regularly.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
Don't really know.
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
We would need to hire more editor to handle the incoming job postings.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
Spam is our biggest headache -- we've removed the forum and made several changes to work around this, but it continues to be a problem
What has been your biggest challenge?
Getting the word out--our site is only successful if employers post jobs and employers find them and apply to them. So far so good, though.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
We started out using cost per click ads, and still do, but most hits are organic search engine hits
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
Just really pleased that our users are so happy with the service. We have all sizes of business advertising, from small local guys, to company's you'd recognize internationally. Recruiters and employers alike utilize the service. We also have an employment services directory where employment related services, schools and agencies can submit a link.
I continue to be a little surprised by the high expectations of people utilizing a free service, but nothing unpleasant.
How long have you run the site already, and how long will you continue to keep it up if you don't enjoy big gains in traffic, income or popularity?
Almost a year and we hope to keep it running indefinitely.
What is your website address?
Toronto Job Classifieds