In August 2006 I realized that I was regularly getting two types of email requests:
- Companies looking to hire bloggers
- Bloggers looking to be hired by companies
As a result I decided to start a Job Board for Bloggers.
The concept was simple. Those looking to hire bloggers could place an ad for 30 days for $50. Those looking to find a blog job could subscribe to the job board RSS feed to be notified of new jobs.
It has been 34 months since I launched the job boards. In that time we’ve seen 720 paid listings for jobs on the board.
As I was doing some analysis of the job listings over this period I realized that the data might be interesting to others also as an indicator of how the current economic climate has impacted the job hiring scene.
While I wouldn’t read too much into the data as the sample size is relatively small I found the following chart interesting.
A few notes on the chart:
- the first month (Aug 06) was a partial month – we launched the job boards late that month
- the last month (May 09) is an estimate. We’re on track for 31 listings this month.
- the line is a moving average based upon the last 4 months/quarter of listings
A few observations:
- there are some definite cyclical trends to be observed – the most notable is that December has been a low month in each of the three years. November has also been a low month and October has been the highest month in each of the three years.
- looking at the moving average – the end of 2008 and start of 2009 saw a definite dip in job listings. Interestingly there’s been a definite upswing over the last 3 months with a new job being added each day.
- I don’t have a chart to show it but the RSS subscriber numbers for the job board are on the rise. The growth in those numbers has been quite steadily on the increase since the job board has been launched.
Again – I wouldn’t read too much into these figures due to the size of the sample and the natural growth of the site as it has become more well known but I do at least take a little comfort from the fact that there does seem to be hiring going on in the blogging industry despite what’s happening in the wider economy.
Based on that chart and the fact the global markets fell on average of 40% or more, I would suggest that fall is related to fear.
The fear of a down market, as although it fell, it didn’t fall anywhere near many markets. And its gone back up again as confidence has grown.
Then again, I do music, not finance so take this with a grain of salt and a plectrum.
The surge in October is understandable, as I guess people start preparing for the marketing push for the holidays – and blog posts are definitely a part of it.
What surprises me is the dip in end 2008 – I would expect more listings for bloggers in tough times.
This is because companies would want to squeeze out the most out of their marketing budgets when times are tight, and I believe bloggers can provide the best return on investment (RoI) by creating a buzz around the products, and by driving potential customers to their websites.
It’s good to see this trend, but with such a small sample size, a lot of things could be coming into play.
– Have you seen a surge in overall readership?
– Are employers trying to get more bang for their buck by advertising during the 31 day challenge?
– Perhaps companies have shifted strategies and are looking for bloggers on your board (and similar places) more frequently than the traditional methods of advertising jobs, but are still hiring the exact same number of bloggers.
I hope you’re right, though.
It’s not much of a surprise considering many newspapers and other news outlets are moving to online delivery of content. Any reasons why the dips in November and December? Could it just be standard end of year cost savings? Thanks for posting this.
Duane
I really like your job board. In this economy crisis you are giving a change to people find a good blogging job. And your graph figure says it. Thanks
The economy may have many firms that don’t blog thinking about their bottom lines, but the firms led by smart partners who are banking on future growth will add blogging to their plans and create a blog, or even better, hire a blogger to distribute their insights and promotional messages.
Outsourcing seems to be the smarter way of getting it done. I believe your board, Darren, and others who follow your lead will see a substantial increase in postings within 24 months.
I think that in general there is more of a move in the economy.
At the beginning of 2009, I had a number of clients (primarily businesses that provide services that would come from discretionary income) tell me they were just dead.
After talking to them in the past couple of weeks they told me that jobs are finally starting to break open for them.
The whole world is reeling under pressure and there seems to be no respite from the economic downturn (it’s no slow down). I was thinking how much it would impact the internet space because it is an universal medium and targets globally.
With this article it makes things clear, there seems to be no industry that has escaped this grinding halt of the economy. Let’s see what the near future has in store for the blogging fraternity.
Its like a google adsense changing his policy issues, this fact some what good for now, but the future its need to change well enough
this is a little unrelated, but i would like to share that my blog income actually went up during the so called recession period. Just wondering what is that or probably anyone who has any idea on this particular ‘phenomenon’?
Unoblogger is concerned about impact of economic crisis on Internet Space. I think that as long as you are in a niche market (which everyone seems to promote these days, am I correct?) then you should feel OK about your blogging business.
Just another point! Anyone with any knowledge of Statistical Analysis would agree with Darren that the sample data is quite small, and consequently unreliable!
The good thing about Internet in this “downturn” is the huge potential that online businesses are still maintaining. Even with a recession climate is really difficult to talk about an Internet recession nowadays. Maybe, there was a deceleration in the past months but it is going to accelerate again soon with the markets recovery.
Hiring at a decreasing rate with more competition for the jobs listed, though?
Great idea.
There is a definite drop at the start of this year. Looks to be coming back up now though.
The PB Job Board is terrific. I’ve picked up some good blogging gigs on there that make me enough money each month to pay for web hosting, plugins, graphic designers etc for my own projects so that I don’t need to dip into my own pockets to fund them. Thanks for providing a place for companies and bloggers to connect Darren!
It would be great if you explained the jobs, what it is about and how to do it.
and thanks a lot about this kind of study, it is very interesting
Obviously it has there are more people out of working and trying to make a living on blogging and I am try to
I have set up this Stock Traders Blog “>
Hi Darren, Nice post. And Can you help me answer some questions for an interview about internet marketing? I sent email + Tweet for you but I don’t receive reply. Looking forward to reply ^_^ Thank Darren.
The sample size is way too small to extract any kind of relevant data, but I always love a good chart. However to answer your question about blogger hiring, it’s probably decreased on a full-time basis but I’ll bet the market for freelance is exploding. Contract work is much cheaper, and there is no shortage of media companies in need of good, cheap, content.
$50 for 30 days? It’s quiet worthly………..
I think that the surge around May 08′ may represent the period of before we realized that the economy was in the tank. Then you can see a rapid drop, follow by another upward trend as people may have started to gain more confidence in the market again.
But then again I’m no financial analyst so what I say doesn’t carry all that much weight. Some good insight into the market though.
It’s like everything else, the economy is hurting and people are looking for any jobs that they can.
I don’t think blogging at the top level would be affected much. Bloggers who were earning 10,000$ plus will still be earning that much, because they are well known, have a big list and trust to help make that affiliate sale.
Current economic situation has an impact on blogging industry but not too much as other industry. Maybe the situation affect the hosting or domain service price but it’s not too much and bloggers don’t have to worry about these things.
But maybe worst economic situation will lead to less high-paying campaign such as sponsored post and advertisement. No need to worry about traffic, I think.
Blogging industry will increase day from time to time. More and more newbies explore the way to become probloggers lately so we’ll see a more challenging and exciting blogging industries in the future.
It’s amazing the direction we are heading in. Not only the way the economy is going but the direction of technology and the way it has integrated itself into our daily lives.
According to your observation, It is obviously seems that economy do impact blogger job listing. Before this, I thought that real economy out there will do not impact any virtual job here because what we do is in different field. But, you’ve prove me one. :)
paylaşımlarınız ve konu bölümleriniz çok güzel tebrik ediyor başarılar diliyorum
For sharing thank you very much good very beautiful work
It’s a good support to all from problogger; I have applied for blogging jobs on several occasions; it seems most of the jobs are there for US and Uk residents…
If 50$ equaled a job then that would be money well spent, but I can’t spend it.