2020. Am I right? Earlier this year — when the global pandemic started to directly impact employment — I did three things on Silicon Florist:
- First, I briefly allowed anyone who was hiring remotely to post jobs on the Silicon Florist job board for free.
- Second, I reduced the cost of purchasing job board listings by 50%.
- Third, I turned on ads in attempt to make up for the lost revenue from reducing job board prices.
To be completely transparent, only two out of those three things worked. A lot of folks posted remote jobs for free. And over the year, a lot of folks took advantage of the cheaper job postings.
But the ads? Yeah no. First off, they were annoying. And second, they didn’t come anywhere near close to helping staunch the loss of revenue. So I turned them off. And started testing Ko-fi as a way to possibly help make up for the shortfall. (It’s still early, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how it’s been working so far.)
So, come 2021, I’m going to continue to experiment with Ko-fi and I’m also going to return job board pricing to its pre-pandemic levels. All in hopes of getting Silicon Florist back to its previous “worse than break even” stance. Like less worse. You know, still losing money, year after year. But just not losing as much money.
Which brings us to the secret. Aren’t you happy you read this far…? Now don’t tell anyone. This is just between you and me. But there’s hack.
You see, the ability to post jobs on the Silicon Florist job board does not have a “use by” date. Once you purchase the slot to post a job — or you buy a pack of jobs — you can use them whenever you want. Even if the prices increase. Even if you don’t use them for weeks or months or years.
It’s like a stock option. You can get it today. But you don’t have to exercise it today. You can hold onto it until it’s more valuable. You just get a better strike price than folks will next year.
So whether you’ve definitely got some hiring to do next year or you’re simply optimistic that you might be hiring someone, now would be a really good time to stock up on a few job board posts. Before the prices go up.
Again, just between you and me.
Also, happy holidays. I hope you get some downtime.
