Publishers
Job board software for publishers
Job listings paid for newspapers for a century, then moved to Indeed and LinkedIn. What did not move is the thing that made classifieds work: a local or specialist audience that employers cannot reach as cheaply anywhere else. A publisher that still has readers still has the half of a job board that is hardest to build.
From $79/month · 14-day free trial · No setup feesKardow is job board software built around that. You bring the audience and the businesses that already pay you. Kardow brings the board: your brand on your domain, jobs imported from day one so it is never empty, checkout or invoicing for the employers who post, and pages built to be found on Google and in AI search. Kardow takes 0% of what you sell.
Three kinds of publisher
Who runs a jobs section on Kardow
01
News sites and newspapers
A national or regional news site with daily traffic. The jobs section is a classifieds product again: employers pay per post or buy packages, and the board runs in the language your readers read. 02
Local newsletters and city media
A newsletter or local media brand with a few thousand to fifty thousand readers in one town. Local businesses already sponsor the send, and a jobs page gives them a second thing to buy. 03
Niche and trade media
A publication, review site or newsletter for one profession or industry. The board is where that industry hires, and the employers are often the companies that already advertise with you. How the money works
Job posts are ad inventory you can sell every day
The first product is the paid post: a listing that stays up for thirty days, priced against what your own ads cost rather than against what Indeed charges. Across the boards running on Kardow, the median paid job post is 99 in the board's own currency, and most sell between 49 and 99. Specialist publications charge more, because their audience cannot be bought anywhere else.
The second is the bundle. An advertiser who already buys a banner or a sponsored slot adds job posts to the same order: a pack of five posts, or a monthly plan that lets them post whenever they hire. Job revenue stops being a string of one-off sales and becomes something you can forecast.
The third is the free inventory underneath. Imported jobs from employers in your area or industry fill the board, which is what makes it worth a reader's visit, and the paid posts sit on top of it with featured placement.
The question that decides it
“Our readers come for the news. Will they use a jobs section?”
Some will not, and the model does not need them to. The board earns through the employer, who is buying reach into an audience you already have: your pages, your newsletter, your social posts.
The readers who do use it arrive two ways. From your own channels, through a jobs link in the navigation and a jobs block in the newsletter. And from search: every job carries Google for Jobs markup and every location and category gets its own page, so people looking for work in your area find the board without ever having read you. Those are new readers, not existing ones.
The one thing that kills a publisher board is an empty page. That is why jobs import on day one, filtered to your area or industry, before you have sold a single post.
A board of this shape
Music Business Worldwide
A trade publisher that sells its jobs section as a real product. Every post, from $180, includes its weekly jobs email to 50,000 readers, longer runs cost more, and five-post bundles cost 20% less. The same shapes work at the scale of a city newsletter or a news site. Music Business Worldwide Opens musicbusinessworldwide.com in a new tab
Look at Music Business Worldwide
Named as a reference point, not as a Kardow customer. It does not run on Kardow and we
have no relationship with it.
What maps to your workflow
The parts of Kardow that do this job
01
Your brand, on your domain
The board sits on jobs.yourpublication.com or under a path on your main site, in your colours and typefaces, with no platform badge on Pro and above. Readers see your jobs section, not a third-party site. 02
Jobs from day one
Scheduled imports pull roles from careers sites and job feeds in over 100 countries, filtered by location and keyword, so the board is full before the first employer pays. 03
Card, packages or invoice
Employers pay by card into your own Stripe account, buy packs of posts or a monthly plan, or, on Scale, post now and pay an invoice you send from your own accounting system. Kardow takes 0% of job sales on every plan. 04
In the language your readers read
Six languages ship with every board: English, French, German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese and Albanian. With more than one turned on, each job is translated automatically and every language gets its own indexed pages. 05
Built to be found
Google for Jobs markup on every listing, a page for every location and category, and a sitemap. The board brings search traffic to your brand instead of competing with it. Guides for publishers
How to add a paid job board to your newsletter Setup, pricing, and getting the jobs into every issue on beehiiv, Substack and the rest. How much to charge for a job post in your newsletter Real prices from $25 to $250, a starting price by list size, and bundle math. How to sell job ads to businesses that already sponsor you An example rate card, bundles, and a script for the first conversation. How news publishers make money from job listings What happened to job classifieds, and the revenue models that work for a publisher today. Run your own jobs section or join a job network? What a network gives a publisher for free, and what running your own gives back. Job board software for publishers outside the US Languages, currencies, and getting paid by employers who pay by invoice. 21 newsletters and publishers that run job boards What each charges, who reads it, and the software underneath. Checked every quarter. Why newsletter job boards fail, and which ones last What Pallet's shutdown and The Pragmatic Engineer's numbers teach, and a checklist for your own list.
The honest limit
Where Kardow is the wrong answer here
If the jobs section has to be wired into your ad server, sold through your ad operations system or rendered inside your CMS templates, an enterprise publisher platform such as Madgex or Jobiqo is built for that. Kardow runs the board as its own site under your domain, and you sell it the way you sell anything else. Kardow is also not a job network: the audience comes from you, not from us. Not sure which side you are on? Ask us.
Questions
What people ask before they build one.
- How much can a publisher make from a jobs section?
- It depends on how many businesses already pay you and how specific your audience is, much more than on raw traffic. A local newsletter with regular sponsors can sell posts in its first week, because it is selling to people who already buy from it. A national news site sells volume, many posts at a modest price. Start by pricing against your own ad rates, then count how many of your current advertisers are hiring right now.
- Do we have to charge for job posts from the start?
- No. Many publishers open with a free board filled by imported jobs, then turn on paid posting once the board has visible inventory and a few employers have used it. Charging for posts is on every plan; packs, monthly plans and a paid tier for job seekers are on Pro and above.
- Can employers pay by invoice?
- Yes, on Scale. An employer posts the job, you bill them from your own accounting system, and marking the payment received publishes the job. Kardow does not produce the invoice document itself. Employers who can pay by card do so through your own Stripe account, in the currency you set on each plan.
- Can we move our existing jobs section to Kardow?
- Yes. Jobs, employers and accounts can be imported, and help moving comes with every plan. Old job URLs are not redirected, so the new board is indexed fresh; Kardow submits its sitemap and pushes new job URLs to Google, which shortens that gap.
Build it and see whether it works
Every plan includes a 14-day trial and there is no setup fee, so the cost of finding out is one month. Kardow starts at $79 a month. Closest to this one
All use cases Newsletters Jobs in every issue, and a second thing to sell to the sponsors you already have. Regional job boards A board covering one place properly, which is the one thing national boards are structurally bad at. Communities Revenue that members welcome instead of tolerate, because the thing you are selling is access to them and they benefit from it.