Hey there,

Picture this: You’re stuck in a hospital room during COVID lockdown, your newborn daughter needs surgery, and you’re bored out of your mind. What do you do?

If you’re Wouter Meen, you buy a £750 domain name and a £2,000 blog, then somehow turn it into a £125,000-per-year business with 95% profit margins.

Yeah, I know. It sounds too good to be true. But I spent 30 minutes with Wouter digging into exactly how he did it, and the story is wild.

⏰Chapters

  • 00:00 Welcome Wouter Meens.
  • 01:30: Wouter’s background: life in the Netherlands, agency business, and why he started SustainableJobs.nl during lockdown.
  • 02:30: How he acquired SustainableJobs.nl and merged it with a sustainability blog to kickstart the platform.
  • 05:30: Advice for newsletter owners who want to spin up a job board.
  • 08:00: Why job boards sell attention
  • 10:30: SEO Secrets
  • 14:00: Content Strategy
  • 17:30: SEO for Job Boards vs Normal Sites
  • 19:50: Cold Start Strategy; How free job posts + DMs on Instagram/LinkedIn brought in the first 100+ employers.
  • 22:00: Wouter’s actual operating costs (~€350/month) and how he keeps margins at 85–95%.
  • 24:30: Three channels: job posts, backlinks/content, and unlimited packages.
  • 25:45: AI & the Future of Job Boards
  • 27:30: Pricing Experiments

The Numbers That’ll Make Your Head Spin

Before we dive in, let’s get the jaw-dropping stats out of the way:

  • Initial investment: £3,000 total (£750 domain + £2,000 blog)
  • Annual revenue: £125K across his job board network
  • Monthly costs: £350-375 (yes, you read that right)
  • Profit margin: 95%
  • Ad spend: £0
  • Time to profitability: 9 months

Wouter runs sustainablejobs.nl, a Dutch sustainability job board that’s become the go-to platform for green jobs in the Netherlands. But here’s the thing – the way he built it breaks every  conventional wisdom  rule about starting an online business.

The Hospital Bed Lightbulb Moment

I was bored because there was not much to do. There was a lockdown because of COVID. And I thought, well, I have the time right now to maybe start a side project.

That’s how Wouter describes the moment that changed everything. But this wasn’t some random idea – he’d been running a temp agency business for 10 years and understood two critical things:

  • Domain names matter (like, really matter)
  • Organic traffic is the holy grail

So instead of starting from scratch like most people, he got strategic. He reached out to the owner of sustainablejobs.nl who was doing nothing with it and negotiated a purchase. Then he found a sustainability blog with existing traffic and bought that too.

 I didn’t want to start from zero,  he told me. Smart move.

The SEO Strategy That Actually Works

Here’s where things get interesting. Wouter’s approach to SEO for job boards is completely different from what most people teach.

Most job board owners focus on individual job postings. Wouter focuses on category pages.

Think about it: When someone searches  energy transition jobs  on Google, who’s searching?

  • Job seekers looking for work? Yes.
  • HR managers looking for where to post their jobs? Also yes.

That was the sort of aha moment,  Wouter explained.  A large portion of those companies said, well, I was searching for this on Google. That’s just the same query, the same keyword a candidate would look for.

His category pages (like sustainablejobs.nl/energy-transition-jobs) serve double duty – they attract both sides of the marketplace.

The Content Strategy That Powers Everything

In the first year, Wouter created about 100 pages of content. But not just any content – strategically targeted pieces like:

  •  What is an energy transition manager? 
  •  Where to find environmental jobs 
  •  What kind of jobs are there in ecology 

Then he built backlinks to this content, which Google saw as valuable, and that authority flowed to his category pages.

Lately, he’s shifted to company interviews.  We just reach out to companies to say, hey, can we do an interview with you? And that’s really cool content because it’s very specific about a specific company. We don’t have to write the content ourselves. And it is a way to connect with those companies. 

Candidates love these interviews because they get insider looks at potential employers. Companies love them because they get exposure. And Wouter loves them because they often lead to paid job postings.

Win-win-win.

]The Cold Start Problem (Solved)

Every marketplace has the chicken-and-egg problem: You need jobs to attract job seekers, but you need job seekers to attract employers.

Wouter’s solution? Make it free.

For nine months, he sent Instagram messages to Dutch sustainability companies offering free job postings.  We are a new job board focusing on sustainability for the for the next few months. It’s free to post jobs. 

This brought in hundreds of free job posts, which created content for social media, which drove traffic, which attracted job seekers, which made the platform valuable to employers.

The Pricing Experiments That Surprised Him

When Wouter finally started charging, he set prices at €175 for basic job posts. Then he tested something interesting – he raised prices to €275.

Sales volume stayed the same.

He also offers  spotlight  packages for €375. Here’s the kicker:  We sell as much spotlight job posts as normal job posts. Companies are more inclined to spend on a more expensive package than on the cheap package.

For unlimited packages, the secret sauce isn’t a pricing page – it’s personal outreach.  If I sent an email to Pankit, this is Walter, normal price is this, but I can offer you for the first year this and this, then it started to convert.

The Three Revenue Streams

  • Individual job postings (€175-375 each)
  • Content and backlinks (companies paying for sponsored content)
  • Unlimited packages (25 companies currently subscribed)

The beauty? All three streams feed each other. Sponsored content attracts readers and builds SEO authority. Strong SEO brings in companies who buy job postings. Regular job posters get offered unlimited packages.

The Tech Stack That Keeps Costs Insanely Low

Ready for this? Wouter’s entire tech stack costs under €400 per month:

  • WordPress + Job Manager plugin (free)
  • Hosting: €25/month
  • Elementor: €10/month
  • A few plugins: ~€100/year total
  • ActiveCampaign for job alerts: €100/month

That’s it. No fancy custom software. No expensive integrations. Just WordPress doing what WordPress does best.

 I think a lot of job boards just make way too much cost,  he said.  Starting with a custom job board software, I think that’s not the best idea. 

The Traffic Sources That Actually Matter

Wouter’s traffic comes from three main sources, in order of importance:

  • Google organic – The foundation of everything
  • LinkedIn – 5,000 highly targeted Dutch followers
  • Word of mouth – People who’ve followed his content for years

No ads. No paid promotion. Just organic growth compounding over time.

 Right now, almost all important search queries on Google, I already have like a top three, four, five positions. So that’s not really growing anymore. The biggest part of the growth right now just comes from people getting to know us. 

The Mistake That Could Kill Your Job Board

When I asked Wouter about the biggest mistake new job board founders make, he didn’t hesitate:

Starting with a custom job board software. I think you should start with something you could customize much more. 

His reasoning? You need flexibility to experiment, iterate, and figure out what works. Custom software locks you into assumptions that might be completely wrong.

Start simple. Prove the concept. Scale later.

What’s Next: The AI Question

Like everyone else, Wouter’s watching AI developments closely. He’s already seeing some traffic from ChatGPT searches, though it’s not huge yet.

His strategy? Focus on becoming better known within AI search engines.  Right now I’m really focusing on what can I do to become better known within like AI search engines. So I can get traffic over there as well from like candidates and companies. 

He’s also working on sustainablejobs.com.com—an international expansion of his Dutch success.

The One KPI That Rules Them All

When I asked about the most important metric for job board founders, Wouter’s answer was refreshingly simple:

  • Revenue compared to cost. Try to grow it without spending all this money. I think that’s the hard part. 
  • Not DAU. Not conversion rates. Not social media followers.

Just old-fashioned profit.

Here are some of the outreach email templates that Wouter used

Template 1

Hi!

We (Sustainablejobs.nl) are an online sustainable job board. On this platform, you can post all your sustainable freelance assignments and full-time and part-time vacancies.

If you’re interested, please let me know! We can then send you some information by email.

P.S. Internship vacancies can always be posted for free on our platform!

Sustainable greeting

Wouter Meens

Sustainablejobs.nl

Template 2

Hi,

Recently, we launched Sustainablejobs.com to become the leading job aggregator for businesses in sustainability, green tech and climate tech.

I see your organization is trying to make a positive impact.

If you’re interested, you can sign up and post jobs via https://sustainablejobs.com/packages.

We have multiple free packages available.

If you have any questions, just let us know.

Kind regards, 

https://sustainablejobs.com

Your Next Steps

If Wouter’s story has you thinking about starting your own job board, here are his key takeaways. Keep in mind: if you’re starting with a no-code, AI-powered job board software like Artha Job Board, you don’t have to wait that long—It comes SEO-optimized and preloaded with niche-specific job ads, so you can start faster and still make more money.