Careers

Five Quick Ways to Earn More Non-Dues Revenue from Your Online Career Center

By Shanna Mertel • May 21, 2021

Associations, like most businesses, need to diversify their revenue streams to be successful. Non-dues revenue from your online career center can create additional income for your association. By providing and charging for additional services, your association will increase your relevancy to your members’ career development and add value to your membership.

Five Quick Ways to Earn More Non-Dues Revenue from Your Online Career Center

Job Listings

Charging employer members a discounted rate and non-members a retail rate for posting their open positions is the most prominent way to generate non-dues revenue on your online career center. Your members are highly skilled professionals and businesses will pay a premium to access that talent. Employers will see a return on their investment by being able to reach relevant, qualified candidates that your association unites in the industry.

Retargeting Posting Enhancement

Provide employers the option to optimize their job posting with retargeting ads that follow job seekers who visit the career center. These users are already engaged with job-seeking activities, so this type of advertising is relevant for them. Retargeting ads are displayed in ad spaces across the internet as the job seeker browses and encourage them to click back to the employer’s posting on your career center. So not only does the employer get a better ROI for their job posting, but your career center’s traffic will also increase as well!

Retargeting Job Enhancement

Display Advertising

Online career centers are generally in the top three most-visited sections of an association’s website. Placing ad units that your organization controls within your website ad sales system will give you more impressions for existing campaigns, plus an opportunity to increase new ad sales opportunities with recruitment companies, advisors, and industry advertisers. You can sell online career center-specific placements as add-on packages to your career center offerings that highlight job listings, retargeting and sponsored content.

Online Career Center Display Advertising

Featured Employer

Featured Employer is a comprehensive self-service branding solution designed to attract maximum exposure for your industry employers. Within a Featured Employer package, your advertising employers receive a:

  1. Brand profile page with easy-to-use web tools to customize the look and content of their profile page so they can stand out from the competition.
  2. Enhanced job listings so every job posted will include elements from the employer’s profile and a company video if they have one.
  3. Banner ads on rotation on the job results page, putting all eyes on their brand.
  4. Increased logo visibility that puts their company logo on the job seeker home page and overview page.

Featured Job on Online Career Center

Featured Sponsors

Sell weekly or monthly sponsorships of your online career center to organizational members, employers, and industry advertisers. An example Featured Sponsorship could include:

  1. X number of Featured Jobs on the online career center during the sponsorship period.
  2. Featured employer profile that gives the advertiser a display banner in between the job listings and custom employer profile page that can link to their career center postings.
  3. Banner advertising on the top, bottom, or sides of the career center (based on your website template and organizational preferences).

Be sure to promote these offers via your media kit, email marketing campaigns and/or as spotlights from your homepage. It’s easy to find non-dues revenue opportunities within your online career center. Try these five quick non-dues revenue ideas for your online career center and your organization will see an uptick in funds for your programming and mission.

Featured Employer on Online Career Center

About The Author


Shanna Mertel is a director of client experience for the SaaS group at Naylor Association Solutions. Email her at [email protected].