(May 06, 2005) - Just as Monster closes the doors on FlipDog, it seems like hundreds of "job search verticals" have moved in to take its place. FlipDog, you will certainly remember, was the service that scraped jobs from employment sites into a comprehensive database. It's business model involved selling banner advertising and placement in search results.

Over the years, Monster used FlipDog as a pricing weapon in the market. That seemed to make up for the difficulties the division had in producing revenue. We imagine that Monster's management got a little tired of subsidizing traffic to freeloading corporate sites. (Note: we haven't added links to the FlipDog name because they simply reroute to Monster.)

It's odd that the major player in the space is exiting a market just at the moment that competitors are springing up like California wildflowers. To the ranks of simplyhired, indeed.com, and, workzoo, add work.com. Billing itself as "The First Pay-per-Click Employment Search Engine", Work.com is a "product of the business.com network."

Headed by Amos Schwartzfarb, a five-year HotJobs veteran, Work.com appears to be an attempt to further monetize the traffic associated with Business.com. The business model appears to be "featured listings":

• Employer's job listings are automatically wrapped from their corporate career site and/or ATS in accordance with the employer's requirements.
• Distribution to the work.com network.
• Employers pay only for performance at a rate of $0.30 per redirect.
• Employers can set monthly caps on their spending based on budget and need.
• Employers reserve the right to cancel their service at any time.
• Employers receive customized tracking metrics that integrate seamlessly.

The site also offers a couple of interesting "tools":

- We're looking forward to playing with Work.com's job search by AOL Messenger:

Add "WorkIsEverywhere" to your AOL IM Buddy List.

Say, "Hello" and WorkIsEverywhere will lead the way!

- Any search on Work.com can be turned into an RSS feed.

With a name like "work.com", these guys already have a jumpstart on traffic. Let's watch and see what happens.