How Craigslist is Keeping up Internet Ideals

prostoalex writes "CBS MarketWatch discusses whether Craig Newmark and CraigsList.org are missing out by not 'monetizing' their traffic or selling out to large corporations. CraigsList is currently #7 e-commerce site on the Internet with 13M unique visitors monthly, and only charges for real estate listings by professional brokers. No word on whether that income is enough to pay 24 salaries and data center fees for hosting a major Internet site." From the article: "Their noble stance gives entrepreneurs from San Francisco a great name. Despite the many unfortunate examples of greed, Internet entrepreneurs aren't all about getting rich quick and cashing out. At an entrepreneur's roots is a vision to provide a service that helps alleviate a pain point. The money thing always muddied the waters down the road. The attitude at Craigslist is a nice reminder of how entrepreneurs' ideals can still remain intact, no matter how odd they may seem in a world that worships money."

Minor error in summary

[YankeeInExile]

Real estate is not the only paid category. Jobs postings in the largest markets are also revenue producers. (Although at $25 it can't be beat)

Large Corporations?

[thesolo]

Um, eBay owns 25% of them [craigslist.org].

Re:Just goes to show...

[YankeeInExile]

Not quite. eBay bought a chunk of craigslist from one of the original partners -- I don't think CL the corporate entity got anything out of the deail.

I choose Craig's List over eBay

[Monoman]

When I want to sell something I usually choose Craig's List over eBay. It is free, local (no need to ship), and the entire process is usually quicker.

Re:Large Corporations?

[Aladrin]

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=211374&cid=172 09134 [slashdot.org]
http://www.craigslist.org/about/press/ebay.stake.h tml [craigslist.org]

Craigslist didn't have any choice in that.

Re:Minor error in summary

[lottameez]

Although at $25 it can't be beat

Yes and no. Since your ads age very quickly, you have to refresh them more often than other online ad venues (dice/monster/etc). Still a good deal tho.

Summary is incorrect...

[Known Nutter]

From the summary: and only charges for real estate listings by professional brokers...

That's incorrect. craigslist charges for real estate postings in the New York City area only. Additionally, they charge below-market rates for job postings in 3 markets (SF, LA and NY I believe).

They are a profitable business. They have, however, chosen to throttle how much profit they suck from the thing.

Re:eBay hindering how?

[truthsearch]

For some reason, craigslist won't run their Paris site in French (at least the last time I checked earlier this year). So only expats use it. Meanwhile Kajiji, created by Ebay after a certain similar web site refused to sell out to them, is doing reasonably well because they translate for every country and consider cultural differences (color choices, images, etc.).

I don't know how they did it, but when ebay wanted a more monetized site, they seemed to prevent craigslist from using domestic languages and created their own competing site (when other competitors refused to sell to them).