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How Craigslist Makes Money

forbes.com

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Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#41

Post by ouid »

debacle wrote: post #4
ouid wrote: post #2

If Craigslist makes ~600M in profit , Why the hell is Forbes giving them a valuation of 3B? That's a Price to Earnings ratio of 5. That's not conservative, that's insane. Am I missing something?

For companies that aren't going to eat the world, only exist on the network effect, and are happy in their space, a P/E of 5 is reasonable. How much would you pay to buy craigslist?

A p/e of 5 is NOT reasonable. Has everyone gone mad? Blue chips run at about 20.

Therefore I would pay 10B for craigslist in a heartbeat. I could probably even get a bank to loan me the money.

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#42

Post by miguelrochefort »

_jal wrote: post #29
miguelrochefort wrote: post #21

Craigslist has one of the worst UX. How come has it not been improved in years? Why doesn't Craigslist get any competition? It should be trivial to implement something that's 10 times better...

Because, as best I can tell, many more people actually like the ultra-simple UX than dislike it. I wish more sites would go retro. It really is a breath of fresh air after so many sites that make me feel like I'm fighting my way through the "experience" they're trying to shove down my series of tubes.

I'm all for simplicity. What I also like is consistency. Craigslist's UI is not consistent.

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#43

Post by miguelrochefort »

nkrisc wrote: post #33
miguelrochefort wrote: post #21

Craigslist has one of the worst UX. How come has it not been improved in years? Why doesn't Craigslist get any competition? It should be trivial to implement something that's 10 times better...

> How come has it not been improved in years? Because it works. It's simply, "good enough.

Good enough is not enough.

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#44

Post by ouid »

mrweasel wrote: post #30
ouid wrote: post #2

If Craigslist makes ~600M in profit , Why the hell is Forbes giving them a valuation of 3B? That's a Price to Earnings ratio of 5. That's not conservative, that's insane. Am I missing something?

Snap and Twitter both have valuation much higher than $3 billion and have zero profit. I would agree that the valuation seems high, but not compared to other tech companies.

The valuation seems absurdly low.

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#45

Post by bovermyer »

miguelrochefort wrote: post #21

Craigslist has one of the worst UX. How come has it not been improved in years? Why doesn't Craigslist get any competition? It should be trivial to implement something that's 10 times better...

Craigslist has competition. However, it works really well, loads very fast, and makes a lot of money. There's no motivation, then, to make the UX "better."

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#46

Post by coredog64 »

iamatworknow wrote: post #17

>It also charges fees to list postings in categories including ... automobiles offered by dealers This was a huge thing in my industry. I work with a lot of independent car dealers that used to list everything on their lots with Craigslist, then they started charging the dealers $5 a pop and many of them just quit using it. There are too many other car listing sites out there now that offer more than just an ad (vehi…

I'm happier for it, as otherwise you wind up with garbage ads from the smaller lots. For example, they'll list the monthly payment instead of the price, which makes wading through 'sort by increasing price' a PITA. Or they'll put a bunch of SEO keywords into the ad such that their vehicle shows up on a search that it shouldn't.

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#47

Post by [deleted] »

mrweasel wrote: post #30
ouid wrote: post #2

If Craigslist makes ~600M in profit , Why the hell is Forbes giving them a valuation of 3B? That's a Price to Earnings ratio of 5. That's not conservative, that's insane. Am I missing something?

Snap and Twitter both have valuation much higher than $3 billion and have zero profit. I would agree that the valuation seems high, but not compared to other tech companies.

[deleted]

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#49

Post by phkahler »

douche wrote: post #28
miguelrochefort wrote: post #21

Craigslist has one of the worst UX. How come has it not been improved in years? Why doesn't Craigslist get any competition? It should be trivial to implement something that's 10 times better...

When I hard reload the Craigslist home page for my state, it downloads right around 150 kb. That is a thing of beauty.

>> When I hard reload the Craigslist home page for my state, it downloads right around 150 kb.

>> That is a thing of beauty.

I really find it sad that it's such an anomaly.

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#50

Post by criddell »

miguelrochefort wrote: post #21

Craigslist has one of the worst UX. How come has it not been improved in years? Why doesn't Craigslist get any competition? It should be trivial to implement something that's 10 times better...

> It should be trivial to implement something that's 10 times better...

What would you be optimizing for? What changes could you make that wouldn't increase the page size or slow the loading speed?

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