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How Craigslist Makes Money

forbes.com

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Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#51

Post by harlanji »

djsumdog wrote: post #40

I remember looking up this exact question a few days ago. I really prefer to sell things like used electronics on Craigslist over eBay. I really like their business model too. They made enough to keep going, but not enough that they aspire to take over everything. It's a really simple concept, and there are very few business ideas that can pull it off.

> It's a really simple concept, and there are very few business ideas that can pull it off.

The vast majority of businesses bootstrap themselves. Not on HN of course :)

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#52

Post by pascalxus »

just look at how successful a business that is, so simple, so little innovation and yet so much revenue. But despite all that, they have the best feature (X factor) in the wolrd: market timing.

ohhh what i wouldn't do, to time travel back to 1995.

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#54

Post by colmvp »

madamelic wrote: post #8

I think they are doing it right. Just find a niche and work at it progressively through life. No need to raise $100M D Rounds, no need to have an explosive exit, whatever. I think it would be nice to just steadily have six figures, work on something I love and live life (a la Basecamp). Most of all: Have complete control of your destiny. No investors, no bosses, etc.

I know hindsight is 20/20, but it's interesting to me that they could've created Airbnb, as they had both the reach and finances to potentially create a side-project that was specific to short-term rentals. They already had sublets and temporary rentals as a sub-listing since forever.

I know that Airbnb comes across as warm and fuzzy hosts who engage with guests, but it's progressively more commercialized with a good portion of hosts either managing multiple short-term rental properties or dedicating a space specifically for the purposes of consistently having short-term rentals.

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#55

Post by bpicolo »

trowawee wrote: post #26
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...

Counterpoint: their UX works perfectly well for them (see: $690m in revenue) and any proposed overhaul would carry potentially disastrous costs (see: Digg's site-killing redesign). Redesigning for the sake of change is not inherently good. Also, on a personal level, I've come to appreciate CL's design, and I very much appreciate its consistency. I don't use CL all the time - I go to it sometimes for things like furni…

> Digg's site-killing redesign

Wasn't that all because they entirely changed the content model though? It wasn't just a UI change. Wasn't it because paid-for-junk was going to be most of what was in your face or something of that nature?

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#56

Post by MR4D »

colmvp wrote: post #54
madamelic wrote: post #8

I think they are doing it right. Just find a niche and work at it progressively through life. No need to raise $100M D Rounds, no need to have an explosive exit, whatever. I think it would be nice to just steadily have six figures, work on something I love and live life (a la Basecamp). Most of all: Have complete control of your destiny. No investors, no bosses, etc.

I know hindsight is 20/20, but it's interesting to me that they could've created Airbnb, as they had both the reach and finances to potentially create a side-project that was specific to short-term rentals. They already had sublets and temporary rentals as a sub-listing since forever. I know that Airbnb comes across as warm and fuzzy hosts who engage with guests, but it's progressively more commercialized with a good…

If I had to bet which would last longer between Craigslist and AirBnB, I would pick Craigslist.

I may be wrong, but I think it's the better bet for the long term.

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#57

Post by miguelrochefort »

bovermyer wrote: post #45
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."

No motivation? How about not making your users miserable?

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#58

Post by bpicolo »

phkahler wrote: post #49
douche wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Text-only content does not make a ton of sense for a whole lot of websites.

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#60

Post by samclearman »

wand3r wrote: post #5
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?

I think largely because they are estimates; I think Craigslist is likely worth way more given the ubiquitous nature, high margin, low costs and the decisions to not monetize everything. That said, IMO this article is not about Craigslist but a subtle advert for the 2 "competing firms" that are mentioned. I have seen an uptick in articles about Craigslist mentioning them and had never heard of them before. Potentially…

Well spotted.
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