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How Craigslist Makes Money

forbes.com

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Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#71

Post by ryandrake »

accountyaccount wrote: post #69
easilyBored wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Craig probably did some math and found out that even if he lives to 800 years old, he will not be able to spend it all so why go nuts? This way everything is manageable and he doesn't need to report to anyone.

I'm surprised that more successful people don't do this? Is the drive that lead them to absurd success what leads them to continue well beyond needing to? I find it hard to imagine hitting $10 million and not just dropping everything and spending the rest of my life on random hobbies and traveling. Maybe that's why I don't have $10 million?

I find it hard to imagine hitting $1 million and not just dropping everything for hobbies. The answer is that $N figure is different for each person.

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#72

Post by ouid »

yeukhon wrote: post #63
ouid wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they said "most of 690M is profit" in the article. I used bayes theorem to go through all of the numbers out of 690M that I would have said "most" for, and arrived at a guess of 600M. Even if it were the lower bound of values for which the word "most" technically applies that's still earnings of 345M. An 11% a year on an investment of 3 billion. That's still insane. CL revenue is not terribly speculative.

I am not much of an investment person, but 600M for a classified site is actually pretty impressive for an old, well-established company. If they are able to maintain a high profit with low operation cost, then buyer can project more earning in the future. There is no absolute Craigslist will always make 600M a year. They may lose 10M next year or go bankrupt in ten years. So for 3B for the ten-year forecast (I don't…

I think you are assuming that I meant insane in the sense that this was not a conservative estimate. That's sort of what I said, but it's clear from context that I meant the opposite. This estimate seems far too conservative to even count as an estimate, more of a trivial lower bound.

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#73

Post by phkahler »

bpicolo wrote: post #58
phkahler wrote: post #49

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. 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.

A few graphics shouldn't cause much bloat, and there is way too much JS out there today. IMHO of course.

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#74

Post by accountyaccount »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #37
eanzenberg wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least 10x their yearly profit? What other investment provides a consistent 10% yearly return on the scale we're talking about? At P/E ratio of 5, you literally just wait 5 years and you've just made as much as your initial investment.

If you get five years before someone disrupts it. That's not a given.

Given craigslist has been around for 20 years I think it's fair to assume they could take an upwards of 5 years to unseat. Even Myspace continues on to this day.

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#75

Post by accountyaccount »

ryandrake wrote: post #71
accountyaccount wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised that more successful people don't do this? Is the drive that lead them to absurd success what leads them to continue well beyond needing to? I find it hard to imagine hitting $10 million and not just dropping everything and spending the rest of my life on random hobbies and traveling. Maybe that's why I don't have $10 million?

I find it hard to imagine hitting $1 million and not just dropping everything for hobbies. The answer is that $N figure is different for each person.

Fair point. I just don't relate to what pushes a wealthy person down the path of ludicrous wealth. Do they really just love doing what they're doing?

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#76

Post by bpicolo »

phkahler wrote: post #73
bpicolo wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

A few graphics shouldn't cause much bloat, and there is way too much JS out there today. IMHO of course.

> and there is way too much JS out there today

Heh, well unfortunately the web doesn't get much in the way of alternative : (

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#77

Post by nkrisc »

miguelrochefort wrote: post #43
nkrisc wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Good enough is not enough.

There is nothing wrong with good enough. It's the perfectly acceptable middle ground.

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#79

Post by DINKDINK »

placeybordeaux wrote: post #25
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remarkably prescient for 2008. 1. A cure for the disease of which the RIAA is a symptom. Something is broken when Sony and Universal are suing children. Actually, at least two things are broken: the software that file sharers use, and the record labels' business model. The current situation can't be the final answer. 8. Dating. Current dating sites are not the last word. Better ones will appear. But anyone who wants…

w.r.t bitcoin being the new payment method, so far bitcoin hasn't enabled the really game changing thing: frictionless micropayments. It's possible that lighting networks will enable this (load up your browser with 5 bucks and lock that up in a connection to the LN, pay for articles then pay 1 cent to skip ads, buy premium features one at a time etc), but we haven't seen this yet.

>we haven't seen [frictionless micropayments from the lighting network] yet.

You post should be corected: Frictionless micropayments are already running on the lighting network, are already operational: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baHHMNA8yf4

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#80

Post by [deleted] »

accountyaccount wrote: post #69
easilyBored wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Craig probably did some math and found out that even if he lives to 800 years old, he will not be able to spend it all so why go nuts? This way everything is manageable and he doesn't need to report to anyone.

I'm surprised that more successful people don't do this? Is the drive that lead them to absurd success what leads them to continue well beyond needing to? I find it hard to imagine hitting $10 million and not just dropping everything and spending the rest of my life on random hobbies and traveling. Maybe that's why I don't have $10 million?

[deleted]
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