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How Craigslist Makes Money

forbes.com

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Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#81

Post by Retric »

accountyaccount wrote: post #75
ryandrake wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Upper crust jobs bring a lot of respect with them. Being the CEO of a fortune 500 or even 5,000 company get's you into a social strata well beyond having a few 10's of millions in the bank.

Consider, people enjoy shopping at Neiman Marcus in part because of how the sales staff treat you. Now picture how you feel when an IBM sales team is trying to sell you over priced services.

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#82

Post by mi100hael »

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?

Paul Allen spent about $200 mil on his super yacht, which one could categorize under "hobbies & traveling." I imagine once you hit 8 figures, a new class of shiny toys all of a sudden feel within reach and become a lot more tempting to a lot of people.

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#83

Post by javiramos »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #20
pkamb wrote: post #14

> 25. A Craigslist competitor. Craiglist is ambivalent about being a business. This is both a strength and a weakness. If you focus on the areas where it's a weakness, you may find there are better ways to solve some of the problems Craigslist solves. http://old.ycombinator.com/ideas.html

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…

AWS:

4. Outsourced IT. In most companies the IT department is an expensive bottleneck. Getting them to make you a simple web form could take months. Enter Wufoo. Now if the marketing department wants to put a form on the web, they can do it themselves in 5 minutes. You can take practically anything users still depend on IT departments for and base a startup on it, and you will have the enormous force of their present dissatisfaction pushing you forward.

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#84

Post by esalazar »

troncheadle wrote: post #70

Forbes is unequivocally the worst website I have the displeasure of being linked to on a regular basis. Readability is quickly approaching 0. This page kept hijacking my scroll thru the article to keep an ad at the top of my window. Horrible, horrible, horrible.

This, a million times this.

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#85

Post by YCode »

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 imagine many do, you just don't hear about them.

For example I know a few people who are millionaires but you wouldn't know it to talk to them. They don't live overly extravagant lives. They have a nice house, some hobbies (e.g. a very nice car(s), a private plane, an art collection), a job they enjoy and friends they spend time with.

At least for those I know didn't strike it rich with some novel idea, they ran a small business or their own finances well and put away what they could for decades.

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#86

Post by tn135 »

troncheadle wrote: post #70

Forbes is unequivocally the worst website I have the displeasure of being linked to on a regular basis. Readability is quickly approaching 0. This page kept hijacking my scroll thru the article to keep an ad at the top of my window. Horrible, horrible, horrible.

Honestly. I despise clicking on Forbes.com for this ad spam.

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#87

Post by pkamb »

LordKano wrote: post #67
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...

I don't think you should have been down-voted but I don't think you understand. Craigslist is so popular because of its simplicity. It's quick. It's light. It's easy. It works and it works well. I don't think there are many potential customers out there thinking "You know what the world needs? Craigslist for web 2.0 with AJAX, JSON, HTML5 and Flash elements." If you think I'm misreading the marketplace, please feel f…

Craigslist doesn't work well though. It looks fine. It loads quickly. But the overall usage to complete your goal is terrible compared to a modern app in the same space such as Tinder or AirBnB.

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#88

Post by ddingus »

miguelrochefort wrote: post #57
bovermyer wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

They aren't. I love that simple, fast, lean interface.

Learned it once, done, works when I need it.

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#89

Post by pkamb »

criddell wrote: post #50
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?

- Global / Region search

- Alerts

- Some kind of historical record of ads

- Increased focus on listing from your mobile phone (camera)

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#90

Post by wvenable »

miguelrochefort wrote: post #66
criddell wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

- Make the UI consistent - Stop using abbreviations everywhere (at least in the French version) - Add structure and semantics to content (not just some blank text fields where people type arbitrary descriptions) - Improve classification using image recognition and mechanical turks - Make an open API available - Get rid of sub-domains - Add trust/reputation mechanisms

> Add trust/reputation mechanisms

This seems like a good idea on the surface but it's ultimately exclusionary. If I want to sell something really occasionally how much trouble do have to go through to maintain this reputation.

As it stands, I still can't participate in stack overflow effectively because of their heavy-handed reputation system.

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