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How Craigslist Makes Money

forbes.com

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Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#111

Post by jandrese »

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...

What's wrong with their UX? You click on a category to narrow the scope and then search using the searchbar. The only time it is an issue is if you aren't sure what category you want or maybe you aren't quite sure where you live.

Listings can be a mixed bag, but that's entirely user data so it's hard to fault Craigslist too much. IMHO it's better than having some 5 page form you have to fill out every time you list something which people will just screw up anyway.

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#112

Post by ouid »

yeukhon wrote: post #99
ouid wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Actually when I read it again it still sounded like you think the valuation is too high. I think this is because you instantly said insane after saying the valuation is 3B. That's how I read it "that 3B valuation? It's insane." It is hard to guess which sentiment was applied. But now you cleared up your opinion on this, I appreicate it. You were trying to say "3B valuation? Wow that's impressive!"

I'm saying that Forbes is insane for giving a number so low based on their estimates. it is off by almost an order of magnitude what you would expect for similar companies.

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#113

Post by trowawee »

sytelus wrote: post #94
dammitcoetzee wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Craigslist is one of the best pages on the internet. It's functional, it loads fast, it doesn't have a stack built of buzzwords and bullshit. It works on every device everywhere. I mean, what business does a page have being megabytes and megabytes if it's gonna display a couple bytes of text? None. It doesn't matter if it's "technically free" these days, that's just bad design and engineering.

Craiglist design actually sucks. When I first used it, the whole thing was almost revolting from design perspective. Where some people see simplicity, others see utter lack of modernity, friendliness and affordability. I still can't get some of my relative to use it (they ask me to post on their behalf!). Before you cite page counts, revenues and unique users, think about how many people are not using it despite the…

I mean, we can't prove who "isn't" using it. We can prove that millions and millions of people are using it and seem to be content with it; we can provide anecdotal accounts (including by many people in this thread) that the simplicity and straightforwardness and consistency is what brings them back to the site. I can tell you that everyone I know looks at Craigslist when they're looking for apartments. But I get that you don't like it; I just think you need to acknowledge that's a preference, rather than an objective fact.

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#114

Post by trowawee »

bpicolo wrote: post #55
trowawee wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Sure, but that's a UX change, and that's what the parent was suggesting for CL.

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#115

Post by DGCA »

donniefitz2 wrote: post #100
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.

I had to copy the text and paste it into Notepad to actually read the article.

Have a bookmarklet:

  javascript:(function()%7Bwindow.location.href %3D 'https%3A%2F%2Foutline.com%2F' %2B window.location.href%7D)()
It'll open the article using https://outline.com/. E.g. https://outline.com/xX7xe3

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#116

Post by sergiotapia »

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...

They do have competition. Every deal I've done either selling or buying second-hand things has been through OfferUp. It's amazing and miles ahead of Craigslists' horrible UX.

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#117

Post by aembleton »

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.

It's not too bad if you disable all:

- 1st party scripts

- 3rd party scripts

- 3rd party frames

It's a shame that it is necessary but it's simple enough in uBlock.

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#118

Post by mostlyskeptical »

fivestar wrote: post #109
YCode wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's because that's basically all you can do with only $1M these days! The US is nothing but a grievous lie--we have allowed a tiny few to extract all the wealth to the tippy tippy top. I can't even believe people work for like $50K in most places anymore, they should be taking up arms at this point.

In most places in the US you can live extremely comfortably, even with a couple of moderately expensive hobbies, on 50k. Get out of the big cities.

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#119

Post by fragmede »

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?

Airplane travel is a good example where you just end up chasing the dragon. You start by wanting to make enough money to take a trip every once in a while. Then the cheapest economy class tickets aren't good enough - start making more money, and you just buy a ticket, no need to spend an hour finding that perfect ticket. Then economy class isn't good enough, so you get business class seats. Then you get lounge access, then move up to first class.

Then, you start time sharing a private jet but at that level that's kind of lame, and what you really want is your own private jet, but once you have one, it's so terrible when it's in the shop, so then you get a second, but you're also noticing how cramped the current one is, and go for a larger one this time...

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#120

Post by bostonvaulter2 »

Animats wrote: post #107

How's Wales doing with Wikia? That was his attempt to monetize the Wikipedia concept. It ended up as a huge repository for fancruft. Does it make serious money?

Ugh, wikia has so many ads. Super annoying, especially when it's the only source of the content that you're interested in.
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