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How Craigslist Makes Money

forbes.com

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Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#121

Post by tunap »

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.

A couple quotes I recall from ENG 101: "Better is the enemy of good enough." and "Simple is the most advanced tech."

Believe it or not, non-tech people do not want to learn the latest, greatest UI. They want it to work. Full stop. The shiny new attack surfaces....er,... features and the vicious circle of security breaches & updates may well extinguish the public's enthusiasm for "new". Ever see an average Iphone or Android user after a nightly upgrade? It isn't pretty when a user's functionality/productivity is torpedoed by a new design +/- features of new OS. As a tech savvy pro, however, YMMV.

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#122

Post by fragmede »

gwern wrote: post #68
wand3r wrote: post #3

I was wondering how they got that number; basically they use a $690M revenue guess from a third party, apply a valuation multiple from eBay and then multiply by the 42% Newmark owns. Craigslist is unique; it isn't entirely profit driven and as far as Alexa 1000 sites; it might have stayed closest to it's original founding philosophy. I am not sure how they make money; iirc it was only a few select markets and select…

> I was wondering how they got that number; basically they use a $690M revenue guess from a third party, apply a valuation multiple from eBay and then multiply by the 42% Newmark owns. It's not that dubious. The methodology is as simple and straightforward as it gets: > AIM's Zollman, who called his company's Craigslist revenue estimate "conservative," said the AIM Group counts up listings for each category in variou…

The article mentions 50 employees; assuming moderate turnover of 10% a year, starting from 1995, plus the 50 current employees, that's 110 people, along some 850,000 in San Francisco.

Even if they all wore t-shirts that said they work and Craigslist and are worth millions, would you still even have met one on the street?

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#123

Post by quickConclusion »

I often wish Facebook would have followed that approach. They made money very early with small ads on a lots of page views, did not need investors.

But they went into the VC religion of revenue growth, took their money, then Wall Street money, and they cannot go back now because all employees and stockholders have been promised more. So more ads, more snooping on users, more worldwide control, we need to feed the beast.

Zuckerberg could have continued managing it a-la Craigslist, and still make a few billion for himself. We would all feel much better about using FB.

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#124

Post by icebraining »

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…

I guess Alan Kay is wrong: The best way to predict the future is to suggest others build for you.

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#125

Post by xemdetia »

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…

Just imagine the number of people that would immediately reject craigslist if it got a clever 'redesign.' It has worked the same way is forever and there are people who are not incredibly computer literate who rely on it. If craigslist moved as fast as facebook then in my opinion I think it would have been already been replaced.

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#126

Post by njarboe »

fivestar wrote: post #103
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?

Hell, I have just over 1/10th and I'm trying to extract myself from the workaday life. What is truly ridiculous is that I can't yet do so, largely due to the high cost of buying health insurance yourself. It's like the whole US is designed around debt slavery and moving the goalposts further and further out. $5-10M is probably the low bar for living a kick-ass non-tied-to-employment lifestyle in the US. Certainly peo…

I imagine you have heard of the Mr Money Mustache and his wife who became financially independent at age ~30 with both of them just working regular tech jobs. You should check out his blog[1] if you haven't. His philosophy is low spending while still having "kick-ass life". Offspring, travel, great food, etc. They own their house and spend about $25,000 per year.

[1] http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#127

Post by hackunomatter »

njarboe wrote: post #126
fivestar wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hell, I have just over 1/10th and I'm trying to extract myself from the workaday life. What is truly ridiculous is that I can't yet do so, largely due to the high cost of buying health insurance yourself. It's like the whole US is designed around debt slavery and moving the goalposts further and further out. $5-10M is probably the low bar for living a kick-ass non-tied-to-employment lifestyle in the US. Certainly peo…

I imagine you have heard of the Mr Money Mustache and his wife who became financially independent at age ~30 with both of them just working regular tech jobs. You should check out his blog[1] if you haven't. His philosophy is low spending while still having "kick-ass life". Offspring, travel, great food, etc. They own their house and spend about $25,000 per year. [1] http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/

> They own their house and spend about $25,000 per year

In the Bay Area, this is a multi-million-dollar ordeal in itself :-(

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#128

Post by hackunomatter »

fragmede wrote: post #119
accountyaccount wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I like to say (not sure if it's original or not), "anyone who says 'money doesn't buy happiness' has never traveled First Class". I got bumped into FC once, and it. was. amazing. Especially on a long haul flight, you actively enjoy the time spent there.

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#129

Post by jjawssd »

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.

Is it possible to consume good quality content with Atom feeds? Are Atom feeds a viable alternative to sites like Forbes?

Re: How Craigslist Makes Money

#130

Post by pharrlax »

fivestar wrote: post #102
bubbleRefuge wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overall, most press/journalism sites I use are terrible. Performance stinks, flash everywhere, ads that nobody clicks on. Horrible.

Not to mention all the "adblock detected" crap. I used to disable adblock, but anymore I just give up and go away. They can all FOAD for all I care.

That's an inevitability at this point.
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