BBC NEWS — Jan 13 — Craigslist now has "well over three billion page views" per month Craig says, which makes it the seventh biggest presence on the internet. His almost anti-profit business employs just 19 people, and is still based in a San Francisco living room. Craigslist is a real and reciprocal online community that is "just trying to give people a break" across the 190 cities it serves. Craigslist nets around $20m a year by charging for job postings in three cities. eBay managed to buy 25% of the company in 2004, when a former employee unilaterally decided to sell his shares. Craig says the unexpected relationship has been beneficial so far. "We try to be driven by the values of the people who use us," he said. With a portion of each site given over to dating, "erotic services" and "casual encounters", it is not hard to see for example, why only Istanbul has joined the Craigslist ranks from the Islamic world. FULL ARTICLE @ BBC NEWS
Mark Brooks: Craigslist because looks and feels like a cool guy doing us all a favor. It is! I had lunch with Craig in 1999 and pitched an early version of Plaxo. In 2000 he almost bit on a deal with Hypermatch a small online dating site I was working with…the only stipulations, we were not to make money from advertising or charge membership dues. Um, then what? It didn't happen and Hypermatch was sold to EZBoard. Other companies I've advised have pitched Jim Buckmaster (CEO) and Craig since then, to no avail. I've not bugged Craig for a while now. The last time I saw Craig it was simply to buy him a cup of coffee and thank him for helping me grow my little club http://www.ace-club.com by relisting events on his events calendar. Craigslist is a great site and public service. The shear utility, utter integrity, humility and lack of commercial agenda is at the core of it's success.
Uh, they have $20 million in revenue and minimal costs. That isn’t commercial enough for you?
According to Alexa Craigslist is the 34th most trafficed site on the web http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&compare_sites=&y=t&q=&url=http://www.craigslist.com
There’s a lot more they could be charging for. They’re in 190 cities and only charge for job postings in 3 of them. Seems very minimal.
Obviously, they could be charging for more services – no one argues that. But what percentage of CL users do you think know that the site generates $20 million? If CL donated all revenue after expenses to charity (or took only minimal salaries above that) then they’d be the organization that you and others say they are. How many entrepreneurs would be happy to be “minimal” multi-millionaires?
99.9% of users have no clue Craigslist even charges for job listings I’m sure. At the end of the day, it’s market penetration pricing. They have massive amounts of goodwill, the Craigslist name is as fluid and word-of-mouth friendly name possible, and I’m sure Craigslist will charge for more in the future.
$20 million for charging for job listings in 3 cities. Fast forward 7 years. Let’s say they are in 250 cities worldwide, are charging for job listings in half of them, and have doubled their current average revenue per city by charging for a couple more things; for real estate listings and premium personals.
$20 million / 3 = $6.6 million per city per year
Double that per city = $13.2 million per city per year
125 cities x $13.2 million = $1650 million
Very nice!
Will they do this. Nyet! I know they won’t. I’ll see if I can get an interview with Craig and let’s see what he says.
Mark Brooks
Editor
OnlinePersonalsWatch.com