Craigslist to Start Charging for Some Listings

rufey writes "In the coming months, Craigslist will begin charging fees for some of its listings. New York City real estate listings will be the first to get the fees. Starting on March 1st, it will cost $10 to list real estate on Craigslist for New York City. The fees may not be limited to New York real estate however. Job postings may see fees imposed for various parts of the country. The fees have been proposed as a way to combat the problem of people posting the same thing several times a day to keep their listing near the top of the list."

Comments

It was bound to happen

[Laura_DilDio]

after all, doesn't ebay have a stake in Craigslist?

Craigslist has become Spam Central

[Animats]

Craiglist has really gone downhill over the last few years. The personals are 80-90% spam, and the other listings have a high spam content as well.

Anonymous ads without moderation just don't work any more.

Expanded Search

[BrookHarty]

The biggest problem with craigslist, they dont allow extended searchs for more than 1 area. While they have always bitched about global searchs would run the "small town" feeling, its global NOW.. Jobs in point, would be nice if you could search nation wide, people move for work now, get with the times.

While making some people pay will get rid of multiple posts, thats annoying on high traffic sites.

I just wish craigslist would actually ask what people want, without the freaking attitude...

i hear a sucking sound...

[d723]

Tim Redmond of the San Francisco Bay Guardian has an interesting perspective on Craigslist:

A little background. Mr. Newmark, whom everyone calls "Craig," has created a system of online advertising that has pretty much wiped out traditional daily newspaper classified ads in many of the 115 US markets where he now operates. He's also hurt the alternative press, although the damage to the dailies is deeper. Some say Craig has single-handedly destroyed thousands of newspaper jobs.

He calls Craigslist the Walmart of classified ads because it siphons money out of the local economy since Craigslist doesn't employ people locally in the markets in which it operates.

It also seems that one of the reasons Craigslist became the definitive source for online classifieds is because it's FREE for everything except job postings, and job postings is an area where they are not the definitive source. Their product is not incredibly complex. If/when they start to charge, it would be a relatively easy task for someone to build a better free alternative.

Re:i hear a sucking sound...

[Jeffrey Baker]

He compares Craigslist to Wal*Mart because he writes for a third-rate free weekly newspaper which depends on small advertisers for revenue. Competition with Craigslist is killing the Guardian because the Guardian provides terrible value to advertisers. They charge a large fee, run your ad only once per week, and on the same page with incoherent political screeds, strange editorials, factually incorrect news pieces, and artistic criticism of the latest pornographic dvds.

Craigslist is killing the Guardian because the Guardian is a bad product. And for the Guardian, Craigslist *is* local competition, and they *do* employ San Francisco workers (4, I think).

Re:Meta-Moderation?

[MustardMan]

IMHO the flag system on craigslist is severly flawed, though - the messages pretty much vanish, and a user who saw a listing one day has no idea why it's gone the next day. Plus, there are entire communities of self-righteous jackasses who patrol craigslist and flag en masse any post that they don't like. I see this a LOT in the pets classifieds, where some have assigned themselves the pet police and go around removing any posts that offend their (usually quite extreme) sensitivities.

Craigslist = spam/scam heavy and search is lacking

[tokengeekgrrl]

There are so many scams and spam postings on craigslist now that I turn to my network of friends and an internal posting board at my work before bothering to use it.

Don't get me wrong, I love craigslist and used it back when it was just a list-serv. But success has its price and that price is a ton of clutter.

If craigslist had decent search capabilities that would help mitigate the problem but as it is, it's very frustrating. You can't search for anything in multiple neighborhoods in the same city, let alone search for something in multiple cities. Searching for housing is tedious since you can't filter it by number of bedrooms, bathrooms, whether it has off-street parking, etc.

I have found some utilities online that will do craigslist filtering but they can't help but miss a bunch of postings since they're just parsing a bunch of text. There is nothing that they can key off of in order to filter accurately.

I'll still use craigslist when I need to, of course, but I also use other things as well and don't solely rely on it.

- tokengeekgrrl

Customers aren't property.

[jcr]

He calls Craigslist the Walmart of classified ads because it siphons money out of the local economy since Craigslist doesn't employ people locally in the markets in which it operates.

Why should they?

If you can't compete, too bad. The advertisers are entitled to choose a vendor, and if the Guardian isn't a good deal, they lose. If they'd been a bit smarter about offering their ads on the net sooner than their competitors, they might not be going down the tubes today.

-jcr