Quote:
Originally Posted by filp
Private ads?
They're a multi-billion dollar company. That seems weird they would want additional profits.
|
A client of mine lobbied them hard for years to start charging. He had a good reason. He's an editor and does a lot of his work via skype. He formerly had ads in yellow pages in 5 major cities, also advertised in arty papers like the Village Voice in NYC. About 15 years ago began advertising in, I forget, about 6 cities on Craigslist. He said more and more the vast bulk of his clients came from Craigslist. Then they started cracking down on people advertising in more than one city. Anti-scammer measures, for all of these asses who don't want to actually sell or buy, just to scam legitimate buyers/sellers.
As his clients were getting what they paid for, what they wanted, it was not a scam. And, as he told me and them, Craigslist had put out of business or made otherwise irrelevant most everyone else. But since there was no charge, he could not complain that he wasn't getting his money's worth. He was at their mercy. Plus, he was paying shady characters to help him get around the restrictions. Also dealing with competitors flagging him to get him off the scene. Apparently other overseas shady characters offered a 'service' of mega flagging the paying customer's foes to get them pulled. Apparently it takes quite a few flags to get someone in hot water.
He wrote Craig Newmark with his concerns, saying he would gladly pay some nominal amount for their service, and Newmark actually answered him back, saying he would discuss it with his board. He claims that Newmark is an old Berkeley socialist who doesn't want to make a ton of money. For a long time the only ones who paid were employers for help wanted ads and housing rental markets in some major cities.