If Craigslist cost $1

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/09/if-craigslist-cost-1.html

by bdfh42 • 17 years ago

69 68 17 years ago

sethgodin.typepad.com

jgrahamc2• 17 years ago

The number of scam artists using the site would go down, because it's more difficult to be anonymous when money changes hands.

Only slightly more difficult. The reality is that stolen credit card numbers are easily available to anyone who really wants to find and buy them (in bulk) and so using "ability to pay money" as a criteria for detecting non-scammers is weak. That's precisely because what scammers are good at is illegal acts, like getting stolen credit card numbers.

andhapp• 17 years ago

Good argument.

Edinburger• 17 years ago

I think the point is it would become much less worthwhile to spam the site, at least with 'simple' spam. Stolen credit card numbers are easily available but using them just to spam Craigslist is probably a poor return on investment. Ironically, more complex scams could become more worthwhile if users start to show a higher level of trust in ads because they've been paid for.

jgrahamc2• 17 years ago

You are probably right that increased trust because of payments could make the scams work better, but bear in mind that a typical stolen credit card can be bought for a few cents. They are almost free.

azgolfer• 17 years ago

If this was true, the credit card companies would all be out of business.

dennisgorelik2• 17 years ago

You are almost right: Merchants that readily deliver goods to wherever carders (credit card scammers) ask them to -- go out of business. Ultimately it's merchant's responsibility to make sure credit card is legitimate.

nazgulnarsil• 17 years ago

this reminds me of the "if email cost a penny" arguments. I think i agree, but I haven't thought about it enough to see the likely ramifications.

dualogy• 17 years ago

The only thing that would likely happen in both cases, craigslist and email, is people would set up free alternatives instantly. Everything needed for that is out there for free already, ready to run.

d4nt3• 17 years ago

I agree the free alternatives would be set up, but in the case of Craigslist I think it probably has enough critical mass to keep its dominant position.

A free email provider would still let you send and receive messages from anyone. A free classified listings site doesn't give you access to traffic on the paid classified listings site.

Tichy• 17 years ago

Or maybe it would become just like ebay.

jbellis2• 17 years ago

Hugely successful to the point that they can buy Skype for $billions just for the hell of it?

whye• 17 years ago

I don't think that's Craig Newark's metric for success.

leftnode• 17 years ago

From what I've read around the Internet, Craigslist is perfectly happy being one of the worlds largest websites run by 32 people. I don't think they want to grow to a huge marketplace, or want to make billions. They sound like a company that's perfectly happy with their place on the 'Net and thats that.

From their Wikipedia article, "Other factors he [Craig Newmark] cites are consistency of down-to-earth values, customer service and simplicity."

To me, those go away if they start charging for posts.

stcredzero3• 17 years ago

"Other factors he [Craig Newmark] cites are consistency of down-to-earth values, customer service and simplicity." To me, those go away if they start charging for posts.

I'd like you to explain that one. Lots of companies charge money and have exactly those qualities.

calambrac3• 17 years ago

Gosh, all that sounds amazing. Let me blow your minds, though: what if CL cost two dollars?

This is unbelievably weak. Godin's not exactly on a hot streak right now, is he?

cemerick• 17 years ago

Even worse is that the slant about being able to use that money to do good in the world (e.g. fund journalism, etc) is almost certainly a swipe from Spolsky's recent craigslist rant on stackoverflow. I guess they might have had the same idea at roughly the same time, but I'm disinclined to think that given Godin's shoddy writing/work lately.

microcentury• 17 years ago

Yup, incredibly weak. And it's written like no-one at Craigslist could _possibly_ have thought about this.

mattmanser• 17 years ago

They're established, they can start charging and as far as I know they already are for some categories. They've not got a chicken and egg problem. So I'm not sure what's so 'unbelievably weak'.

On a side note, Joel Spolsky was arguing the same point a couple of weeks back on one of the SO podcasts. He obviously said a lot more, being Joel. I'm paraphrasing poorly but one of his better points was that there's a certain amount of potential money in CL that at the moment is being spent on the very small social good of totally free listings. But he lamented the fact that it used to be spent on the much greater social good of journalism, which is a waste as people don't really need free listings, but they need good journalism for a healthy democracy:

http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/09/podcast-67/

They went on to conclude charging on all categories in CL was inevitable to stop the spammers and perhaps they could use the extra revenue to start funding digital journalism.

TheElder• 17 years ago

That was a great podcast and it had me thinking. But what had me thinking more is when I found out that Joel is also subverting journalism with his million dollar plus in yearly revenue job board: http://jobs.joelonsoftware.com.

Revenue for the job board was found here: http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090101/how-hard-could-it-be-th...

calambrac3• 17 years ago

as far as I know they already are for some categories.

The fact that CL is already doing the thing that Godin just descended from the sky to tell us CL should do is, to you, evidence that this isn't 'unbelievably weak'? Will you start reading my blog if I promise to fill it with gems like "What if Google started matching ads with searches?" or "What if Amazon started up an affiliate program?"

For the record, I think Spolsky can be pretty unbelievably lame, as well. People have been talking about how CL should monetize for years.

jbellis2• 17 years ago

> Let me blow your minds, though: what if CL cost two dollars?

It's well understood that the psychological difference between free and $1 is much larger than the difference between $1 and $2.

calambrac3• 17 years ago

So you're saying your mind isn't blown? Hmm, might have to start shaving my head...

ujibuip• 17 years ago

It's almost impossible to charge $1 for something. As soon as you start charging you need, a secure site, a credit card processor, accountants, lawyers, tax accountants, tax lawyers - repeat for each state/province/country/jurisdiction.

You go from a company with a dozen programmers enjoying what you do to a company of 1000s of employees making sure you have met the requirements for an out of state advertiser in Nowheresville Ak

ptomato• 17 years ago

But craigslist already does charge, for job postings in certain cities.

dennisgorelik2• 17 years ago

I have a better idea: what if it costs 1 cent? That would generate no revenue, but harass posters enough so CraigsList would quickly go out of business.

DanielStraight2• 17 years ago

He's completely ignoring the fact that some people (a lot of people actually) won't pay any price. Changing the price from free to $1 would probably have more effect than a site changing its price from $1 to $10.

d4nt3• 17 years ago

Isn't that exactly the point he's making

zaidf2• 17 years ago

He's saying making it a buck will make CL a lot of money.

OP is saying that may not happen. People might move to another classifieds website in mass. CL might end up making a lot less money because less traffic = less price for paid sections of their site(ie. job sections in certain cities).

webology• 17 years ago

eBay is a great example of how charging money does not curve bogus, repetitive listings or fraud for that matter. A reputation system might go a long way and make people more accountable.

tghw• 17 years ago

eBay is a great example of how a reputation system does not curb bogus, repetitive listings, or fraud for that matter.

thras• 17 years ago

What is the spam/gold ratio on ebay?

The reputation system and the monetary charges do help to curb problem users. The problems are still there, but not as bad as they would be. Or as bad as they are on Craigslist.

On the other hand, the Craigslist approach to fighting this sort of thing is "keep it local." But they've gone as far as they can with that.

randallsquared• 17 years ago

Well, of how their reputation system... There's a lot of room for experimentation.

brazzy2• 17 years ago

Apparently you have no memories of how ebay was before they started charging for listings. I have. It wasn't pretty.

When ebay started charging, the howls and cries for boycott were loud and numerous, but fact is, the quality of the listings soared, and ebay's competitors did not profit; instead, they disappeared one by one.

jacquesm2• 17 years ago

Either that or they were bought out (marktplaats.nl for instance).

nir• 17 years ago

What if publishing a blog post cost $1? Would people spend more time thinking them through?

vaksel• 17 years ago

$1 for each Google search..it'll make them billions!

bigbang• 17 years ago

everyday...

jacquesm2• 17 years ago

Possibly, maybe they would even have time to go and build that other classified ads site to prove the people at Craigslist wrong.

The number of people that are willing to tell you how to run your business that do not run a comparable business always amazes me (and then there are the ones that don't run businesses at all...).

buugs2• 17 years ago

If Craigslist charged $1 dollar I would have a really good Idea for an ad based website.

patio11• 17 years ago

craigslistrefugees.com : For when your listing isn't worth a buck!

Advertisers: Please contact us to be put in touch with our userbase of people who take the castaway things of people who are such tightwads they wouldn't pay $1 to list. They combined the technical savvy of eBay users, the purchasing power of MySpace users, and the commercial tolerance of Slashdot users! Your CPM campaigns have never seen anything like it!

buugs2• 17 years ago

Craigslistrefugees.com: Because you don't have to pay a buck!

ajaimk• 17 years ago

In response: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=850380

TravisLS• 17 years ago

No objection to the usability assertions, but there's a huge problem with this idea that Craigslist will now always control the classifieds market no matter what they charge. This meme has caught on recently and it's time for it to die. It's not Craigslist's responsibility to provide journalism or to use their large size to extract profit and solve the world's problems.

If Craigslist charged $1, users would immediately flee to any new competing sites that only charged for job and real estate listings, just like Craigslist does now. Then Seth Godin and Joel Spolsky could complain about those sites' margins instead, and those sites could take those complaints all the way to the bank.

jerf• 17 years ago

Yeah... the fundamental cost of classified ads isn't zero, but is so close to it that anybody who tries to charge $1 will have trouble with the ones who do it for free. That's the way to think about it, really. Running classified ads for even a medium-sized city is something that quite a lot of us could toss together in a weekend, and with the correct choice of framework, we could get it to scale fairly well in another couple of weekends. There's not much challenge.

And per some conversations from a few months ago about how hard it is to replicate a full site like Stack Overflow, replicating Craigslist from a features point of view really does seem to be pretty easy. What you can't replicate overnight is the ubiquity of Craigslist; the fact that they cover the country, and that everyone, even very non-technical friends of mine, know what it is. Both of these could be overcome if Craigslist started charging too much. (Though if they stay the course I'm not sure how they could be defeated in any reasonable period of time.)

makmanalp• 17 years ago

>the fact that they cover the country, and that everyone, even very non-technical friends of mine, know what it is

That's why after you build the free version, you name it something similar, eg: freelist or joeslist. Now people get the gist of what it is just from the name, you can't be sued for copyright and you're a valid competitor.

Craigslist is undoubtedly a useful service but it's trivial to implement and the only reason to use craigslist over some competitor is because everyone else uses craigslist. If you place a barrier to entry, you lose customers unwilling to pay. If you lose customers, you lose other customers.

brazzy2• 17 years ago

If Craigslist charged $1, users would immediately flee to any new competing sites

People who post ads would, many of them. The question is whether people who read and answer ads also would, or whether the improved quality of ads would cause them to stay, making the competing sites unattractive due to the lack of an audience and finally forcing the posters to return to craigslist. This is what happened with ebay.

The question is not whether posting an ad is worth $1 to you, the question is whether having your ad read by enough people is - and for that to be true, enough people must find looking the ads on the site worth their time.

showkiller• 17 years ago

It seems of late everyone is trying to improve on something that is obviously working. ie. Craigslist

Love it or hate it, it's working for them.

Why not examine why it is working so well and take some lessons, and build better products?

henning• 17 years ago

If you have nothing to say, say it anyway.

jcw• 17 years ago

The revenue of the site would soar, which means that the people running the site could ... change the economy of an emerging nation.

I find that whenever I say things like this, people either look at me funny or laugh. I wish more people shared this kind of naive optimism.

toto• 17 years ago

Bad idea.

As a classified ad owner (2nd largest in my country), doing so would only give a chance to a newcomer.

The problem is to charge for the first penny... http://redeye.firstround.com/2007/03/the_first_penny.html

orblivion• 17 years ago

Well, sometimes friction is good, sometimes friction is bad. So let some sites have friction, and let Craigslist be Craigsilst.

misuba• 17 years ago

Craigslist does need to start charging for personals. $1 would be pretty appropriate - enough to make spam unprofitable, but not enough to drive legit users to a better deal (at least I'm not aware of any).

efsavage• 17 years ago

He's really using money as a proxy for identity/reputation/culpability. If you have something at stake, you are less likely to act like a jackass. Craigslist's propensity for scamming (and positive frictionless interaction) is because of its anonymity more than its cost.

Gilson_Silveira• 17 years ago

Well, I don't think it is a bad idea.

I'm implementing a similar idea. But the adv will cost $5,00.

CatBaby• 17 years ago

I wonder how much those spammers make per bogus listing. If it's more than what legit advertisers make per listing then charging per listing will only drive out the good guys or, at best, do nothing. If it's not, charge somewhere in the middle and, voila, problem solved.

I guess the reality is, you can only have a spamerless site when all your users are more lucrative than spammers.

Anyway, even if it would result in higher profits, CL would not be interested. Because they're not interested in driving up their profits.

If Craigslist cost $1

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