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Startups Rival Craigslist for Online Classifieds Market Share

11 points by erin_bury 14y ago

tudorw 14y ago
Cracking the on-line classifieds 'thing' has been an 'idea' since day one of the Internet, literally thousands have attempted it, getting traction seems to be the consistent issue, why do people use Craigslist, well, mainly because people are using Craigslist, certainly not because it has function X or does Y or looks hip, as a market it's worth a massive shed load of cash, one time an anecdote was that it was worth more than TV/Radio and Newspaper combined, am I showing my age...
sixQuarks 14y ago
In order to have a chance at fighting Craigslist, these services need to start hyperlocal first. There's nothing worse than going to one of these sites, entering your zip code and finding there's no listings. It's much easier to market to a small geographic area first. One great tip I heard in a Mixergy podcast came from the founder of GrubWithUs. To get started, they printed 10,000 flyers and went around stuffing them into the free daily papers in their hometown. Once you get going in a small area, then you can expand out. This is the only way to win against craigslist.
sedev 14y ago
This article seems to miss a very important point: Craigslist basically operates like a nonprofit. Anyone who wants to compete with Craigslist has to have a compelling answer to the question "how do I compete with a company that does not care about profit?" in addition to the normal questions a startup has to answer. (for the record, I think that the way Craigslist runs things is both admirable and idiosyncratic: it works very well for them, it wouldn't necessarily work well for others)
- dredmorbius 14y ago
  Craigslist cares about profit. It also realizes that sustained profitability is achieved by leaving so much money on the table that any possible competitor is going to have a really hard time covering expenses. Generating positive social goodwill isn't a bad side-effect either.
  - sedev 14y ago
    That's also a helpful way to look at it, yes. I would say that given Mr. Newmark's personal statements, "Craigslist doesn't care about profit" is an acceptable oversimplification, and is how a competitor should probably view the situation for purposes of trying to profitably compete with Craigslist.

11 points by erin_bury 14y ago

Cracking the on-line classifieds 'thing' has been an 'idea' since day one of the Internet, literally thousands have attempted it, getting traction seems to be the consistent issue, why do people use Craigslist, well, mainly because people are using Craigslist, certainly not because it has function X or does Y or looks hip, as a market it's worth a massive shed load of cash, one time an anecdote was that it was worth more than TV/Radio and Newspaper combined, am I showing my age...

sixQuarks 14y ago

In order to have a chance at fighting Craigslist, these services need to start hyperlocal first. There's nothing worse than going to one of these sites, entering your zip code and finding there's no listings. It's much easier to market to a small geographic area first. One great tip I heard in a Mixergy podcast came from the founder of GrubWithUs. To get started, they printed 10,000 flyers and went around stuffing them into the free daily papers in their hometown. Once you get going in a small area, then you can expand out. This is the only way to win against craigslist.

sedev 14y ago

This article seems to miss a very important point: Craigslist basically operates like a nonprofit. Anyone who wants to compete with Craigslist has to have a compelling answer to the question "how do I compete with a company that does not care about profit?" in addition to the normal questions a startup has to answer. (for the record, I think that the way Craigslist runs things is both admirable and idiosyncratic: it works very well for them, it wouldn't necessarily work well for others)

dredmorbius 14y ago
Craigslist cares about profit. It also realizes that sustained profitability is achieved by leaving so much money on the table that any possible competitor is going to have a really hard time covering expenses. Generating positive social goodwill isn't a bad side-effect either.
- sedev 14y ago
  That's also a helpful way to look at it, yes. I would say that given Mr. Newmark's personal statements, "Craigslist doesn't care about profit" is an acceptable oversimplification, and is how a competitor should probably view the situation for purposes of trying to profitably compete with Craigslist.