As reported by (fellow E-Media Tidbits contributor) Peter M. Zollman in his Classified Intelligence Report, Craigslist has finally decided to institute a fee for apartment brokers who post on the New York site
as of March 1. (The company has been talking about it since November
2004.) The fee will be $10, but will not apply to private listings,
only brokers.
As Zollman notes, “The New York apartment listings on Craigslist have
become a morass.” The pure volume of free ads in the category — about
130,000 ads this week — has been a major problem. What many people do
is place duplicate ads frequently so they rise to the top. And there
are lots of scam advertisers. While the modest fee won’t eliminate
scams, he thinks that “attaching a name, address, and verified credit
card number should certainly cut down on the garbage.”
This, Zollman suggests, demonstrates that Craigslist and founder Craig Newmark
are genuine in their goals to serve the public first, make money
second. He writes: “To those who tell us Craigslist has a master plan
to make tons of money and ultimately rule the world, we point to the
NYC apartment listings issue as proof they’re wrong. After all, if the
master plan was to make tons of money, etc., the charge would have
been imposed more than a year ago.” Zollman also thinks that Craigslist
easily could charge much more, and still provide value.
The company is estimated to have had about $25 million in revenue last
year. Zollman does a conservative calculation that the NYC apartment
fees will bring Craigslist about $1.7 million in revenue a year, but
thinks it probably will be higher.
Next step: Fees for job postings in Washington, D.C., Boston, and a few
other cities. Currently, the only charges on Craigslist are to place
ads for jobs in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Otherwise,
placing ads in any category on its other 100-plus sites is free.
And while we’re on the topic of Craig, Tim Redmond writes a provocative review of Craigslist’s influence on local communities. He goes so far as to liken Craigslist entering a new city to Wal-Mart
opening a store in a new town. Just as Wal-Mart hurts local retailers
and causes some to close, Craigslist entering a new community damages
local media and can result in fewer resources for important local
reporting. He writes: “I’ve got no problem with Craig making money. He
revolutionized advertising, and that’s not entirely a bad thing. If he
wants to build an empire, that’s his right under the (warped) rules of
American capitalism. But don’t give me this community-building
bulls—.”
That’s a thought-provoking view, though I don’t buy it. Craigslist has
just done what was inevitable given the evolution of the Internet. If
not Newmark and Co., someone else would have done the same thing. It’s
up to traditional media to adapt, not waste time on “woe-is-me” griping.
