Wow…was trying to post something on C/L and got hit with a $5 charge to proceed. Gotta wonder is this is sustainable for C/L and/or how long it will last?
Others have noticed as well:
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This helps to further enforce their shutdown of the “dating” section of the site in compliance with new legislation.
It will probably cut down on spam and put money in their pocket, so good for them. I think I heard Backpage is gone now so their only competition in that space would be taskrabbit I guess.
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This change mostly affects people advertising in the “gigs” or odd jobs areas, i.e. “I will come help you with housework for a day for pay” kinda stuff. I was posting looking for help with large landscaping job.
Unclear if it was related to backpage stuff…you might be right, but it seems pretty detached?
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Yeah this is totally in response to CL having to shut down the only part of their website that was previously making them money. The FOSTA act that was recently signed has spurred websites to shut down anything that could have been construed to facilitate sex trafficking, since it basically overrides a previous act that protected companies in the event that they unwittingly hosted illegal content generated by third parties. Since Craigslist only charged for postings in the Personals section, they’ve lost their only revenue stream. Gotta make it up somehow. Makes me wonder if we’ll see this trickle down to other parts of the site. Never know what revenue streams will be closed off by the law next.
And of course, this new law won’t do a damn thing to combat sex trafficking. Websites owned by foreign companies running on servers outside the US will become the new haven for those people, beyond the reach of US law and prosecutors. Just another case of a technophobic government legislating beyond their comprehension, to protect nobody at the expense of legitimate businesses on our own shores.
What happened at Backpage is despicable, but the timing of that scandal just happens to coincide with this law’s signing- it passed the house months ago and has been on the President’s desk for 3 weeks.
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This is a sign of the “maturing” of the Internet.
From Angie’s list which was a paid service early on to the many others which tried to subsidize their site from advertising or charging for the more lucrative parts of the site.
It will be interesting to see how many are willing to pay to use Facebook.
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Personals were free, the job listings were their only paid ads until now. It makes sense to me.
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The limited pay-to-use features on facebook don’t appear to have done much for them. For now, at least, keeping facebook free so they can continue to compile user data and sell analytics based on it, will be much more lucrative.
Right you are Ken. Forgot they changed that a while back. Used to be a charge in some of the personal sections. That’s a dead revenue stream now though.
When I lived in the NE (that nightmare over) craig’s List made money charging for rental listings.
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They’ve changed their charge-to-list sections over the years. The timing on this particular change feels a bit related though. Could discourage certain parties relevant to the legislation from posting on CL (since the usual section has been removed) and making the company lose their lunch. Meanwhile, they can garner some additional cashflow.
It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out though. Nobody reacts well to their advertising cost increasing.
Craigslist has a problem with spamming of services offered and gigs so they flipped to the pay to post system to reduce the issues.
You’re back!!
C/L has had that spamming problem forever…and it WAS annoying. I think someone above pegged why they probably decided to start the $5 dollar fee now.
I personally don;t really have an issue with the fee, i just think it would be better to distinguish between when someone is posting a gig (a one-time thing) vs. posting a service-for-hire (many-time thing). Time, and the market, will tell whether they have found the right solution, I guess.
Yep we came back to Texas. My wife was medically retired and we decided to make Texas our home base again.
Yah only time will tell if it will work for Craiglist.
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Bummer about the medically retired part, but welcome back!