Advertising on Craigslist is certainly affordable. In fact, there is no charge for most postings on Craigslist. Craigslist started as a nonprofit organization, but in 1999 it was converted into a non-profit organization. However, operating costs are supported by charging nominal fees for help wanted ads placed on San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York Craigslist site. In addition, there are brokerage fees for apartment listings in New York.
The vast majority of these ads ad on craigslist one of more than 300 web sites are not paying a fee to do so. This definitely makes posting advertisements on Craigslist to be useful from a financial point of view. While advertisements are free care must be taken to bring these advertisements judiciously because although there are financial losses, the misallocation can cause loss of time and resources if it leads to poor profit potential .
Why Craigslist is Free
Although the founder of Craigslist, Craig Newmark, was approached in 1997 about the possibility of broadcast advertising banner on craigslist for a profit, he decided to keep Craigslist as a noncommercial site. Even after Craigslist was converted to a for-profit marketing organization did not seep into the site. The points in the mission statement demonstrate why Craigslist has remained noncommercial craigslist:
* Giving each other a break, getting the word out about everyday things in the real world
* Restoration of the human voice to the Internet, in a humane, non-commercial environment
* Keep things simple, common sense, down-to-earth, honest, very real
* Provide an alternative to impersonal, big-media sites
* Being inclusive, giving voice to the disenfranchised, democratizing ...
* Being a collection of communities with the same spirit, not a monolithic entity
Advertising on Craigslist vs. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is another type of marketing that allows owners of many companies find to be both interesting and affordable. For many, the appeal of affiliate marketing is the affiliates are not compensated for their efforts unless the business owner sees some type of gain from advertising. This gain may be in the form of website traffic in the case of pay per click marketing, in the form of sales in pay per sale marketing or in the form of potential customers when a user performs a specific action such as registering with a website or signing up for an offer.
While affiliate marketing is very appealing there are others who prefer advertising on Craigslist. The advantages Craigslist offers to advertisers is, of course, the advertisers never pay for their advertising business and the community gets a lot of website traffic already so traffic to the site is not a concern.
Why Free is not always better
However, there are specific instances where free advertising is not the best form of advertising available. Consider a product or service for which Craigslist does not have an appropriate category. In this case, advertising on Craigslist may not be useful because even if the advertising is free, it is not likely to receive attention of the target audience. In this case, advertising on Craigslist may be a waste of resources.
Another example of a case where Craigslist may not be an option of advertising is great when the market is already saturated with ads from competitors. In this case, it may be difficult to influence customer loyalty so that it could be more profitable to pay for advertising in a market less cluttered.
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