Craigslist has now made a decision that may affect quite a few small business owners. Without any prior warning, Craigslist nationwide now charges five dollars for most service advertisements. For example as a part time computer repair technician, I advertised on their platform for years.
Allegedly, beginning on March 15, 2018, Craigslist began charging five dollars per advertisement in their services section. The only niche within services that do not get charged five dollars per advertisement is the Therapeutic services. However, therapeutic services advertisements are now charged ten dollars per advertisement.
I never received an email notifying me of this change. The humans that run CraigsList.org could have and should have in my opinion, warned their existing advertisers of this change. I found out because I tried reposting a computer repair advertisement that had expired.
This change really does not effect my business as much as perhaps other small business owners. I was planning on closing my part time computer repair business later this year. This year so far most of my computer repair customer base has dried up.
Perhaps it is time to find other ways to earn income. Actually, I already have found other income avenues, but that is for another blog post. In my opinion five dollars per advertisement may or may not become productive.
You might have alot less competition to deal with. Also, your advertisement might stay up on the first page of Craigslist for your niche. What this means is possibly more customers.
If you rely on Craigslist for your sole advertisment campaign, you are a fool, in my opinion. Craiglist is full of time sharks. People will waste your time, without any empathy in the world.
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Also, you have to deal with scammers, spammers, phishers, etcetera on Craigslist. I used to advertise on Craigslist and allow people to contact me over telephone or text. What a huge mistake.
Now I only allow individuals to email me. I may test out one Craigslist advertisement in the computer services section for a few months and see if I receive any customers. One final note, there are different rules for therapeutic_services.
I think advertisments in that Craigslist section only last for just seven days. You can renew them for five dollars. When I tried to publish my expired advertisement I received a notice at the top of the page warning me I needed to pay five dollars.
Also, this notice stipulated that this advertisement would expire after thirty days. You will need a credit card in order to pay for these advertisements. Their posting fees section is pathetic.
It lists about a paragraph of information about their fees structure.