If it works why change it? This might have been the thought on the minds of dot com executives back when Internet businesses were booming, and most of the Web content was free. Web sites were overflowing with advertisements of every kind and size. Now that dot com principals know better, Web ads are no longer the only path to revenue generation. Community portals, however, never seemed to have many ads to begin with, and their content stayed truer to who they served. Many of them started off as simple places for users to list announcements, local events, want ads, real estate, and mingle with other local users. Craig Newmark saw the need for San Franciscans to have a place to do all of that for free, without any annoying advertising, and ended up offering much more to his community with the creation of craigslist.

In the Beginning
craigslist began in 1995 when Newmark wanted to offer the San Francisco Bay community a list of local events. Craig's list grew up as a listserv, and members began posting events, wanted ads, and real estate for rent. "It is very hard to find a place to rent in San Francisco Bay, we try to make it easier for people to connect locally with our site, this is how it all began," says Newmark. Users listed jobs, stuff for sale, and apartments, all for free. Newmark, previously an independent contract programmer, wrote software that could automatically add email postings to the site, which became www.craigslist.org.

The site became very popular by 1997, and that's when companies began to approach Newmark wanting to post advertisements on his site. "Banner ads are annoying and pretty stupid," says Newmark. He declined the offers and decided to keep the site noncommercial. craigslist's staff, now 17, couldn't agree more with his decision, and backed Newmark up. "Everyone [the staff] gets paid without having to run the annoying ads on the site," says Newmark.

Where's the Money Coming From?
So how has Newmark supported the site and his staff? craigslist's virtual community enjoyed all of the services for free—until recently. Users could post job-related ads, housing-related ads (including parking, storage, studios, commercial); event-related ads (events/entertainment, tech events, and classes except for tickets info); personal ads (including w4w, w4m, m4w, m4m, missed connections, miscellaneous); community (activity partners, community, artists/musicians, pets, rideshare, volunteers); resumes/services (resumes, freelance services, biz ads); and sale/wanted (for sale, wanted, swap/barter/ free, tickets).

While these free postings worked for years, Newmark, however, decided to implement a new plan. He started charging recruiters and companies to post job-related ads—$75 per job, per category, excluding those posted by nonprofit organizations. The way that Newmark implemented his new plan was innovative and considerate of his audience. With craigslist users always in mind, he decided to ask members what they thought about his new idea. Newmark received positive responses, and implemented the new plan. Newmark decided to do the same with rent-related postings, garnering 1,500 favorable responses. He plans to execute this new plan in the months ahead.

"This was a good way for us to, again, connect with our members, this is the way to operate successfully in situations like these—your members come first," says Newmark.