Craigslist Buying, Selling, Site Wide Search

Once upon a time there was only one website that came to mind for the do-it-yourself seller, bargain shopper and collector. That well known e-site is slowly losing favor as changes make searching difficult for buyers and selling expensive and complicated for sellers. As a result an old site is gaining in popularity.

Craigslist.org has been around since 1995, when Craig Newmark began emailing a community events list to friends. A plain, basic site, Craigslist has with no bells and whistles, no fancy graphics, no changing fees or complicated rules. It loads quickly and is easy to navigate and best of all it’s free (with the exception of job and apartment advertisements posted in certain cities).

One noticeable difference between the simplicity of Craigslist and the complicity of eBay is the number of employees. Craigslist states that they have 25 employees. A profile for eBay lists 15,500 full time employees.

Craigslist fit’s the description of “just a venue” popularized by eBay. They aren’t trying to sell extra services, require specific payment options or limit contact between buyers and sellers. No hand holding or arm twisting here, buyers and sellers are on their own.

Evidently buyers and sellers like being left alone. Over the past year, Craigslist has seen a 56% increase in unique visitors, while eBay’s unique visitor count has decreased 11% over the same period.

Listing an item on Craigslist is a simple process and photos can be included. After registering, choose a location, prepare and submit an ad, then wait for an email with a link to the ad. Check the listing for mistakes, click publish and in approximately 15 minutes the ad will appear on the site. If changes are necessary later, simply use the link in the email to edit or delete the ad.

For the majority of locations ads will remain on the site for 45 days. The exception are posts to the Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Portland, Sacramento, San Diego, Seattle, San Francisco Bay Area and Washington, DC sites, these sites limit classifieds to 7 days and resumes and job listings to 30 days.

The one thing that limits buying and selling potential is location. Ads are listed within a specified location so if a buyer is looking for a "widget" in Baltimore and a "widget" has been listed in Chicago, the Baltimore buyer may never know a Chicago seller has the item they need.

A solution is to start a search from one of the many sites that offers site wide Craigslist searches, these include SearchAllCraigs.com, Lifehacker.com Search All Craig’s List, Craigslist-search.blogspot.com and Search Tempest. These sites are not connected to Craigslist, but they will allow users to search the entire site.