By BRAD STONE
Published: June 9, 2009
SAN FRANCISCO — As the newspaper industry and its classified advertising business wither, one company appears to be doing extraordinarily well: Craigslist.
The Internet classified ads company, which promotes its “relatively noncommercial nature” and “service mission” on its site, is projected to bring in more than $100 million in revenue this year, according to a new study from Classified Intelligence Report, a publication of AIM Group, a media and Web consultant firm in Orlando, Fla.
That is a 23 percent jump over the revenue the firm estimated for 2008 and a huge increase since 2004, when the site was projected to bring in just $9 million. “This is a down-market for just about everyone else but Craigslist,” said Jim Townsend, editorial director of AIM Group. The firm counted the number of paid ads on the site for a month and extrapolated an annual figure. It said its projections were conservative.
By contrast, classified advertising in newspapers in the United States declined by 29 percent last year, its worst drop in history, according to the Newspaper Association of America.
Craigslist, based in San Francisco, would not comment on the study. “We are a privately held company and never comment on guesses of our revenue. Nor have we ever commented on any number bandied around in the past,” said Susan MacTavish Best, a Craigslist spokeswoman.
The firm did not project profits, but Craigslist keeps its expenses low. It has just 30 employees.
Craigslist allows people and companies to post free classified online ads in 570 cities around the world. But in 18 major American cities, the company charges recruiters $25 (or in San Francisco, $75) to place a help-wanted ad. In New York, it charges real estate brokers $10 to post individual listings for apartments and houses.
Craigslist also charges for ads in its erotic services category, which the company renamed “adult services” and pledged to begin monitoring after it was pressured by state attorneys general who said the category had become a marketplace for prostitution. Craigslist said it had donated money made from that category to charity.
AIM Group projected that more than 80 percent of Craigslist revenue came from recruitment ads, with most of the remainder coming from housing ads in New York. Its most lucrative markets were New York City, on track to generate $17.7 million in 2009, and San Francisco, with $14.4 million, AIM Group said.
Mr. Townsend said the numbers belied the claims of Craig Newmark, Craigslist’s founder, and Jim Buckmaster, its chief executive, that the company was not profit-minded.
About 24 percent of Craigslist is owned by eBay. The two companies sued each other last year over corporate governance issues. The dispute is coming to trial later this month.
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