Craiglist Charging for Employment Ads

For the past month, Craigslist began charging $25 for help-wanted ads in 11 markets, including Sacramento. The effort is not one to raise revenues, rather, to improve the quality of the employment ads posted.

According to an article in the Sacramento Bee, The fees don't represent a change in philosophy for Craigslist, which is a for-profit corporation but styles itself as a quirky nonprofit "community." Rather, the San Francisco-based site said the fees will weed out the "duplicate and illegitimate ads" and make the remaining listings more effective.

According to the article, "Craigslist's free ads have helped fuel a massive migration of classified advertising to the Internet, a trend with enormous implications for the newspaper industry. Publishers such as The McClatchy Co. of Sacramento, which owns The Bee, have reported significant drops in classified ad revenue in the past year or so."

We'll have to watch and see if the charges reduce demand on Craigslist and if this has any impact on online job-related advertising.