Week 5- Internet Business Model

It was hard to choose only one e-commerce web site and talk about what business model it uses when there’s nine others very interesting forms of Business models you want to find out more about it. Since I had to choose one, I choose Craigslist. I’ve always wonder how Craigslist makes money and maintain its website profitable. The main idea of a business model is the base strategy for how the business plans to make money. So how does Craigslist makes money since it offers free advertising? How are the owners sustaining their business? Craigslist’ uses the “Advertising Model under the online classified model” as its Internet Business Model. Craigslist has more than 20 billion page views per month.“ The advertising model works best when the volume of viewer traffic is large and highly specialized. The more focused the model on a specific segment of a large audience, the better”. Craigslist is #7 worldwide in terms of english-language page views, more than 50 million uses Craigslist in the US alone. Craigslist’ users self-publish about 50 million new classified ads each month and it receives more than 1 million new job listings each month. Also, It seems that not all posts are for free. Those that post in the job category pay a specific amount for each post. $25 for posting in the website is far less that how much it costs to post on other classified ads.