The Boston, San Diego, Seattle, and Washington DC markets will have to pay for placement of job ads on their local Craigslist sites beginning October 22nd.
Based on the feedback we’ve heard over the last 12 months in this forum and via email, and in light of the accelerating overposting, spam, “get rich quick” schemes and other quality issues we’re seeing on the job boards for these 4 cities (surpassing what we saw in NY and LA before charging in those cities), we’ve made the decision to start charging $25 for job postings in Boston, San Diego, Seattle, and Washington DC, effective October 22, 2006
Our “Gigs” categories will of course remain free, for posting smaller projects, odd jobs, and openings for personal attendants and other domestic help.
Craigslist also charges $75 for job ads in San Francisco, and cited how historically the requirement of fees for job placements has helped in the New York and Los Angeles markets instead of being a hindrance:
Since a $25 fee was instituted in August of 2004, the absolute number of NYC and LA job ads dropped significantly, but the remaining jobs are of much higher quality, and these have more than doubled in the year since the fee took effect.
The move should help improve the quality of ads in the four new markets as it has in cities that already charge a fee for placement. It could also have the effect of pushing undesired ads onto free sites that compete with Craigslist, diminishing the perceived quality of those sites with the influx of less useful advertisements.
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David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
