Make that "a thousand and one" cuts

Ah, the good news just keeps on a-comin'.  Via Rand Simberg we discover where a few more tens of millions of missing dollars that hemorrhaged from newspapers' coffers have turned up.

Well, of course it was on the web, but I meant, like, where on the web.  And it's another little startup with a handful of employees, a good attitude, and a great idea.  And one more thing:  Craigness¹.

It’s been called the scourge of newspaper classified advertising. Kryptonite for newspapers. One publisher compares it to “Sherman marching through Georgia.”

“It” is Craigslist, the enormously popular Web site that offers community-specific free classified ads and discussion forums to millions of people in more than 190 cities worldwide, including Sacramento. Since it arrived in the River City five years ago, usage of Craigslist has spread like a California wildfire. In fact, with 70 million page views per month, Sacramento Craigslist ranks 10th in usage out of the 190 cities and grew by 300 percent in the last year, strictly on word of mouth alone.

Headquartered in San Francisco, the stripped-down Web site eschews banner, text and pop-up ads as well as any attempts at self-promotion. Operated by just 18 employees, the company earns an estimated $10 million in annual revenue by collecting below-market rates for employment ads in just three locales: the Bay Area, Los Angeles and New York City. It has steadfastly refused to charge for the vast majority of the classifieds on the Web site, forgoing millions of dollars in income.

Not grabbing for every possible dollar?  Imagine that!  And wouldn't this be, like, price-ungouging or something?  Gotta be something illegal in there somewhere...

Now, some newspapers, including both SN&R and The Sacramento Bee, are fighting back, offering their own versions of free online classified ads.

Sigh...behind the curve again, guys.  You're not gonna keep the presses running that way.

Meanwhile, the founder of Craigslist is hinting that he may enter the online journalism business.

Did I chuckle already?  Permit me another one—discreet, of course.

How this all will play out remains unclear, but one thing is certain: The news business is about to get very interesting.

About?  What do you mean, about to get interesting?  It's already entertaining me just fine, thanks.

And do I care that this sort of business is what's really hurting the papers financially, far more than the blogosphere?  Not a bit.  Maybe it's an unselfish thing, not caring who gets the credit as long as the job gets done, but I suspect I'd be just as happy regardless.  It's certainly not like they're not digging their own graves too, you know, albeit seemingly unawares—I suppose they think they're digging nice, safe bunkers to protect them from the nasty business practices of upstarts like Craigslist.

This is getting funner by the day.

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¹Craigness, n.—

You get the feeling that battling scam artists and ensuring stray cats are fed hold equal importance to Newmark, 52, a self-proclaimed nerd who swears he really did wear pocket protectors in high school. Thickset with a bald pate, spectacles and a neatly trimmed goatee, he exudes sincerity. He appears to be that rarity in business, the nice guy who’s finished first.

This congeniality--call it Craigness--permeates the company he founded in 1995 as a bulletin board for techies. The appearance of the site has changed little since its inception, with rows and columns of blue text on a light gray background, no graphics, no text ads, no banner ads and no pop-up ads. It’s simple and easy to get around on. From the very beginning, users have been given a remarkable say in how the site is run. The noncommercial style has inspired fierce loyalty among users, and Craigslist now receives 3 billion page views per month, ranking it among the top 20 sites on the Internet.

Comments

[Phoenix]

"Craigslist now receives 3 billion page views per month, ranking it among the top 20 sites on the Internet."

Just out of curiosity and awe, what other sites are on this Top 20 ? Wow. 3 Billion page views a month ??

[Obi-Wan]

Daily Kos gets almost 800,000 visits (not page views) per day, so this guy is getting probably something less than 100 times the traffic Kos gets, which, while it's at the top of the blogosphere, is probably well below the really popular websites. Yes, that's pretty awesome traffic.

And I'd like to know what those top 20 are, too, although I know Yahoo is #1. I tried searching for them with not much luck.

[Phoenix]

Oops. I was thinking blogs. Not sites like Yahoo. I can easily find that in the TTLB system check thing. Instapundit is number one, Michelle Malkin number two.... that's all I remember for now.

Isn't it the number of page views that make your blog move up? Or is it the number of links? Number of hits can't count as so many are just Google hits.

[Obi-Wan]

In the ecosystem you're ranked by how much others link to you, in which Instapundit is #1 (Yours Truly managed a ranking of #2129 today). But Bear also keeps a list based on traffic alone in which Instapundit is #4—Kos is #1 that way. And as far as I know, a visitor referred by Google counts in that list as well as any other.