Craigslist vs. Kijiji…Who Wins?

There are really only 2 competitors out there when it comes to free online classified ad’s for the most exposure. I have been using both for quite awhile now and I will explain the what the benefits of each is as well as the downfalls. Here we go…

Craigslist is the most established of the two and is is independently owned, so is not overly ad driven or does not have the annoying ‘feature ad’s’ that are on Kijiji. Craigslist also has more categories in which to target your ad’s to your prospective clients. Both Craigslist and Kijiji are Geographical meaning they are set up for specific regions and Cities so ad’s can be added to your specific area or Region. Great for the garage sale items! The downfall of Craigslist is the erotic section still available in Canada, you cannot pay for a better position, you cannot renew your ad for 48 hours (depending on how many people post in your category, your ad could be on page 4-5 in no time), and that they allow people to ‘flag’ your ad if they feel it has been mis-categorized. This just happened to me where I had actually posted business products for sale in the Business category and someone flagged them ALL! Yup, gone within minutes. Craigslist will not respond if you complain that your legitimate ads are flagged, so you have to deal with the people who have nothing else to do but flag ads. More about this when I conclude.

Kijiji on the other hand has some great features. One, it is very popular and I have had great results for selling domains. Kijiji also has a ‘hit’ count on the bottom of your ad so you can see how many people have clicked on your ad. Great for research as well as you can look at other ads or products and see what people are interested in based in ‘hits’ to the ad. Kijiji is owned by Google so it is ad driven. The good news is that it offers the poster a free ad, or the the opportunity to purchase a “position” in a category. For as little as $1.99, you can ‘bump up’ your ad on the page so it doesn’t disappear down the pages. With ad’s being a revenue stream for Google, allot of ads on one page is annoying. Kijiji allows you to delete and re-post your add at any time but the downside is you will spend time doing this frequently as it has a tenancy to drop your ad quickly due to the amount of people posting. I guess this is good for Google as they get more people to buy positions. I have been testing this lately and will post my results in a subsequent post.

Let me conclude with my personal opinion…I am loosing patience with Craigslist for their lack of concern for over zealous ‘flaggers’ who are bored and flag ads for removal, even of they are legitimate. Not sure how to fix this but it makes me not want to spend time posting ads. If Craigslist allowed paid ad’s like Kijiji, this could be eliminated. Spam is an issue with Craigslist as well and they will check your ad to make sure you do not have a live email address in your post as spammers will get you! Not an issue with Kijiji so much. So, I will lean more to Kijiji and it’s features as it is all about getting results for your efforts and so far, Kijiji win hands down

To your selling success,
Larry J Clark