Backpage dot com: Best Alternative to Craigslist

Craigslist is definitely not the way it used to be. Ever noticed that when you advertise on Craigslist that you get a pile of scam mails directly afterwards? Well while backpage.com doesn’t have the name recognition that craigslist has, it also doesn’t have the scam mails! While most of the adds can be inserted free, some adds, like jobs (as with Craigslist), are paid for. Cost is far more reasonable than craigslist, though, i.e. about 40 cents for 4 days. This is an auto add posting rate which means that each day your add would automatically go to the top of the page. Ads can also be run on a monthly basis for a very low cost - up to $11.00 per month. In addition, while craigslist does not allow adds for multiple cities, backpage.com does. One excellent feature that backpage.com has that craigslist does not is that you can do a search of the entire site! The site also offers greater options for classified ads.

Demographics. Backpage.com. Advertising Your Small Business
Backpage has over three million users daily. Craigslist has sixty four million monthly users. The difference is immense. Backpage.com partners with half a dozen newspaper nationally and this may make a difference. Those that still read classified ads in newspapers are far more likely to click through to backpage.com than to craigslist. So this is a demographic that could be pretty unique to Backpage.com. I have heard from numerous small businesses that they have had a far better response from backpage.com than they have had from craigslist. This is interesting because craigslist is actually a smaller site than craigslist.

Specific Areas are Better for Backpage.com
Users of Backpage in Houston, Miami, and Phoenix do better than Craigslist users in those areas. This is despite the fact that Craigslist has an immense advantage in numbers. Nationally, backpage.com picked up on adult ads when craigslist shut that down. While some may consider this the wrong type of business, invariably the biggest market are these adult ads, and what that means is that people gravitate there. Over a period of time, they start using backpage.com for other ads, and this spurs the growth of the site. This has been happening. Backpage.com is growing.

Fewer Rules on Backpage.com
Anyone who has recently been using craigslist will know that you need a telephone for it to check that you are who you say you are. These type of rules are not yet in force on backpage.com. Also, if you place an add in the wrong section on backpage.com, it won’t be removed. On craigslist, it would be gone in two ticks. Uniquely, backpage.com has a forum that permits links in terms of advertising. What I discovered is that people will go to the forum and write an ad with a website address that acts as an ad. Can you imagine doing this on any of the craigslist forums? You post would immediately be flagged!

On a personal basis, some years ago, while in San Diego, I posted ads on both craigslist and backpage. I received far more emails from craigslist but most of them were scams. I received fewer from backpage.com but I remember thinking at the time that there weren’t that many scams, and that I actually preferred backpage.com. At this point, I use both craigslist and backpage.com