The short answer is - I think it used to be much better. To be fair, doing marketing and obtaining new clients has always been difficult - arguably, it is more difficult than doing actual technology work. But in the past I think it was more rational and more usable.

Now, either craigslist is under ongoing attack, or they facilitate their own demise - but CL has become pretty much unusable. To begin with, any posting you make there, if it is a free posting, will be taken down for no reason. I don't know why or how that is happening. I used to be able to post my resume. Not anymore - it just gets taken down immediately. Same is true for every other type of posting. The only postings I see stick around are the ones I pay for.

Which brings me to the next point. How useful is craigslist, really? Well, here is a creeenshot of my analytics, see for yourself:

I've looked over these numbers for a few days, and they are not changing. So, you can expect half-a-thousand impressions for $5. That means roughly a $10 CPM. Not cheap, not expensive.

I am also noting that Austin seems to be twice smaller than San Antonio. Whatever they said in the news about the startup scene in Austin being vibrant, I think was a lie.

Also, a crazy number of clicks from Houston. Almost every person who looked at my ad, clicked it. It was probably not organic. I wonder what's going on in Houston. I also wonder how is houston views not any more than San Antonio views. Houston is maybe 60% larger than San Antonio.