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In November 2008, I wrote an article entitled “Online Classifieds: The Internet Garage Sale.” It’s related to this article, so I hope you’ll check it out as well. I consider it a prequel to this topic.

The two largest online classifieds websites on the internet are Kijiji and Craigslist. As I mentioned in my previous article regarding these sites, both of them are essentially internet versions of the typical garage sale, in which you try to find something that peaks your interest for a cheaper than normal price.

Craigslist

Advantages:

• Text-Only Website – Dial-up Internet Users will find the pages loading very quickly.
• No Advertisements – No annoying ads on the site and no ads sent to your email address.

Disadvantages:

• Bad Account Interface – No option to delete old expired ads. Lousy user interface. Old design.
• Short Expiry Date – An ad is only active for 45 days, after which you’ll need to re-post it.

Craigslist sort of represents the way the internet looked in the 1990’s – no pictures and no flashing advertisements. The main page is very organized in that all of the advertisement categories are listed, and there is a search box on the left-side of the page that can be used to look for a particular item. Due to the fact that the entire site is text-based, even dial-up internet users will think they’re on high-speed internet.

The problem with the site is in its over-simplicity. Whoever designed Craigslist put in the bare bones and nothing else. After one of your advertisements expires, you can’t delete it. In fact, when you go to write an advertisement, only basic HTML can be used to edit the font.

In a simpler time, Craigslist might’ve attracted more people. But in the 21^st century, where internet users prefer plenty of customization features, Craigslist just doesn’t make the cut.

Kijiji

Advantages:

• Professional advertisement creation form.
• Neat and colorful design. Ads are displayed in an organized manner.
• Long Expiry Date – An ad stays active for 90 days before expiring. Easy re-post link.

Disadvantages:

• Too many advertisements; eBay will even send you advertisements to your email inbox.
• The site incorporates the latest flash technology, so dial-up users might have to wait a while.
• Censored writing.
• Short ad display times on the first page of a category in a popular city.

Kijiji is a site owned by eBay, so whilst it’s free to use, eBay will take every opportunity at its disposal to try and get you to pay for additional features, such as featured ad listings, and ad space at the top of the site’s pages. In fact, eBay will actually go so far as sending you advertisement emails, such as “Make your ad stand out on the Kijiji home page! Only $19.99 a month!” Of course, unless you plan on your item selling for several hundreds of dollars or more, it’s worthless pursuing these extra costly features.

While the advertisements are a big problem, I have to commend eBay for creating such a customizable site. The form used to create ads has plenty of features, allowing you to adjust color, font and size with just the click of a button, as opposed to Craigslist, where you actually need to know HTML to do the same thing. In addition, any ads you post on the site last twice as long on Kijiji than on Craigslist – 90 days compared to 45 days, respectively. The good part is that when your Kijiji ad expires, eBay will send you an email with a convenient “re-post” link, which will re-post your ad for free.

One of my problems with Kijiji, however, is the fact that eBay has incorporated word censoring into any ads you try to post. So if in your advertisement, you use words like “post office”, “shipping”, “courier” or “insurance” (all of which are words you would normally use on eBay.com), the ad won’t be published until such words are removed. Of course, the reason why you (and I, for that matter) use such words is to attract attention to our ads from other cities. You see, even though Kijiji and Craigslist are meant to be “local classifieds”, as in you only post ads in the city or town you’re located in, you can get a much bigger number of people viewing your ad by posting it in different cities on the site. However, eBay doesn’t want you to do that. So to get around using such shipping-related words, you have to slightly modify your ad to evade the word censoring. An example would be: “S-h-i-ppi-ng will be $10.00.” Or simply don’t use the word at all, as in “Extra costs may apply if I need to send this item to you in the mail.” Yes, surprisingly, the word “mail” is allowed. I wonder how long that will last.

The last problem I have with the site is that if you post an ad in a popular city, it will only appear on the first page of that category for several minutes at best, until it gets pushed down by the ads that appear after yours. For example, after posting a computer ad in the Toronto, Canada portion of the Kijiji site, it’ll maybe get 5 seconds of display time on the first page of the Electronics category, and then it’ll get bumped down to the second page when 9 other computer ads are published several seconds after your advertisement.

The Conclusion

To summarize what I’ve stated above, Craigslist is a very bland, text-formatted, yet quick-loading classifieds website. Kijiji, on the other hand, is a very colorful and professional classifieds site, but it’s loaded with eBay affiliate advertisements. Also, keep in mind that the site was created by eBay – a company that has already made billions of dollars through their online auction site, and doesn’t need more of our hard-earned money.

Now we come to the hard part – choosing which site you, the viewers, should use. To be frank, I don’t really like either site. Craigslist is just lacking too many features for customizing your ads, while Kijiji seems to constantly pressure you into paying money for your item listing. Now, on eBay itself, there is a mandatory fee for item listings, but the good news is that as long as Craigslist stays alive, eBay cannot charge mandatory item listing fees on Kijiji, because they’d lose all of their business to their main competitor. However, the biggest problem with Craigslist right now is its popularity, which is falling rapidly due to the better overall design of Kijiji. I posted an ad on Craigslist months ago trying to sell a set of popular Pokémon games, yet I did not receive a single email about someone’s interest in purchasing them from me. I posted the same ad on Kijiji, and got 5 replies within 2 days.

So here are my final thoughts regarding the matter. Right now, Kijiji is definitely the better site, since more people visit it due to eBay’s large advertising of it, thus you’ll get more people viewing your ads and you’ll hopefully make more sales because of that reason. However, if Craigslist ever goes out of business, eBay will once again have the majority of the market on its side, and thus incorporate mandatory listing fees for Kijiji, just like they did for their auction site. Therefore, my suggestion is to use both sites on an equal basis. If you post an ad on Craigslist, copy and paste the same ad on Kijiji. You’ll get twice as many views, keep Craigslist alive, and prevent eBay from monopolizing the free classifieds market at the same time.

Overall, Kijiji is better, but it’s only because of eBay’s mass marketing of the site (which attracts million of visitors), and their use of the latest website technology to make Kijiji visually appealing. If Craigslist was revamped to look as good as Kijiji does now, it would be a real threat to eBay (who would more than likely buy Craigslist out, knowing how eBay executives operate).