13 Craigslist Statistics to Get Your Ads on Top of the List

Looking for a bike at a reasonable price? Or hunting for a job online, just like 54% of people in the US admit to doing?

Chances are, your local Craigslist site has at least 100 ads offering whatever you’re trying to find in any category you can think of. 

Take the San Francisco Bay Area, for example. Just by itself, it has six overall categories with 182 subcategories in total. And before you ask, yes, we counted them. That’s just one of the things we at Web Tribunal did to bring you this list of Craigslist statistics.

Named after its founder Craig Newmark, Craigslist is a listings website that almost everyone has heard of by this point. 

Though…have you heard of it recently?

Is it still thriving?

The answer is only a few lines below your eyes.

Craigslist Users, Visits, Finances, And Other Relevant Figures (Editor’s Choice)

• Back in 2017, 60 million people in the United States used Craigslist every month.
• Together, they accumulated more than 50 billion page visits at the time.
• As of 2022, the site receives around 250 million visits a month.
• Due to Craigslist’s digitalization of ads, newspaper classified ads sales dropped by 77% in the span of 10 years.
• Craigslist has gone global, with over 700 local sites in 70 different countries.
• Since 2007, there have been at least 85 killings somehow related to the listings website.
• Craigslist gets in around $1 billion in revenue annually.

Key Craigslist User Statistics In 2022

With 27 years in the game and still counting, to say that Craigslist has been around for a while would be an understatement.

Some predict that its ever-lasting fame will diminish soon—or rather, competitors are preying on its downfall—but how soon is “soon”?

Is Craigslist still popular today?

How many users are there?

Who are they?

Where are they from?

You’ll get to figure out all of these foggy unknowns with a few scrolls down.

1. Back in 2017, over 60 million people regularly tuned in.

(Source: Arcalea)

And even better: their accumulated activity on the website resulted in Craigslist pages recording more than 50 billion visits monthly. The figure is quite impressive—especially when you consider that all of those users and visits came solely from the US.

Back in those days, 41% of the US shoppers who loved good second-hand deals turned to Craigslist. In fact, the only ecommerce website that ranked above it was eBay, which was popular among 72% of shoppers.

2. More than 80 million ads appeared on Craigslist in November 2017.

(Source: DMR)

Yep, and one million of them were job listings. 

Honestly, the flow of website traffic was pretty heavy at the time. There were over 100 discussion forums on various topics, which accumulated over 200 million postings. Presumably, these forums played a big part in driving Craigslist’s daily user count up.

So, yeah, Craigslist certainly reminisces about its 2017 hit period, but how about some more recent data now?

3. As of 2022, Craigslist receives around 250 million visits a month.

(Source: Similar Web)

Unsurprisingly, Craigslist is doing very well on the traffic and engagement metrics. In the average visit, a user spends eight minutes of their day clicking on 11.82 pages on the site. That’s 11 different ads and, essentially, 11 potential purchases or inquiries.

Good job, Craig!

So, all in all, how many people use Craigslist nowadays?

Let’s go over data from the summer of 2022. May and July recorded around 248 million visits each. June saw a slight boost, hitting 250.4 visits, but, as you see, the numbers are pretty stable.

4. Men are Craigslist-ing the hardest in 2022.

(Source: Similar Web)

A staggering 64.5% of all website visitors were male in July 2022. This leaves the remaining 35.5% of the gender composition to women.

Now, let’s elaborate some more on Craigslist’s demographics.

The website’s visitors are mostly people who are older than 24. Specifically, people in the 25-34 age group make up exactly 24.12% of the site’s users. Almost equally interested are the early Millenials and late Gen Xers (35-44 years old), accounting for 20.45% of the traffic. 

All other age groups fall in the 13%-17% range—except for the visitors who are 65+, as they account for less than 10% of the site’s traffic.

5. To no one’s surprise, people in the US make up the largest portion of Craigslist users.

(Source: Similar Web)

Though Craigslist’s popularity has spread across the globe, let’s be real: it will never feel more at home than it does in its birth-nation, the United States. 

So, unsurprisingly, people in this country are the biggest Craigslisters, accounting for 93.53% of all users.

Now, guess who takes the honorable silver and bronze.

Of course, the US’ neighboring countries are Canada (4.71%) and Mexico (0.23%).

6. Over 450 US cities have Craigslist sites.

(Source: Brain Writings)

Back in 1995, only San Francisco had its Craigslist site. Five years later, Boston joined the network, and within months, major cities like Chicago, New York City, Seattle, and Los Angeles had hopped on the Craigstrend.

Fast forward to 2022, and the number of Craigslist sites in the United States goes above 450.

But that’s just in the US. In total, there are more than 700 local city sites in 70 different countries—at least 250 out-of-the-States cities making the most of Craigslist.

7. How come Craigslist only employs 50 people?

(Source: Business Insider)

Well, Craig Newmark himself claims to lack social skills and cut-throat business decision-making, so he likes to take it easy at the workplace. In other words, he likes to keep Craigslist’s number of employees on the low side, in accordance with Dunbar's number, to increase the chances of a healthy work environment. 

Basically, Robin Dunbar’s theory is that a person can form and maintain stable social relationships with any number of people as long as that number is under the cognitive limit. Essentially, Dunbar’s limit is 150.

Advertising On Craigslist: What You Should Know

Are you ready to switch positions from simple user to master marketer? 

Just like you can find anything imaginable on Craigslist, you can advertise anything imaginable—with the right strategy.

Here’s our advice: keep it legal. Don’t sell drugs or babies (yes, that actually happened).

We still have some pretty cool facts about the platform, but the highlight here is how to market on Craigslist like a pro.

8. 77% less newspaper classified ads sales? Blame it on Craigslist.

(Source: Business Insider)

As the ad industry modernizes, it’s only natural that less and less of the action will happen on paper. Craigslist, though, made that transition quite drastic.

Back in 2000, newspapers made $20 billion in revenue from daily ad placement on their issues. By 2012, that number had dropped to just $4.6 billion, recording a 77% decrease.

Fun fact: Craig Newmark is actually very committed to the future of the journalism industry. He’s made multi-million donations to various institutions in the field, including ProPublica and City University of New York's Graduate School of Journalism.

9. How long until a Craigslist ad shows up? 

(Source: CHRON.)

Wait 10-20 minutes, and your ad is now Craigslisted. 

And just like that, people will keep stumbling upon your offer for as long as 30 days. After that, the website will automatically delete your ad. Hopefully, you’ll have already sold your product by then, though.

Making your ad appear on Craigslist is not too expensive, either. In fact, most are totally free. As for the ones that aren’t, job listings are what would cost you the most, going as high as $75 in the US. For anything else, a fiver will suffice.

Interesting fact: Craigslist’s business strategy considers these fees as the platform’s main source of revenue. Annually, it makes about $1 billion from ad postings.

10. Sadly, you can’t repost an ad in less than 48 hours of uploading.

(Source: It Still Works)

Sorry, folks, but that’s just policy—and Craigslist is very strict about it.

To increase your chances of reaching as many people as possible, you can renew your ad every two days. This will boost it to the top of the page, but again, that can only happen every 48 hours.

Once your ad’s 30 days are up, you can post the same ad with any changes you like.

And yes, some sketchy bots are able to repost Craigslist ads daily, but we’d advise you to avoid that route. It could result in a life-long ban from the website.

11. Craigslist lets you track your ad’s performance.

(Source: Constant Contact)

Is there anything better than seeing your traffic and marketing numbers skyrocket?

Seeing how your product is doing is always incredibly important—especially on Craigslist, where anyone can post anything under the sun.

When you do your marketing on Craigslist, you can see where the most traffic is coming from. Granted, it won’t give you a granular rundown of all your leads, but it will get you the number of visits to your landing page or the number of follow-up emails you receive.

Pro Tip: Craigslist is mostly a text-based platform, so make sure your ad is grammatically correct and typo-free. People are more likely to consider your ad seriously that way.

12. Facebook is the social media platform that drives the most traffic to Craigslist.

(Source: Similar Web)

Approximately 43.6% of Craigslisters went on the website after seeing something on Facebook. The honorable second goes to YouTube, which engages 34.1% of users.

According to Craigslist statistics, Reddit (12.2%), Twitter (2.5%), and Facebook Messenger (1.8%) follow behind.

Ironically enough, Craigslist sends a fairly good amount of traffic back to social media (10.3%). However, most people go straight to their favorite email app (33.5%) after checking out the listings on the site.

13. Bots might undermine your strategy.

(Source: Jalopnik)

There’s one thing you should beware of: the bots on Craigslist.

Such software can easily flood the page with barely legible or illegitimate ads that will decrease the chances of your ad being seen. And there are tons of them.

It’s not all lost, though. Users report such ads frequently, allowing Craigslist’s team to handle them.

Still, it’s not cool to see an ad titled “I Have Over 600 Hours of Blood on the Highway” instead of your awesome offer at the top of the page.

Wrap Up

Phew, talk about a crazy space for any deal hunter!

Craigslist statistics show it’s been the top ecommerce site of its kind for decades now, affording quite a lot of visibility to the people who use it. Whether you’re looking for a job, a gig, or a new phone, Craigslist is probably a good place to start.

Just, please, be careful. You probably won’t be able to run a background check on all the people on the site but at least exercise basic caution: don’t believe everything you read, and do not share personal information online.

That said, happy Craigslisting!