Alaska’s Not Craigslist

The Alaska online classifieds world has been divided yet again with the introduction of AlaskasList.com. According to the founders and the catch phrase on the website,

“That guy in California has his list. Now Alaskans have their own…”

I suppose the real question is do we need another classified ad service in Alaska? We already have Craigslist, local newspapers and one of my personal favorites: Oodle.com  

With the ever withering newspaper decline, I’ve often wondered why they haven’t picked up on how easy it would be to build a free online classifieds service to keep their readers coming back?  There are a few reasons why Alaska’s List could be a better option for Alaskans.

Guns!
Let’s just throw out the biggest reason that Alaskaslist.com has unique and local appeal. We love our firearms up here in Alaska. Leaving the obvious political debate aside, it’s nice to have a marketplace to list your guns for sale. There are a few other resources that I’ve used or seen where people can buy/trade and sell firearms to each other, but most are niche community sites like the Alaska 4×4 forums.

Animals
You can find pet and animal listings on most other classifieds, but according the Alaskaslist.com, Craigslist has notoriously been under attack by animal rights activists, etc.  I tend to agree with the author of the About Us where they state “The creators of this Web site know first-hand how frustrating it is to place a classified ad at Craigslist, only to have it flagged-down moments later.”

Who is behind this?
At the time of this post, I have an email out to the webmaster at Alaskaslist.com and did a little investigative digging of my own. I’ll save the final WHOIS until I’ve heard back from the site’s creator(s). The best I can do right now is guess that the founder of the site is a local in Anchorage that runs a small web design shop and currently uses GoDaddy to host the domain. 

Update: I was close. The guy behind Alaskaslist.com is a local in Chugiak (just down the road from me) who I’ve met in person a few times in the past. Mike runs a few other Alaska sites, like akweb.com which is a sort of local portal with an emphasis on Alaska weather.

In their words…

“What we promise you at AlaskasList is freedom from the anarchy that you get at Craigslist.”

My tips for the founders

• Get your RSS feed setup through Feedburner
• Make money off the traffic, even if it’s cleverly and tastefully done with *gasp* Google ads
• Offer some widgets for people to easily embed searches on their PC or own blogs
• Offer an automated “watch” feature that emails alerts when a new listing matches keywords
• Drop the fee for 365 days ads – who wants to see an ad that’s 6 months old, make them come back and update it for free
• The $1.99 fee for being featured – I dunno, okay I guess, PayPal option is nice

Will I use Alaskaslist?
Probably not. At least not in its current form. There’s a certain aesthetic and simplicity to Craigslist that makes it super functional and a more pleasing and rich experience using Oodle.com.  That being said, if the local adoption of the service picks up and they manage to keep the spam like “Yorkies for sale” out of the mix…I could be persuaded to add it to my bookmarks.