Alaska’s Not Craigslist
10 Jan
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.
That is a bit odd that they would get hammered like that.
This guy launched the site after AnchorageList.com and is using our allowing firearms and pets motto. He is using the xero script and probably will try and buy some of our modifications that we have developed and add them to his site.
The creator of Alaskaslist is the person flagging EVERYBODYs livestock ads.. he has a major head problem, he is trying to ruin craigslist so you will go to his pathetic site… I hope the ATF gets involved with the guns being sold…
Sellers BEWARE of this wacko! I politely asked him to remove my email from his lists (due to a high volume of spams since listing something on Alaskaslist.com) & now he wants to sue me for harassment! I tried out his sight with an open mind, but now get 22+ spams a day after giving him my info. Just BEWARE of what you may be getting into…
I sent the Admin at Alaskalist a comment about changing post titles after submission. He replied back with a tirade of the most disgusting and ignorant comments I have ever seen. Guy is a pathetic loser. If he was on fire I wouldn’t piss on him. I will use any of the other websites locally for shopping or selling.
Mike Baker is a pompous butt-head I really think he’s a closet homo…
All messages you recieve via our contact form clearly instruct you to
forward any suspicious emails to us for analysis and possible action.
Why didn’t you ever do that.
For someone so clearly concerned about receiving SPAM, you sure don’t do
anything to stop it.
Emailing this complaint to me does nothing. However, I will suspend your
ads, so that you don’t receive any more spam.
Mike Baker
> Just asking but I do note when I post a ad with you guys I start getting
> junk mail. Whats the deal? do you guys sale off email info ?
>
> Dont like spam
____________________________________________________________
If you wanted to track down spammers, all you had to do was follow the
simple instructions in the contact form message, which instructed you to
forward the message to us. Every Contact Form message contains the
following message at the bottom…
**** IMPORTANT MESSAGE: PLEASE READ ****
“If you wish to communicate with this user, simply reply to the e-mail
address they provided above, or create a new e-mail message to the user.
“Please report any abuse of our site’s messaging system by forwarding any
suspicious e-mails to Abuse@Alaskaslist.com for analysis and possible
action.
“Please remember that we value everyone’s privacy. Therefore, we never see
or read any message sent to you by anyone using our site’s messaging
system. Nor do we have the ability to do so. Whenever a user contacts you
through our contact form, the message is automatically sent to the e-mail
address of record for your ad.
Thank you for your support.”
Had you actually followed those instruction, the spammer would have been
blocked instead of you. But you’re probably just full of bull, anyway.
Post elsewhere, Craigzombie, because you won’t be posting here anymore.
Mike Baker
> Not to sound ungrateful for your service , but I was just asking . But to
> pull my ad for asking sounds like you are selling emails or something or
> at least really gay, its your world be gay there’s other sites without
> homo administers..I have junk filters , but I still like to track down gay
> f**kers who spam.
>
>
> Good day
_______________________________________________________________
Go away, Craigzombie. A “mustt read.” I’m lmao.
> Really funny a must read !
> lol Follow the instructions ? I was not sure the spam emails were from
> your website.. your funny as hell, so you blocked my 1 out of 100 email
> addresses ? LMFAO good one! ;p
> IPs is not static so f**k off. dam your a homo.
Thanks for not having the balls to post my comments.
You and your site are sad your another HOMO of the great Net world !
Mike, comments are always welcome. Rants and name calling is uncalled for.