This conversation occurred during a 2-hour drive on the interstate, so rather than let the question lie, I pulled out my iPhone and Googled the question. It turns out that Craigslist does indeed charge for some postings — they charge for job listings in a handful of cities, and for apartment listings in New York. That’s it.They pay their expenses, and I’m sure they make a nice profit, but surely they could make a lot more than that.

Even if all they did was place a single unobtrusive Google AdSense ad on each page, they would reap a heckuva lot of money. They could make even more with some private paid advertising, affiliate marketing, and charging for more classifieds postings. Craigslist is one of the highest-traffic sites on the entire Internet; they could be raking in the dough.

So why don’t they?

“Users haven’t expressed an interest in seeing ads,” said Jim Buckmaster, according to an article in a NY Times blog post.

When an analyst wanted to know how Craigslist planned to maximize revenues, Buckmaster replied, “That definitely is not part of the equation.”

That’s just weird. Why would you not want to make money?