Craigslist isn't non-profit, it's a for profit business whose goal is user satisfaction, not revenue maximization. For instance, apartment listings are free everywhere except NYC. NYC landlords and brokers asked Craigslist to charge for listings, because it reduced the amount of spam and fake listings. Since users were asking to be charged, they started charging. The money from these few exceptions (like jobs in SV and a couple other markets) makes more than enough money to pay for everything else. They make something like 600-800K per employee, hardly non-profit.
Well, yes, they are not a non-profit but actually tried running the organization as a non-profit at one point. Craig Newmark mentioned that it was a bad idea but didn't explicitly give the reasons why. That's what I was alluding to. I should have been clearer, but thanks for your comment.
