Understanding Craigslist

Advertising on Craigslist is worthwhile for just about any business offering products or services. Whether these products are offered through ecommerce websites or physical stores, the business owners can see financial gains through advertising on Craigslist. Firstly unlike other advertising opportunities there is very little risk involved in posting on Craigslist.

With the exception of job postings and housing postings in specific markets, advertising is free on Craigslist. Users are asked to agree to the terms of service of the community and are expected to follow specific guidelines when posting advertisements but there are no financial obligations to those placing advertisements on Craigslist. This means those who post advertisements do not have to be concerned with whether or not the advertisement they place will meet their expectations in terms of sales generated.

Reaching Potential Customers on Craigslist

Another reason why posting advertisements for products or services on Craigslist is so worthwhile is the likelihood of reaching a large audience of potential customers. A review of the Craigslist fact sheet reveals pertinent information regarding the amount of traffic the website receives. According to this information Craigslist receives approximately four billion page views each month with ten million people using Craigslist each month. From these statistics it is clear that advertisements placed on Craiglist are likely to receive at least some attention from potential clients.

With so many visitors using Craigslist each month the advertising possibilities are limitless, however, there are no guarantee any of these visitors will be interested in your products or services. Like any marketing campaign, your advertisements on Craigslist must be intriguing, informative and in a location where you will reach your target audience.

Finding Your Target Audience on Craigslist

We’ve already discussed the number of visitors using Craigslist each month but the key to taking advantage of these numbers is to target your advertising in a way aimed at reaching your target audience as opposed to a wide audience of individuals who have no specific interest in your products or services. It is much more worthwhile to reach a small audience of those with a keen interest in your products or services than to reach a much larger audience of those who are not interested. Those who have an interest in your products or services are your target audience.

The key to reaching your target audience on Craigslist is placing your advertisement in the most appropriate locations. Craigslist has a specific section for businesses to advertise their services. This section is broken down into a number of categories. Those who are in the business of computer repair would be wise to place their advertisement in the computer section as opposed to the automotive section because individuals looking for computer help will naturally migrate to the computer section. It may sometimes be appropriate to place an advertisement in more than one section. This is acceptable as long as it does not cross the line to spamming the section.

If there is not a specific section for the products or services offered by your business there are a couple of options. Business owners can place an advertisement in the section for small business advertisements where it might be found by those doing a search in this section. Alternately the business owner can contact Craigslist to suggest the addition of a new category. They might be willing to oblige if they believe this category warrants an addition.

The Difference between Advertising and Spamming

Advertising on Craigslist is one thing but spamming is quite another. Placing an advertisement in an appropriate section of Craigslist is acceptable; however, placing the same advertisement in nearly every section of Craigslist websites for a number of different geographical regions is considered spam. Spam is ineffective for a number of reasons.

First of all potential customers who see a particular advertisement in a number of different locations are likely to recognize the spamming techniques and be less inclined to patronize this business. Also, if Craigslist detects the practice of spamming they may delete all of the postings and could potentially ban advertisements from the individual in the future.

On or about October 24, 2009 Craigslist made changes to their login and phone verification system. This new change is causing people who already have Craigslist verified accounts to re-verify them. It is not just the housing section of Craigslist that is affected, it is all sections.

The housing section of Craigslist is loaded with scammers and many of them are making thousands of dollars a day scamming people who are unaware that they’re being scammed. Although Craigslist makes great effort to post warnings on just about every page on the site including emails from potential scammers, people are still getting taken advantage.

For instance, right here where I live on the news recently there was a story about three families who were scammed out of almost $10,000 on one rental property. What the scammers do is find a listing on Craigslist that is a genuine listing w/ photo and they copy it, then they place a new ad with a lower price a price that seems too good to be true. This causes people to act fast and they take the scammers bait. In this case that’s exactly what the scammer did. He was so good that he convinced these three families that he was out of the country on business. He asked that they wire the money to him and all three families did.

And then come move-in day, three families show up with their moving trucks and belongings. Some of these families had traveled halfway across the country to relocate to this residence. What they were in for next shocked them. The house was already rented by the owner and the new tenant who was living there went to answer the door just to hear, what are you doing living in my house? By the end of the day three families were out over $10000, they had no place to stay, they had movers and moving trucks that had all of their belongings. Talk about pain!

I didn’t hear exactly how the remainder of the story went because the TV news only has so much time to tell a story, but I can only imagine the grief these families went through after that.

This is one of the many reasons why Craigslist has revamped their entire system. They did it for security reasons but at the same time locked out millions of people worldwide who actually make a living on there. I don’t think Craigslist realizes how many legitimate people were making a living on Craigslist, but all I can say is there’s a lot of people stressing out about this according to my blog traffic. I am experiencing heavy international traffic to my website so this is definitely a worldwide issue.

There are other places where you can make money online including housing, and one of them is to consider writing articles about the rentals or sales of housing in your area or the values of living in the area where you are renting or selling. In those articles you use specific keywords that you would actually use if you were searching on Google for the housing that you’re actually trying to rent or sell.

Using specific keywords to target Google search is called SEO, also known as search engine optimization.
One of the beauties about writing articles and then placing them on free article websites is that you are able to place a link from you, the author, to your website or blog. If you are a good writer and are writing on a genuine topic that informs the reader you build trust in them . If they like what they read they will click that link and visit your blog or website. Then they can see if you are a valuable source of information and have more to offer them..

Before they even arrive at your website you have already shown them your credibility so making a sale or scheduling an appointment is easy. Housing video’s are very popular and if you can drag someone from your article to your website or blog so they view your videos then you have a great chance of making a sale, rental or lease.

And don’t forget this, articles live online forever so if you did a good job, it will keep sending you customers over and over again. If one article that you wrote in under 45 minutes rented or sold one or two properties a year would you consider 45 minutes a good investment for the return that an article can give you? Imagine what 500 articles online could do for business! Remember that in housing people are always moving in and out of areas and 90% don’t use Craigslist for information. They want credible information from a local source. Tell a nice story about the history of a neighborhood and its strong points, schools, historic places and make a believer out of them. Include your photo in the article and they will think you’re their best friend and they can’t wait to meet you. An article is a salesperson that works 24/7 and costs you absolutely nothing.

Don’t have time to write an article? I have article writers who will write full time on any subject and will do all the research. All I do is post the article to the internet and insert my business link into it. How much do I pay per article? $4 each, YES $4 EACH! I outsource to a guy in the Philippines. He is a member of Wealthy Affiliate where I also belong. Wealthy Affiliate is the only place on the internet with an International community of internet marketers who freely share the ways they make money. The job bank there can help anyone out from building a website, writing articles, logo work, and much more. Many Wealthy Affiliate members actually produce their own member tutorials for members to learn from.

I don’t know about you but when someone that earns $375,000.00 a year as an article marketer produces free videos for Wealthy Affiliate members to watch and learn from, you bet your sweet Fort Knox that I will watch each one of those video’s a dozen times or more over and over again.

Craigslist.org, originally a San Francisco community electronic newsletter, is now one of the most visited English language Web sites, with local classifieds for more than 450 cities worldwide. The site’s main function is to host classified ads that cover practically every category you can think of, including housing, job postings, items for sale, services and personals. There’s also a forums section that allows users to discuss topics on everything from gardening to the Linux operating system.

Craigslist’s founder Craig Newmark and CEO Jim Buckmaster aim to provide users with a helpful, noncommercial way to connect with other people in their communities [source: New York Times]. Posting for most classifieds categories on craigslist is free, and it’s also free to browse and respond to ads. The Web site doesn’t have any flashy animation or graphics — its value comes from its utilitarian design and the contributions of its users.

If all you want to do is browse the site, you can just visit craigslist.org and click away. The site has a range of broad categories, and each category has several subcategories, making it easy to navigate to the appropriate section quickly. For example, the “for sale” category features subcategories like computer, books, electronics, sporting, motorcycles and collectibles, among others.

Most ads include the member’s e-mail address. Craigslist offers a function that masks e-mail so that members don’t have to worry about their address being openly available. All transactions are between the person who posted the ad and the person responding to it. Craigslist’s employees don’t get involved in any transactions or discussions unless someone reports a problem.

If you want to participate in forum discussions or post your own classifieds, you need to create a craigslist account. The only thing you need to become a member is a valid e-mail address. The signup process is short and painless — after entering your e-mail and filling in a verification word (which helps prevent programs called bots from creating accounts to post ads automatically), you’ll receive an e-mail that includes a link you’ll need to click on to verify your account and log in. Once you’ve done that, you’ve officially joined the craigslist community.

Craigslist users act like the site’s watchdogs by monitoring the content that gets posted. Users flag posts to draw attention to those that are particularly interesting and those that detract from the site. The tags that can be applied to posts are best of craigslist (a funny or effective post), miscategorized (a post placed in the wrong section of the site), spam/overpost (a generic post or one that has been posted multiple times) and prohibited (a post that directly violates the site’s terms of use).

In this article, we’ll look at craigslist’s impact on the Internet, the corporate structure of the company and some of the controversies involving the Web site.

Craigslist can be a very valuable online community for those who are looking for a variety of options including jobs, products, services, personal connections or housing opportunities. Users of this community can find all of the above listed opportunities and can also meet others and network or discuss important issues. However, because Craigslist is an online community there is always the opportunity for scammers and predators to be lurking on Craigslist.

Craigslist has approximately four billion page views per month and approximately ten million visitors each month. The majority of these visitors likely have no harmful intentions but there is a small percentage, as on any online community, who may be seeking to harm others either physically or financially. There are, however, a number of very worthwhile reasons to use the Craigslist community for finding more information on career possibilities, meeting platonic friends or romantic partners or purchasing products or services. This article will take a look at why Craigslist is so useful but will also offer sage advice on how to protect yourself while using Craigslist.

Why Choose Craigslist for Online Searches

Many might wonder why Craigslist is so appealing. While there are other websites which focus exclusively on job searches, product purchases or meeting potential platonic friends or partners, Craigslist is unique in that it provides one convenient location for all of these types of searches and more. Craigslist might have started as a small operation focusing exclusively on the events going on in the San Francisco Bay Area but has since mushroomed into a much larger community with websites specific to different geographic regions.

The different websites focusing on specific geographic regions makes Craigslist an excellent resource because the users can communicate with those in their area directly instead of having to search through a larger database to find information on people, products and events in their area.

How to Protect Yourself on Craigslist

Craigslist is not anymore dangerous than other online communities. As with an Internet gathering place, the biggest problem is the ease in which individuals can disguise themselves and trick others into believing they are trustworthy when they are not. This applies both to individuals who seek to physically harm others as well as those who have intentions to scam others out of money or tangible items.

One of the best ways to protect yourself on Craigslist, or any online community, is to safeguard your personal information. This means information such as credit card numbers, bank account numbers, social security numbers and other similar numbers should not be given out unless the individual is positive who will be receiving the information and that it is being transmitted over a secure server. This is important because this information can be used for identity theft or other fraudulent purposes.

Care should also be taken to avoid giving out personal information such as full name, address and phone number. This is especially important because such information could be used by someone with malicious intent to locate an individual. While name, address and phone number are obvious pieces of information which should be safeguarded, it is important to note other pieces of information could be used to find a person. For example a person can be identified and located by supplying seemingly harmless information such as a first name, where high school was attended and year of graduation. Determined criminals can use this information to deduce the last name of the person which could lead to finding their address and using this information to harm or harass the individual.