Posts Tagged advertisements
Answering Advertisements on Craigslist
Craigslist is an online community which has a great deal to offer to both individuals and business owners. Some of the features on Craigslist include sections for community events, activities and news, personals advertisements, discussion forums, housing opportunities, for sale items, services offered, small business advertisements, jobs and resumes. While some of these sections such as the discussion forum and parts of the community section exist exclusively for the purpose of exchanging information or ideas, other sections such as the personals, housing, sale, services, job and resume sections provide the opportunity for users to respond to advertisements for more information or to make a purchase. In these cases uses should exercise caution. This article will focus on specific precautions which should be taken when answering advertisements in the personals, housing and jobs sections of Craigslist.
Answering Personals Advertisements
The personals section of Craigslist can be a great place for individuals to meet platonic friends or potential romantic partners. However, it can also be a location for predators to prey on unsuspecting victims who do not realize the threat of danger which may exist with meeting online partners in person.
One of the simplest ways to avoid potentially harmful situations is to never agreeing to meet someone in a desolate location. Initial meetings should take place in busy, public locations to minimize the potential for danger. Predators are much less likely to attempt to harm you in a public location. Additionally, it is wise to not travel to a secluded location with someone you don’t know until you are positive they do not intend to do you any harm.
Precautions should also be taken to avoid giving out personal information such as your address to those you meet online. The Internet affords a certain degree of anonymousness and some unscrupulous individuals can take advantage of this to mask their true identity.
Answering Housing Advertisements
The housing advertisements on Craigslist offer opportunities for those who are seeking housing situations such as rental of a housing location, roommate opportunities, sublets or house swaps. Care should be taken in all of these opportunities to ensure the person you are working with does not have any ill intentions towards you. This can be done by carefully screening all potential roommates or others who might be using your house or apartment.
When selecting a potential roommate it is important to verify the individual is trustworthy and able to pay the rent. It is also important to seek out an individual with living habits similar to your own to avoid the potential for conflict.
Answering Job Advertisements
Craigslist is an excellent location for finding exciting new career opportunities. There are many different job advertisements in a variety of different categories. These job opportunities include full time, part time, telecommute and contract positions. The downside to answering job advertisements on Craigslist is the advertisements are often placed anonymously. Those who place the advertisements are given the opportunity to either use their own email address for candidates to respond or to have candidates respond through an email address generated by Craigslist. Therefore, candidates do not always know who has placed the advertisements. For this reason care should be taken when responding to these advertisements to avoid supplying specific contact information. Candidates are instead urged to supply only an email address when responding to advertisements.
Tags: advertisements, community, craiglist, information, online, opportunitiesAffordable Advertising on Craigslist
The advertising on Craigslist is certainly affordable. In fact there is no fee for the majority of posts made on Craigslist. Craigslist began as a non-profit organization but in 1999 it was converted to a for profit organization. However, operating costs are supported by charging nominal fees for help wanted advertisements placed on the San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York City Craigslist websites. Additionally, there is a fee for brokerage apartment listings in New York City.
The vast majority of those posting advertisements on any of the Craigslist over 300 websites are not paying a fee to do so. This definitely makes posting advertisements on Craigslist to be worthwhile from a financial standpoint. While the advertisements are free care should be taken to post these advertisements judiciously because although there is financial loss, poor posting can result in a loss of time and resources if it leads to poor profit potential.
Why Craigslist is Free
Although the founder of Craigslist, Craig Newmark, was approached in 1997 about the possibility of running banner advertisements on Craigslist to generate a profit, he made the decision to keep Craigslist as a noncommercial website. Even after Craigslist was converted to a for profit organization commercialization did not infiltrate the website. The points listed in the Craigslist mission statement demonstrate why Craigslist has remained noncommercial:
* Giving each other a break, getting the word out about everyday, real-world stuff
* Restoring the human voice to the Internet, in a humane, non-commercial environment
* Keeping things simple, common-sense, down-to-earth, honest, very real
* Providing an alternative to impersonal, big-media sites
* Being inclusive, giving a voice to the disenfranchised, democratizing…
* Being a collection of communities with similar spirit, not a single monolithic entity
Advertising on Craigslist vs. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is another type of marketing which many business owners find to be both worthwhile and affordable. For many the appeal of affiliate marketing is the affiliates are not compensated for their efforts unless the business owner sees some type of gain from the advertising. This gain may be in the form of website traffic in the case of pay per click marketing, in the form of sales in pay per sale marketing or in the form of potential leads when a website visitor performs a specific action such as registering with a website or signing up for an offer.
While affiliate marketing is very appealing there are others who prefer advertising on Craigslist. The advantages Craigslist offers to advertisers is, of course, that the advertisers never pay for their business advertisements and the community receives a great deal of website traffic already so driving traffic to the website is not a concern.
Why Free Is Not Always Better
However, there are some specific instances where free advertising is not the best type of advertising available. Consider a product or service for which Craigslist does not have an appropriate category. In this case advertising on Craigslist may not be worthwhile because although the advertisement is free, it is also not likely to receive a great deal of attention from members of the target audience. In this case, advertising on Craigslist may be a waste of resources.
Another example of an instance when Craigslist may not be a great advertising option is when the market is already saturated with competitors’ advertisements. In this case it can be difficult to sway customer loyalty so it might be more worthwhile to pay for advertising in a less crowded market.
Tags: advertisements, advertising, affiliate, craiglist, financial, marketingAdvertising on 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
Tags: advertisements, advertising, business, craiglist