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.