Authored by Geoff Vaughan in Make Money Online
Published on 07-03-2009
Craigslist is a popular Internet Site that founder Craig Newmark created in 1996 to locally connect people who want to sell items or services with people who want to purchase these goods or services. On average, 10 million people view Craigslist each day. The ads are posted by city or by region. Craigslist is, for the most part, a completely free way to market things. On Craigslist, you can advertise everything from furniture, jobs, services, pets, real estate, and personal ads.
Before posting anything on Craigslist, you need to understand the rules, as the site has several rules in order to avoid people spamming the users. The first rule is that you cannot post the same ad within 48 hours, and once you do, you must delete the old ad. You also should not post the same ad in more than one area. Some people are able to circumvent this by changing several things. If you plan on advertising in different cities or regions, you should have several different e-mail accounts and change the wording in your ad. Craigslist has a filter system that will detect multiple listings as spam, which will automatically delete your ad. If you do this too many times, you will eventually be banned from the site.
Another rule of Craigslist is that you can only post a variation in your ad once every 24 hours. If the ads are too similar, Craigslist will delete your ad. The way to avoid this is to change most of the ad by inserting different paragraphs and/or prices. You will be able to gauge the effectiveness of each ad by the number of e-mails and phone calls that you get when you post the information.
One of the key ways to make money on Craigslist is to properly categorize your item. Most people will only search within a specific category. If you list workout equipment in the furniture category, for example, you will miss people who are specifically looking for exercise equipment. Therefore, you need to identify what people will search for to find your item, and list it in the correct area.
You should also include a catchy title in your ad and include a photo. People will skim through ads, and will be drawn to interesting titles. Most people also want to see an actual photograph of the item before making a decision on whether or not they are interested in making a purchase. The picture is important because very few people will make the effort to call and ask for more information, or travel to someone’s home to see the item without first seeing what it looks like. Having a good picture attached to your ad is imperative in getting people to buy something.
In order to get the sale, you will need to clearly post your contact information on the ad. If the potential buyer does not know how to reach you, you will not get the sale. Most successful sellers list a cell phone number and an e-mail address. In order to make this contact information easier to see it is better to list this information apart from the description.
If you follow the site’s posting rules as well as tweak your ads to give yourself an advantage, you too can make money on Craigslist.
