1 The Craigslist Codes Guide to Marketing, Promoting, Buying and Selling on Craigslist.org By: Renato Ferraz 2 I have been using Craigslist since 2002 and have come up with some time saving and money saving tips and easy html code and web hosting tips to marketing, promoting, buying and selling using the popular and free Craigslist.org as a tool to make money as well as find merchandise with a good old fashioned classifieds mentality in the new information age with the internet. 3 Sections: What is Craigslist? To Craigslist or to eBay? Marketing/Promoting/Selling: How placing an advertisement works Staying on top of the list: The grind Html codes and tips Image tips Web Hosting Tips Ad text tips Time saving templates Buying from Craigslist My experiences buying from Craigslist 4 What is Craigslist? In my opinion, Craigslist is the ultimate free classifieds, personals and forums that cover many subjects in many countries. It started in San Francisco and became worldwide and has been featured in many news articles and for the most part, it is free and it is no frills and it is also notably a non-profit organization. Screenshot from 2006 5 Using Craigslist or eBay? There are many pros and cons to both web sites, but the bottom line is neither can be ignored and best used together. First off, Craigslist for the most part is free, and in major cities with high volumes of ads, they charge a very small fee for employers putting up job ads in some cities as well as some real estate or housing ads, but otherwise everything else is free and eBay charges all kinds of fees. Another difference is eBay is strictly bidding, buying and selling while Craigslist is classifieds, personals and forums and is mostly free. Now eBay does however make it much easier to deal with logistics issues like shipping and payment but in retrospect can be utilized for Craigslist business such as using services such as paypal. Also with Craigslist you have very simplified options to deal with which makes it quick and easy. Another thing is with eBay, there seems to be more sense of trust with all the filtering they do and Craigslist has some more risk involved in certain situations. But truth be told, Craigslist can simply be another outlet and used together with eBay to redirect potential customers to the eBay site or your own site for that matter. 6 How placing an advertisement works: Thankfully it is quite simple when just dealing with plain text. 4 simple fields – Posting title, price, specific location and posting description and for posting services it has all fields except the price. The only time it is complicated for the inexperienced is when you want to put html code or host your own pictures and have them appear in the ads. 7 First off, you want to find your target state and once you get to that homepage before you post your ad and sometimes for certain states, depending on the city, for example New York City has multiple locations. 8 *below is a sample of New York Choices (2006) 9 Once you get to the target city, go to “post to classifieds” link 10 From there go to the section you want to sell or promote in 11 Choose a sub category (I chose - for sale/wanted) 12 Once you get to main screen, it is simple and self explanatory: From this point you have the options of uploading up to four images that will be resized automatically whether you like it or not and when you’re done and you continue to the next screen, it is the terms and agreement. And once you get to the end a screen lets you know an email has been sent to you and that email should instantly arrive in your email box, the link to publish the ad will be in the email, be sure to look in your junk mail folder because sometimes it is flagged with certain email services, also, be sure to keep the emails, a good idea is creating a folder in your email just for your ads and creating accounts on Craigslist itself saves some time as well. 13 More points to remember is you can edit your ad any time after you post it through the email they sent you, but the clock is running from the moment you officially post it. I also want to point out the FAQ’s are extremely helpful, I highly recommend using them for most general info. They actually do help you and are strait forward. 14 The strategy and tips: Staying on top of the list: Basically the goal is to keep your ad on the top of the ad list, when someone goes to the section you posted in, you want your ad to be among the first they see at the top of the list always, doesn’t have to be at the tip top but somewhere in the top ten or five is recommended. If you lose your spot on the top of the ad list, delete it and repost it, how many times you ask?, as many as it takes and depending on how hungry you are to make money, it is tedious work but my tips should smooth out the ruffness for you and not for nothing, sitting in front of a PC compared to manual labor isn’t all that bad, or go American style and hire someone to do it for you. Posting multiple ads obviously gets more exposure, but you cannot post a similar ad or identical ad with the same email address or in other words if you try to post the same ad in twice in the same city, the system will not let you and flag your ads or block your ads so there are a few choices: 15 Creating multiple email accounts and a good tip with creating multiple emails is you can point multiple emails to the same email box with most major email providers, this is easy if you host your own domain as well. But having different email addresses does not matter if your trying to post every ad exactly the same (copy and paste), Another part of the way to avoid getting flagged and jog your creativity is to create multiple ads that get the same message across with different words, this is important with the titles and descriptions, they pretty much cannot match, sometimes you can switch up the words though (different sequence), including html codes, if the ads or more important the text are to close or identical, the system will still flag you, and do not fret over this work, all it does is make better at marketing and promoting, keeps your mind moving. 16 Some more good tips to keep yourself organized is you can create multiple ad templates in a notepad program or email client with notes, so you can simply copy and paste the your ads or ads codes as well as your multiple email addresses and you can turn on the auto fill in your browser to make that easier as well and again, creating a folder just for your ads email in your email client is a good idea, unfortunately you cannot create folders with Google gmail but the search function works fine as well. 17 Html codes and tips: Although you can post plain text and get results you can also put html code into your ad posts, which is a great feature and it enables you to put links and images on the pages sometimes you may run into system flags on more complicated codes for anti spam and non support reasons, which is good, but for the most part you can make it look more like a web page instead of plain text. If you have some time on your hands you can go to html code tutorial internet sites or you can simply search for that phrase in a search engine because there is wealth of information on it. In the template section you will see some samples of how keeping it simple is effective and quick to maintain. 18 Below are the guidelines from the site as 2006: Can I add HTML tags or URLs in my posting? Traditional processing, no HTML: If you include a URL in the text, make sure you also include the http:// in front of the URL or our system will not recognize it, and will not make it an active link. You can use HTML in the posting body If you want, you can use HTML sparingly. We don't try to wrap HTML around your URLs if we see HTML tags including ,

,

. We just pass through your HTML unchanged. Please use only the HTML you'd use in the of a document, no or anything like that. We can't support JavaScript, applets, Flash, or other embedded non-HTML content. * Note: If you use HTML in any part of your posting you must use it throughout the entire body of your posting. 19 Image Tips: It has been in my experience that hi quality images are the most eye catching but when you add text to the mix it can lose some quality with programs like MS paint, if you are good with a photo editing software then by all means make it as professional looking as possible. Using .JPG or .GIF files is usually first choice and I would also recommend using .PNG format because it has small file sizes and loads different than the other formats. There is nothing wrong with using the simple image upload option Craigslist offers but remember it resizes your images like it or not and if you think not uploading an image is OK if you are hosting your own images in the ad, think again, because strategy comes into play, when your ad title appears on the list, there is a small indicator in orange that reads pic and simply means the ad has images to offer and if you host the pictures yourself without uploading at least one image, there is no indicator there are pictures in the ad and most people look at the ads with pictures first. Another thing to remember is that if you plan to post multiple ads it is also a good 20 idea to upload multiple copies of the picture you are going to be using for your posts and give them different names for example: Pic1.jpg, Pic2.jpg, Pic3.jpg, Pic4.jpg Below was taken from the Craigslist FAQ Can I add a picture to my posting? In some categories, you will be offered the option to Add Images to your posting during the posting process. Additionally, you can do that using the HTML tag, but the picture must already be on a site someplace. There are many free web hosting sites on the internet where you can upload your picture, just type in "free web hosting" into your search engine. Make sure that the site allows you to link to their site from another. If it's on a site, say on www.craigslist.org, in a directory called /about/teamPix, and named homer.gif, you'd code: 21 Web Hosting Tips: This section is no brainer for the web savvy people who have a website of their own and it is also great for inexperienced people as well. I have come to like geocities.com the best for a free website provider if a catchy .com address doesn’t matter to you and if you don’t have skills or time to design your own website they have good tools for any skill level. In the html section I took a snapshot of the web site and used it as the image for the ad post and it linked to my website which was geocities hosted site at the time and I also realized that it is also a good place to host your pictures even if you don’t have a website there, you can simply upload them and put them on the URL of the image source. Now for hosting your own domain I have a couple of good recommendations, doteasy.com starts at $25 a year but it has its limits and to me the best site to go with is bluehost.com for a little less than $100 a year and a great package that includes some great features. These websites did not pay 22 me to mention them but they are good from my own experience. There are plenty of options out there when it to web hosting and it certainly adds more spark to your marketing. Don’t forget, if you use eBay to sell merchandise, you can simply make your Craigslist ad link to it. 23 Ad text tips: If you plan to do plain text ads there is a few things you should remember, keep it simple and put the most important information first. Putting your phone number on the ad gets much more results than just email, and the anonymous email feature leads to distrust. But it is very important to at least upload a picture simply to have the indicator on the side of your post title on the list cause most people go for those first. Offering paypal is also a good idea if you want to deal with non local sales through shipping, but I highly recommend it as a backup if you provide services such as tech support. 24 Time Saving Template: Here is a sample template I used for my PC support business that in fact for the first couple of months was the source of 100% of my income using Craigslist. Below is a simple picture and link, which is a snap shot of a webpage and once posted on Craigslist, the entire picture is an active link to my website that opens in a separate window. In this template you can replace my web addresses between the quotes with your own, the first tag is the link and the second tag is the image source. 25 *Below is the screen shot of the ad which had an appearance of a webpage, when in fact it is a picture that is a link when you hover over it with the mouse. 26 Buying Tips In my opinion the most trustable ads are those that have a phone number. Non anonymous emails I would go for before anonymous but some people will try it all. I highly recommend going local and meeting the seller or buyer in person when you do business. Dealing with out of state purchasing can be frustrating and there are plenty of scams out there. 27 My experiences using Craigslist First Purchase: My first purchase was an mp3 player, it was brand new 256MB flash drive player with a built in recorder and headphones (that sucked which he warned me) for $20 and I still have it and it works fine. I called the guy during my lunch break at work and met him the next day during lunch at his address and I purchased it right from him at his front door (in NYC) and I must say I was totally satisfied and still am. I also spent $4 dollars on the subway round trip, so all together I spent $24 dollars. Thankfully it was a positive experience. Second Purchase: My Second Purchase from Craigslist was a nice used Burton snowboard with bindings and boots (my size!) for $85 and with that the ad poster had his number there, I called him and he explained he would be near my neighborhood and I arranged to meet him near a business to look at the snowboard with committing to buying it and met him 28 and took a good look at the snowboard and decided it was worth it and purchased it cash on the spot. Third Transaction: The first Ad I ever put up was in the free section, I gave away a 1987 Buick skylark I had purchased two weeks prior for $300 and the engine died on me and it cost too much to fix, I did not want it parked in front my moms house so I posted it free and took the loss. I got a bunch of responses and I chose the single working mother who worked. Her father came with a flatbed and thanked me many times. Felt good. My PC Support Business: The first month I posted ads I got about 12 calls and went on 7 jobs and one particular job turned out to be a nice payoff and the rest were small jobs, and since then every month is different and of course it was not my main source of income, but my side business, because I was a employed full time. I have found other ways to promote as well and Craigslist certainly has its part for me. 29 Real Estate / Mortgage: I was once a loan officer for a while and I was able to find telemarketers, assistants as well as post ads for potential new business. At that point is when I was posting ads in several states and looking to do a lot of business over the phone. I have found real estate agents have had great success using Craigslist for residential properties as well as apartments. 30 I would like to thank Craig for making such an awesome site! You Rock! 31 Notes 32 Notes 33 Notes 34 Notes