Craigslist is a fortune trove of chance for digital marketers. Every month, more than 60 million people visit Craigslist in the United States alone. The site includes an straightforward interface and a few section.

Craigslist originated from humble beginnings. The author of the website, Craig Newmark create a online mailing list of about ten friends. So that they had some place to talk about social happenings in the San Francisco zone.

The list kept on developing. Now, Craigslist started to come to a shape that has remained generally unaltered all through the twenty-year history of the site.

Today, Craigslist operates in more than 700 cities across 70 countries. The site is a popular destination to buy and sell merchandise, buy, sell and rent homes and apartments, look for a job, advertise a job, meet people and more.

Each month, over 80 million ads and one million new jobs are posted to Craigslist.

In all occasions, it’s allowed to present your promotion on Craigslist. In a couple of business sectors, Craigslist will charge a little expense for specific kinds of posts.

For example, it will cost $10 for a broker to post an apartment for rent in New York City. Or $5 for a car dealer to post an ad about a car they have for sale throughout the US.

One thing that has stayed consistent is the feeling of network that is related with Craigslist. Craigslist’s top need has been its client experience.

You may want to take a look around the help section on the Craigslist site. That page features useful information that will help you to stay in the good graces of the site when posting your ads.

Here’s a broad overview of how to get the most out of your Craigslist advertising:

Sections

To maintain order on the site, Craigslist is maintaining some parameters. At the top level, you select your location. This limits the results to ads posted in the city you select. Next, the site is broken down into the categories below.

Community

The community section of Craigslist features local information. Posts may include local news, a lost and found section, local political discussion, information about events and more.

Personals

The personals section allows CL (Craigslist) users to create personal ads in hopes of meeting new people. Personals are broken down into sections depending on the type of relationship you’re hoping to find.

Discussion Forums

Also for being an online marketplace, Craigslist also features dedicated discussion forums for over 100 topics.

Housing

The housing section is a great place to search for rental properties or to advertise a property you own. Housing features subsections for apartments and houses for rent, sublets, office properties, parking spots and more.

For Sale

Along with the housing section, the for sale section is a popular destination on Craigslist. There’s a subsection of this forum for every type of product imaginable.

Services

Like the for sale section, the services section is for businesses and tradesmen.

Jobs

By far the most popular section on Craigslist, over 1 million new jobs are posted here each month. The section is broken down by industries.

Gigs

Like the jobs section, this section of the site is for one off or short term work in your local area. This section is a great place to post about or land a freelance job.

Resumes

For those looking for a new job, you can use the resume section of Craigslist to post your cover letter / resume. 

Using Craigslist

The first thing you’ll notice when visiting Craigslist is that the site is easy to navigate and it’s very straightforward. The design has remained unchanged since the late 1990’s.

Creating An Account

You don’t have to create an account to post on Craigslist. If you have an account, you’ll be able to post your ad very and .

With an account, you’ll also be able to keep track of all your different posts and edit or remove them as necessary. Craigslist ads are usually active for between 7-45 days.

Posting To Craigslist

Like every other aspect of the site, creating a post is quite easy to do. From the homepage of the site, click “post to classifieds” in the upper left-hand corner of the page.

Next, you’ll select the section your post belongs in, and the subsection you’d like your post to appear in.

Depending on the type of post, there may be some extra fields for you to fill out.

Renewing Your Posts

The ads in each category on Craigslist are sorted by recency. As new ads are created, older ads are pushed further down the list.

To get your ad back to the top of the list again, Craigslist allows you to renew your ad. You’re able to do this once every 48 hours.

Editing Your Posts

Next to the link to renew, you’ll see options to edit or delete your ad as well. Click the edit link, and you’ll be able to make changes to any aspect of your post you’d like.

Tips For Creating An Effective Craigslist Ad

One thing that’s important to remember when using Craigslist is its popularity. Millions of people visit the site daily and thousands create posts.

It’s easy for your posts to get lost in the fold, so it’s of paramount importance that you create memorable and engaging posts on Craigslist.

If you’re interested in how to advertise on Craigslist , these tips may help.

Headline / Title

The first way to set your post apart from the thousands of other posts you’ll be competing against is with your title. Creating an engaging and information-rich headline is going to be the first step.

Keywords

The most important aspect of an effective Craigslist ad, keywords will make your ad searchable which translates to more eyes on your ad.

Unlike more advanced search engines like Google, Craigslist doesn’t use elaborate algorithms to sort the order of it’s search results.

Instead, Craigslist relies on keywords to serve relevant results.

Pictures

An important component of a successful ad in Craigslist is photos. Ads with photos will garner more engagement, period. Users on Craigslist even have the option to filter out ads without pictures.

Be Informative

Provide as much relevant information in your ad as is possible. Whether you’re trying to promote your company, sell items or hire for a job, the more information you can provide in your ad, the better off you’ll be.

Cross Promotion

If you’re placing many ads for different products or services, use your ads to promote one another. Each time you create an ad, link back to your other ads on Craigslist in the body of that ad.

You can also go back and edit your existing ads to include links to the new ads you’ve created.

Renew Your Old Posts

Every 48 hours, you’re able to renew your post and push it back up to the top of the category. Renew your posts as often as you’re allowed to so you can receive most exposure from your posts.

Keep in mind that the timestamp on your post will still show the time of the original post.

Keep It Clean

Do your part to keep Craigslist clean and useful by removing ads you’ve posted that are outdated and irrelevant.

Or, if you’re experimenting with the copy and content of the ad, delete the old versions of the ad. Many versions of the same ad appear to be spam and also affect the user experience of the site.

Be Honest

It may seem like a no-brainier, but be as honest as possible in your ads. Try to represent the products or services you’re offering as as possible.

Use Best Of Craigslist

Best of Craigslist is a section of the site that features the most popular ads on the site. Craigslist users can vote these posts into the best of section. Sometimes, you’ll see posts that are only there for humor’s sake.

While they’re good for a laugh, they aren’t especially useful for any other purpose. But, there’s also plenty of well written and clever advertisements there that can help give you creative ideas to use in your posts.

Using Craigslist For Business

Craigslist presents such a unique opportunity to grow your business because the site is free to use.

That traffic combined with the very low cost of use gives smart marketers tons of opportunity.

Using Craigslist For Service Professionals

For freelancers, Craigslist can be an valuable source for lead generation.
In the service section of Craigslist, you’ll notice subsections for almost every trade imaginable. There’s a niche for almost any skilled trade on Craigslist.

Using Craigslist For Networking

Craigslist also presents lots of opportunities to network with like-minded individuals or companies.

For those who are involved in direct sales, networking on Craigslist can be an excellent way to generate leads for new business.

Using Craigslist For Jobs

For both individuals and companies, the jobs section of Craigslist can be an invaluable tool.

People can search through the available jobs posted on Craigslist to find a position that’s well suited for their experience and skills. Each month, over a million jobs are posted to Craigslist, so there’s no shortage of employers looking for new employees.

For businesses, Craigslist provides an easy and free tool to locate talented new applicants. In some cities, Craigslist charges a small fee to post a job ad.

Using Craigslist For Real Estate

The housing section on Craigslist is one of the largest and most trafficked parts of the site. Real estate professionals have been using Craigslist as a tool to find interested renters and buyers for years.

It can also be an invaluable tool to use if you’re a homeowner looking to rent or sell a home, office, vacation home or even a parking space.

Using Craigslist For Start Up Businesses

Craigslist is an invaluable tool for startups because it allows them to develop their branding. It also helps them in marketing, and advertising at little or no cost.

As the company grows, you’ll be able to take what you’ve learned from marketing on Craigslist and apply it to other platforms.

Using Craigslist For Affiliate Marketing

Craigslist is a useful and popular way to find new affiliates for affiliate marketing programs.

While there are rules that prevent you from posting in the jobs section to find new affiliates. Although the discussion forums can be a useful place to find new affiliates for your business.

Craigslist is an amazing platform for advertising / marketing your products & services. Not only is it free to advertise there – they have plenty of unique traffic.

Use Craigslist as part of  a broad strategy to reach your audience. Don’t look it as a silver-bullet to sales, but as a place to test, refine and improve your product & messaging. Once you get that right, you can develop a process to drive sales from Craigslist.

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Do you have something to promote in craigslist? Lemme know in the comment section below.