The Craigslist Game

When I heard about Craigslist for the first time I immediately thought of  the possibilities of placing multiple ads. I got really excited and my initial idea (not only mine but everyone’s) of placing multiple ads in different cities kept buzzing my mind for several days until I opened my first account.

That day I got serious and and worked practically all day designing some ads to generate traffic to some of my sites.

At the end of the day, I felt really good!, My work was practically done. I read my ads over and over to correct any noticeable imperfections. After a few hours of rest, I went to my desktop and kept myself busy for a few more hours. I placed several ads but after a few, the Craigslist notification with red bold letters showed after I clicked “submit”. Well, my last ad was rejected because a similar ad was already placed. OK, it’s time of using my other email addresses I said to myself.

If I use a different email address, I will be able to placed a few ads at a time, I said. Well, I was WRONG. That’s when I knew that Craigslist identifies the IP address and the email address is not as important when placing ads. The result of doing that is that your ads get deleted once detected. You might not be able to see any difference. You get an email with the copy of your ad and the link where you can find it. If it gets deleted you don’t get notified. So, using different email addresses won’t solve the problem whatsoever.

I asked myself how some marketers get away with it. Many place hundreds of ads and none of them get deleted. Craigslist know that there are thousands of marketers who would invade the platform with all kinds of ads. I understood the philosophy behind it, but I think their policies are way too strict in my opinion.

Well that day I checked the stats of my links and I didn’t see any noticeable increase on the traffic. I knew that If I wanted to use Craigslist as a tool, the best way is to use it correctly. I don’t see anything wrong using several different email addresses, since we all have more that one (example: one for work, one for family, one for finances etc.).

Here’s what I recommend if you’d like to place several ads in Craigslist without being red flagged. (There’s no guarantee that you won’t be red flagged since Craigslist changes its scripts as well as its terms and conditions).

Use only a few email addresses.

Only place 1 ad per email address.

Don’t copy and paste the same ad.

Be creative and use different descriptions.

If you use pictures, only use one picture per email account.

In my opinion it’s better not to use pictures.

Take your time and take breaks, don’t go crazy placing too many ads.

Once the ads expire, you can repeat the process, but wait until then.

Craigslist is definitely a good classified site, but its not the only one. Use your time wisely by using other sites. Take advantage of the possibilities you can obtain by placing ads in high ranked sites that are not as strict as Craigslist.

Here’s an example of other available classified sites:

http://backpage.com

http://www.ebayclassifieds.com/

http://www.classifiedads.com/

http://www.classifiedslive.com/

http://wantedwants.com/

Make sure you get all the necessary information about the site when planing your campaign. Remember that not doing the proper research prior to taking action can result in unnecessary headaches and frustration

Success to you.

David Rodriguez

My name is David Rodriguez and I'd like to thank you for stopping at my blog. I am a network and affiliate marketer currently working on different projects including web design and offline marketing. David Rodriguez

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