The REAL juice on Craigslist

Ok, I searched these forums for threads involving craigslist... mainly I've gotten confusion and attempts to sell various "solutions". I'm interested in using craigslist to market at least a site that I run. Maybe affiliate marketing at some point but I don't want to sell e-books nor do I want to annoy everyone on the planet with constant ads that I myself would be irritated by.

I'm looking to find methods that work and I'm willing to try (almost) any suggestions, but I've not got the cash to buy anything at this point. As of now I'll simply try posting ads and see how it goes and report everything here in this thread.

So, any tips are appreciated! Feel free to share your experience. If I find a way that works well I'll definitely share it here in the spirit of DP

 

Tips? Just post your ads, quite happy to help where I can but what exactly are you looking for? Just post an ad for whatever site you are promoting in a related section on Craigslist. Most likely will be something in the services section.

 

I'm just looking to see if the ads generate anything in terms of traffic to the site I'll be promoting.

That and testing the theory that there's a lot of money to be made on craigslist.

 

I think the best way to test this is to post some ads and see for yourself.

 

Thanks for responding Just to clarify I am planning to post ads, I started to thread first so I could report on a per attempt basis .. kind of an 'up to the minute' style. First ad will go up quite soon and we'll see how it does!

 

Ok, first 'test' posted about 12 hours ago. I visited the EZAdPost forums and learned as much as I could, even watching the videos. A little struggle since they're dealing with some software issues, but I tested 3 ads in 3 different cities.

While I significantly altered the titles, apparently I didn't save the changes to one ad so it ended up posting 2 versions instead of three, so one was disallowed from posting because CL stated it's a "duplicate". None of the ads have live links and as of right now only one ad remains live if I search for it via google.

To clarify, I'm only trying to invite people to visit one of my web-based stores so that may be why I've not seen significant traffic yet or it's a good chance my first run at good ad copy bombed. We'll see!

 

best option is to test out yourself and share on your success or failure .

 

This is the best idea Glow. Study other peoples ads and you will learn tricks that many sites charge you for.

 

you really dont need tips, just get to posting and you will learn everything you need to know.

 

A quick update. The ad's working because I got another 12 visits (each staying several minutes average) straight from a typed in web search of the site's name! :-D

Good suggestions on scoping the ads of others. I've only seen straight affiliate sales attempts thus far, though. I'm trying to find ads that merely invite the viewer to visit a site rather than try a hard sell approach.

 

I think the majority of ads on Craigslist are just affiliate or sales related.

 

creztor, you're right. I believe that's probably because it's the quickest return on the time investment required. While I've no problem with that route, I'm going for posting ads as an alternative to other advertising campaign styles that cost a great deal more.

I'll post the results of stuff tonight

 

It's a great place for traffic in general. I can see many uses of just getting people to your website, it may not be just to make a sale. If you have launched a new blog or some kind of forum or something, its a very quick and free way to just get the word out to people with similar interests. GlowStormLion would be glad to see how things are going for you traffic wise.

 

A little update... while googling my ad copy didn't turn up any results from craigslist like it did before, I'm *still* getting traffic. Since I didn't include a link, ALL of the traffic is either direct (ie, they typed the domain name into their url bar) or from a google search of the site's name! That's pretty amazing considering it's a heck of a lot of extra work you'd not think people would be willing to do.

Also, I actually got 2 e-mails to the effect of "hey this site sounds great! what's the web address?"

Small traffic at this point (20 visits) but they're actually coming... AND I have an image ad I'm going to attempt posting next. Maybe pictures will improve performance.

And creztor, thank you very much for the encouragement!

 

nice work glow. If you are getting traffic and it's from people typing it in, then that is the kind of traffic you want I'm sure whatever you are promoting will get a nice boost thanks to Craigslist.

 

Thank you! Yes, I thought it must be fairly good quality traffic, also. I'm working to make the actual landing on the site a great experience. Much more work to be done in that arena!

 

whats curious to me is this is in your sig line

"Earn valuable backlinks for your website with Qassia for NO MONEY "

but your trying to get traffic from craigslist and happy about it being just a couple dozen

???????

 

owned lol.

I am gonna try this craigslist crap out myself

 

Strange thread. Let's do some testing yourself posting some ads.

???

 

I'm doing an experiment So yes any sort of positive results works for me. I'm trying everything not only one route. I've got some PPC, backlinks from Qassia, Hubpages and article marketing traffic, as well. I put the site up only a few days ago so yes any traffic seems terrific to me at this time.

As far as testing it myself, I'm not sure if you read the messages but I'm actually testing the ads right now. lol