Rent My Couch! – Must Love Dogs:) : craigslist tv ep 111
facebook.com Megan is strapped for cash and lists her couch for rent on craigslist. Folks soon learn that Megan already has a full house. (Copy this link to share with your friends on twitter: youtu.be )
Categories: Craigslist New Haven Tags: Couch, Craigslist, Dogs, Love, Must, Rent
Businesses & Craigslist – Lessons and Advice for Beginners
Businesses & Craigslist – Lessons and Advice for Beginners
When my wife and I started our own home business we were of course very excited and eager to get going. I was in charge of advertising and immediately started to think about where I could advertise to get the biggest bang for my buck and time. I realized early on that it was only me and my wife in this so unless I was going to go out and hire more people I needed to work with the limited resources that I had. I also didn’t want to work any more than I had to as I was now playing with my own time instead of someone else paying me to sit in a seat from 9-5 regardless how much work I was doing. Now I had the freedom to get things done faster AND have the reward of more time off for ‘good behavior.’ So with that in mind, where could we possibly get free/low cost advertising and reach a huge amount of quality people? Craigslist (CL) of course! We had used this service before to sell stuff that we didn’t want anymore, and we had also found jobs using the service as well. We even stumbled across the business that we are currently doing on CL. The stars just seemed to align on this one.
Excited to get going we immediately started to post ads on CL with reckless abandon. Ok, maybe not ‘reckless’. It was probably only about 5-10/day. We posted in areas that we were familiar with and used generally the same message and email address for each ad. Even with this limited amount of activity, it eventually got the attention of CL. Far from actually sending us any kind of notice, we found that one day, no matter what we tried, we just couldn’t post anything to Craigslist. Stunned that our biggest lead producing source had just dried up, we took to the internet to find a CL replacement, and fast! There are plenty of articles out there that can give you alternatives, but none of them seemed to drive the same amount of quality traffic our direction. Not one to easily give up, I started to research more about why CL suddenly stopped responding.
During my research, I came across several sites that gave me the idea that I wasn’t the only one that had the idea of advertising on CL. A bunch of sites offered software that claims it could post hundreds of ads on CL each day! Wow, that seemed like a lot of ads. I wasn’t interested in gaming the system, I just wanted to be able to post consistently without CL shutting me down. I would also soon find out that it was this kind of ‘spamming’ that was causing me to go through and learn how to use CL. You see CL likes different posts from different email addresses and with varied text or sometimes images. Spammers tend to post the same ad over and over in different locations. In the Job section of CL it clearly states that it doesn’t want you to post the same job in different areas as CL is first and foremost a local posting service. So, now that we know a little bit more about CL let’s discuss how you can use it to further your business while still being a good citizen about it.
So, knowing that many others were experiencing the same trouble that I was, I thought that there had to be some information out there that could help me navigate around this issue. I learned that CL had been tracking people using their IP address. The Internet Protocol (IP) Address is a specific and unique number that each internet connection requires. Not to get too complicated, but if you are on a wireless connection and using multiple computers, you still only have one IP address. This address is given to you by your Internet Service Provider (ISP). CL can read this number and track all of the posting activity that comes from that address. With this information, CL can determine when someone is ‘spamming’ the system and shuts them down. Ok, so knowing that CL shut our IP address down we needed to get a new one.
Depending on who your ISP is, this can be as simple as shutting down your internet (unplugging everything) for a couple of hours and then starting it all up again. Again, I’ll let you do some research into your own situation. In our case, turing off the modem overnight didn’t change anything. So, back to where can I get a different IP address.
Our first solution was to go to a location where we could get internet access as this would mean that it would have a different IP address. Where can you get online besides at home (or at work for the more adventurous)? Coffee shops! Yes, this was the perfect solution. Here in Seattle, coffee shops are even more ubiquitous than the normal Starbucks on every street corner that many places have experienced. Not only are there sometimes several Starbucks per block, but there are other smaller shops as well. So lots of different places for us to try.
Hmmmm, well this too worked out well for a while. Again, others had beaten us to the punch. We soon found ourselves being asked by CL to sign up for accounts. Arrrrg. Ok, by now we had spent a bunch of time, not to mention money, on coffee and trying to get CL to play nice and let us post our modest amount of ads. We were starting to question whether it was even worth all of the effort. I mean, we had started this whole thing with the idea that CL with be a great place for us to get a bunch of leads with the least amount of work. Now it was CL who was working us!
Many of you are hoping that this story has a happy ending and that I’m going to tell you how to solve all of your CL problems. Unfortunately it doesn’t. CL is still treating us like criminals and blocking our attempts to use its wonderful service. HOWEVER, we do know many people who are still having luck using CL to advertise so what I want to do is to share with you what they are doing as responsible CL posters who haven’t gotten their accounts flagged or banned.
Don’t abuse the system!
This will be a continuing theme for this article and should be a no-brainer. Don’t go into using CL thinking that it will solve all of your advertising problems. It is a great system and an outstanding way for you to get some traction with your advertising. However, it isn’t and shouldn’t be considered the one trick pony solution to your advertising. CL works best, as with any other online advertising, when it is used in conjunction with other forms of advertising. If you treat CL nicely it will provide you a steady stream of quality leads. Don’t get greedy, thinking that you will game the system and post more ads that we’ve found acceptable to CL (see below for numbers). Use it for what it provides and combine it with what you can get on other sites. You’ll eventually find that you don’t need as many leads as you initially thought.
Protect your IP Address
Remember, Craigslist can track your IP address. If you can use a proxy server or other service to block or mask your IP address, then by all means use it. We haven’t had any success doing this, but haven’t paid for IP addresses or proxy server services either. As your IP is basically your ID card to play on CL you should keep your ‘record’ as pristine as possible and don’t abuse the system.
Use multiple email addresses
CL also tracks the email address that you use, which means that even if you are using a different IP address, CL will still be able to track you if you consistently use the same email address. Be reasonable and don’t be greedy. CL is only part of a successful advertising campaign. Don’t abuse the system.
Change your ad copy and titles
If you are using an 800 number or a web address consistently in all of your ads, CL will be able to ‘read’ your ad and in combination with the above methods of tracking see what you are doing and block or ghost (the system says that your ads are posted, but they are no where to be found – you’ve been ghosted) your ads. There are a bunch of ways around this. Anything from clickable image ads (a whole different post) to just simply changing what you say each time you post. You don’t need to re-write the whole thing, just enough to make it a little different.
Delete your old ads
Another CL no no is to post the same ad multiple times in the same area. Some people (not you, of course) do this so that they stay at the top of the list. In really populated areas this can be a huge advantage as within minutes you can go from the top of the heap to the middle. Again, don’t abuse the system. Put your ads in there once and leave them for a couple days or a week. When you want to repost them, simply find the email that they sent you confirming that your ads was live and delete it. Once you have done that feel free to repost the ad.
Don’t overpost
Some people seem to get by with just a couple of ads a week, being very diligent to either post to the same areas with the same email account or keeping their CL history clean by deleting ads since they want to repost in different areas and use a large supply of email addresses or verified accounts. We haven’t ever used the verified accounts so I can’t speak to their effectiveness. However, we were having some great success with posting 5-7 ads per day and using a rotating list of email addresses. Again, we were eventually blocked, but this could be because of other posters using the same IP addresses as we were, thereby compounding the amount of posts from those IP addresses. I’m not really sure. Again, don’t abuse the system and you should be okay using just your one IP address.
So, there you have it. Our experience with CL. Hopefully this will help you get off the ground and save you a bunch of time and possibly money trying to work with CL.
Before starting his company, which he runs out of his home office, Dave Kuhl worked in online marketing for several large and small advetising agencies, specializing in paid search advertising. Before that he worked in real estate and sales. You can catch up on all that he is doing at their website www.LifesGrandAdventure.com. You can also ask him questions at info@kuhllifestyle.com.
Happy Posting!
Categories: Craigslist New Haven Tags: advice, Beginners, Businesses, Craigslist, Lessons
Should You Promote Affiliate Products on Craigslist?
Should You Promote Affiliate Products on Craigslist?
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the past ten years or haven’t been connected to the internet (yes, there still are people that have not) then you probably have heard of Craigslist. If you haven’t then this post probably isn’t very relevant anyway. But there is a vast amount of information on the net that suggests you should promote your affiliate products on Craigslist. Here’s the catch: Craigslist prohibits advertising of affiliate products on its site. So there is a real risk in disobeying these rules.
The truth is, the Craigslist team isn’t the ones that are scanning each post and banning them. It’s going to be your competitors, other affiliate marketers. If they see your post they are going to flag you for deletion. You probably will do the same to them. But get flagged enough times and your account will get suspended. I know because it happened to me. NOw, you can go ahead and create a new account.
Remember that for many of the categories you need to log in with an account. This account gets associated with your phone number so unless you have multiple phone numbers that you have access to, you really need to take care in using Craigslist if you plan on advertising your affiliate products. Craigslist verifies the account by sending a code to your telephone which you must enter in the confirmation page. Once your account is banned so is the phone number that you used to verify the account.
Now there are ways to get around this whole approach. Instead of including any kind of links, set up an autoresponder to the email that you include in the post. Then within the Craigslist post, tell them to email you with any questions or if they are interest in the product you are advertising about. Your best bet when using this approach is to present the post as an informative article (less of a sales page) to get them interested in emailing you. I would also suggest have a link that goes to an entirely informational (non sales) page about the product you are promoting. Once again, within that page including your autoresponder email.
One last technique that I find works pretty well. State in your posting at the bottom of the page the following: “Attention Craigslist Management: this post conforms to all the rules and terms of service of the site”. Just make sure that it really does before using this.
You don’t even need to go through Craigslist at all if you learn proper techniques to promote in places that allow affiliate links. Use this resource to help you get much further in your affiliate marketing endeavors.
Categories: Craigslist New Haven Tags: Affiliate, Craigslist, Products, Promote, Should
