Craigslist is one of the easiest ways to make money online. The free classified ads site has a huge member base that you can take advantage of. With so many potential customers at your disposal, how do you get your marketing message to the right audience at the right time? Here’s how to quickly and easily make money online using Craigslist.
Recently, I’ve been doing some marketing using the massive classified ads site. I had not given it any kind of consideration in the past as a means of making money, that is until I was in a forum observing some threads on Craigslist. A member of the forum noted that he regularly placed ads on Craigslist and turned a profit using his affiliate programs.
My experience with Craigslist has been limited in the past; I placed ads and sold some pieces of furniture on the site when I went through a breakup. I was a seller, and received lots of inquiries for my items. Even had a bidding war going on between two members for my steam cleaner! So I knew the potential for making money with the online classified site, I just never took the time to do it. Taking a few targeted ads, and placing them strategically in categories, has increased my affiliate earnings on a couple of my campaigns. This is just within the last 30 days I have begun this promotion, and so far I’ve been able to make money with my energy drink campaign, and my smoking surveys. I’m sure other products can do just as well, however, I only ran these two.
I made a lot of mistakes at first, but those mistakes enabled me to earn; here are a few tips I picked up along the way.
(the energy drink program I used)
(the energy drink program I used)First Things First:
If you don’t have a Craigslist account, sign up for one – it’s free. It’s takes a couple of seconds, and Craigslist will send you a confirmation email once your sign up is complete. Once you confirm you’re a human, and not a bot, you’re now a member and can begin posting ads. The next steps will lay the foundation for success or failure: I call it, look, lurk and learn.
Lurk:
In the beginning several of my ads were flagged and deleted. That was 100% my fault. Placing an ad in the wrong category was my sin. So here’s my advice: look and lurk around the site before you place ads. Get a feel for what others are doing. Take notice if there are too many of one type of ads in one category. Don’t place the same kind of ad there, you’ll only add to the over saturation of the section, and people will look past your ads. Instead, go to another category, there are plenty, try to match your product to the available categories. You’ll have more success this way. Because Craigslist is a free classified ad site, and the largest on the internet, the employees there do a great job of maintaining order in the categories. So take some time to get familiar with what has already been posted. Once you get the hang of it, the orders should start pouring in.
Strategize:
Once you’ve decided on a category, search your affiliate programs for a campaign that fits. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel, or your ad may end up getting flagged and deleted by Craigslist, or worse, no buyers. For example, in the Free Stuff category, I’ve had awesome success with my Free Samples campaign. Free Samples = Free Stuff; in this category people are looking for “free” anything. Another product of mine that continues to make money for me in the Free category is my energy drink offer. I didn’t start off marketing both products at the same time; it was after my free samples promotion starting making me an income did I add the energy drink offer.
(the free samples program I used)
(the free samples program I used)I recommend taking one product, create varying copy for the same product, and place that ad in different states and cities. It helps to have a roadmap for your end results, it can aid getting a better view of what’s working and what’s not.
Implement:
After you get a marketing feel for making money online with Craigslist, and you understand the community a little, go into the forum and check it out as well. There you can truly get a feel for what people are looking for. You can’t post in the forum unless you register first, it’s free as well. Once there, you should create a new user name, and just look around, don’t post yet. Often members will pose questions about what they are looking for. This is a bonus because you can take this information and incorporate it into your marketing mix. Treat the forum the way you would any other forum, don’t spam, and think about your response before you answer. Remember, you’re dealing with real live people, and they can spot a scam and spam in a heartbeat.
Frequency:
You can post to Craigslist daily. Here’s the thing though, don’t post the same ad in the same category today that you did yesterday. Change it up a little bit. And start the cycle over again, look, lurk and learn before placing another ad. Note if your ad was successful, did it reap results immediately, or did the money trickle in?
Some categories will automatically expire an ad after 7 days, others will give you 45 days. It all depends on the category and location you’ve chosen.
Once you place an ad successfully, the information header will reveal the length of time your classified ad has. If it is 7 days, you can turn a negative into a positive. Craigslist allows you to reactivate that same ad after the expiration date. This is good if you’ve had good response from a particular campaign. If the campaign hasn’t been so successful, you can delete it, or edit it to make it more effective if you choose.
When placing classified ads on Craigslist, pay attention to the competition. Normally, when I observe lots of “make money online” ads in one category, I don’t post that type of ad. Why you say? Because I believe that when a lot of salesmen gather in one place, customers run away. No one likes to be sold. Besides, your ad probably won’t be seen if everyone is screaming the same message.
Writing copy for your Craigslist Ad:
In the beginning, you created a strategy; part of a good Craigslist make money online campaign includes a message that is beneficial to the customer and adds value to their lives. So much so that they want to act upon the very offer you are presenting.
Here is where great ad copy writing comes in: Do you want your new customers to go directly to your sales page or are you trying to build up subscribers to your blog feed? Depending on your goals and motivation, you need to write your copy to reflect this.
With Craigslist, your message has to create emotion, desire and instant action. Visitors have other choices, and they won’t waste a second of their precious time on boring ads that are not beneficial to them.
I used Writer’s Friend to spark really creative ad headlines. Your headline is going to be the door that gets opened first, so it needs to be compelling. “How to win friends and influence people” has got to be the most memorable lines (as well as a successful book) in the last 10 years. This is what your headline must do, it must spark an emotion that creates the desire to want to open your ad. Once you get the customer to open the ad, you need to meet their needs, show them what’s in it for them, and end with a call to action. Unless your ad does this, you’ve just wasted your time and a good lead.
Tips:
- Don't make your ads look like ads
- Give them a local feel
- Choose the right category and section
Epilogue:
Using Craigslist is just one of the ways to make money online. Learning how to earn money from home is a skill that can be acquired. Try to find out as much as possible about a community before you engage it. Learn how to engage it, the protocol, the way things are done, what’s accepted. It’s just a matter of putting the human touch into the internet. As they say, making money online is easy, if you know how.
Posted by Teasa's Tips
