Craiglist was started back in 1995 in San Francisco by a gentleman called Craig Newmark. It is now considered as one of the main sites for classified listings for just about any product or subject you choose.

There are now "community" sites in over 400 cities and countries around the world . The company has a surprisingly small number of staff so no moderation exists on their sites and this has resulted in a fair amount of criticism of the company.

Can you use Craiglist as an internet marketing strategy?

In theory yes, although it is a debateable point as to whether or not it was intended for this purpose.

This strategy is suitable for people with a limited budget and plenty of time.

The advantage is that for the most part posting and reading ads on Craiglist is free whereas the main disadvantage is that it is very easy to get your ads flagged. This is because they use ebots that scan ads for similar text and when they find one then it is automatically deleted. One way of overcoming this is to create your ads as images since the ebots cannot see text saved as an image.

I have to stress here that I have never used Craiglist personally as I am not too happy about the ethics but if you wish to consider marketing through this medium then I suggest the following method:-

You need to register for 10 free email accounts. On day one only post 10 different ads to 10 different cities On day two post another 10 different ads to another 10 other different cities. Repeat on day three. Then on day four you can repeat the above sequence.

So in effect you have 30+ advertisements rotating to different cities/countries. This overcomes the problem of only being allowed to post the same ad over a specified timescale.

I think you are beginning to realise why you need so much time for this strategy! However if you search the internet you will find people that are willing to do all this for you. For a fee of course.

It is also advisable to avoid the "normal" internet sales wordings such as "click here" "check out this" etc as this is likely to get your ad deleted.

Basically the best cities to post to are the well known U.S.A. ones such as New York, Washington etc and the best other countries are Canada, Australia and the U.K.

There are a lot of categories to choose from so obviously make sure you select the one most appropriate to your product/service.

I have heard such conflicting reports about the use of this medium. Some people think that Craiglist is the greatest thing since "sliced bread" whereas others wouldn't touch it with a "barge pole"

As I mentioned above I am not happy about using Craiglist but to be fair many others are so it's up to you.

To YOUR success

John Beaumont Internet Marketer