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Disclaimer/Legal Notices
Disclaimer/Legal Notices: This product is for informational purposes and represents the views and
opinions of the author. The author makes no representations with respect to warranty of the accuracy of
the information herein or no guarantees on how much money an individual can earn from the techniques
in the program. The author does not accept any responsibilities or liabilities from the use of this
information but we do our best to provide high quality and accurate information.
Copyright © 2007 trade24-7.com
Craigslist
Blackbook
Why Craigslist?
Craiglist is the 7th most visited website in the world (Yahoo!
is currently first) and it was officially launched in 1995.
Craigslist receives close to 10 billion views per month and
has cost newspapers companies millions of dollars in loss
profit, and it’s easy to see why. Craigslist has invented an
extremely important, rare, and valuable marketplace, and it
is one of the many examples of how the online world is
changing the offline market. Another example is online toys
which put many Toys r us stores out of operation. Craigslist
is the major classified site for people looking for just about
anything, ranging from apartments to getting dates. It’s
successful because:
 Its easy to use
 Free which is always a helper
 No ads… well banner ads
 Direct communication with seller and buyer
You can post a job for free anywhere on Craigslist except in
NY, LA, and San Francisco, anywhere else is open game. To
do the postings in these areas are very reasonable and that
is because Craigslist is very supportive for non-profit causes.
Craigslist is like eBay but it offers more personal services
and also allows people to sell without listing fees. It’s also a
great place to find any local service providers that you might
need such as lawyers and accountants.
Like most populated websites it gives you the ability to try
and market your products because of the wide range of
audience there. I like to use myspace and craigslist as an
additional stream of traffic plus income every now and then
but these shouldn’t make up all of your marketing plan,
these just should be an extra free stream of traffic.
Craigslist url: http://www.craigslist.org/
Craiglist forum: http://forums.craigslist.org/
You can’t spam so make sure to read the rules before
jumping on board just like you would for any other network
online. Be creative and think of ways that you can advertise
yourself without appearing to be spamming. Craigslist has
all of the major cities and states in the US and it also has a
ton of international territories so this can be useful for
anyone. However, it does have a good deal of scammers on
there so be careful. The scams are very similar to the ones
on eBay.
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The most common scenario is if you’re selling a product,
someone from a different country will contact you paying a
much larger amount then what you requested, and will ask
you to wire back the money to their account. When you do
so you just gave them your money and won’t hear from
them again.
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Here are a list of rules and etiquette for craigslist:
http://www.craigslist.org/about/prohibited.items.html
Go here to find out more about craigslist or to address
anymore concerns you may have:
http://www.craigslist.org/about/
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You can also start your own classified community for
FREE here: http://www.northboard.net/
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Quick Search Engine Optimization trick
Since craigslist has so much traffic it is a nice & quick way to
get indexed in the search engines, usually within a day in
MSN. What you do is post a classified ad in the SF Bay area
of craigslist. Why the SF Bay area? It has the most traffic to
my knowledge and it has a very high PR ranking which is
another plus. When you make your classified ad make sure
to put your link so that the search engines can spider it
which will help you get indexed rather quickly. In order for
craigslist to read your url it must include this syntax:
http:// when posting a url because that is the only syntax
that will read links.
You should be in the MSN search engine within the next day
and should see some good things with this elementary
tactic.
Target your services in your Area
Here is an interesting story that a friend of mines used, and
he is only 20 and a personal trainer with little marketing
experience so if he can accomplish this… I’m sure you can.
What he did is he wanted to promote his personal training
services, so he simply posted a classified ad in his area
offering his services with his phone number for a free
consultation.
He used some good copywriting techniques and since he has
just finished a book (book on demand) he offered it to the
individual as a free gift and he made $1000 in less then an
hour. He also now has a steady stream of clients from
simple craigslist listings.
Here is another example,
One of my friends is a Mary Kay consultant and she has
some trouble getting a customer base, and since I had some
experience selling offline (herbal life) I gave her a good
suggestion that helped expand her customer base and can
you guess what that was? I told her to place an ad on
craigslist, and offer a free complimentary facial--but more
importantly, try to get as much referrals as possible to keep
her business growing. After that, her business had started to
expand since and never looked back. This is another
example in how you can use an online website to boost your
offline sales.
Why pay newspapers money to advertise when you could do
the same thing cheaper, and most likely get better results?
If you’re an online business owner and are thinking about
adding another additional stream of income to your business
why not try consultation? If you know what you are doing,
and charge a good price, then I’m sure there will be people
that are interested in what you have to offer.
People who are interested in your offer can contact your
through various means such as email, and phone number.
Some Simple Ideas
Say that I live in New York City and I want to start building
a reputation offline as a world class baker. You can offer free
classes or charge for them and then post your ad in
craigslist under the community section. Don’t say that you’re
not good enough to start teaching someone something. If
you can write an e-book about something then you should
be able to offer consultation for that service. Everyone has
something unique they can teach a group of people just
think to yourself:
“What is something that I like to do and is my hobby.”
You will be surprised on how many people will want to learn
from you.
The community section is located in the upper left hand
corner of craigslist, and the classes’ link is located in the
bottom right hand corner of that section as shown in figure
1.
Figure 1
Here is the link to New York cities classes and events so you
can get some ideas on what you can do to market your
services.
http://newyork.craigslist.org/cal/
http://newyork.craigslist.org/cal/#classes
If you would notice, a lot of people posted the same posts in
these categories… the more the better I suppose.
Get in Bulk and Resale on eBay
Here is a technique that I used in the past and ANYONE can
use it to make easy money on eBay. If you want to open up
your own eBay store for physical products the only problem
you may run into is having enough merchandise to sell. You
can purchase in bulk and resale each item separately to
make more profit, but how great would it be for you to get
FREE items and sell it on eBay? I will warn you, the items
will rarely be new, they will most likely be used but you can
still sell them for money on eBay, and did I mention that you
get the items to sell for completely FREE?
If you would look in your current geographic location in
craigslist you will notice that there are some free things that
people give away. You know how the saying goes don’t you?
“One man trash is another man’s treasure.”
Well, that is defiantly the case in this situation. If you are
into selling physical products you can get yourself a garage
full of free treasures to sell. Sometimes people move or
sometimes people just want to get rid of stuff from their
house that they no longer use, regardless of what the
reason is, you can target your location using craigslist and
then you can look for free items. You can then check out
eBay auctions to see if it would be worth your while to sell
these items. A good idea to use for craigslist items is to sell
them in a big box known as a “mystery box” on eBay. With
good copywriting and building suspense you can sell
mystery boxes from anywhere to 100 or a couple of
thousand dollars. Go here to check out some current
auctions that sell mystery boxes:
http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?cgiurl=http%3A%
2F%2Fcgi.ebay.com%2Fws%2F&fkr=1&from=R8&satitle=m
ystery+box&category0=
http://listings.ebay.com/Mystery-
Auctions_W0QQfrisZ2QQfromZR8QQfsooZ1QQfsopZ1QQsaca
tZ102534QQsocmdZListingItemList
The highest one I have ever seen was for five thousand, but
the individual said that it had items in there worth “ten
thousand dollars” not sure how true it was.
Figure 2
I’m telling you, you would be surprised on what people are
giving away these days, so try to seize every opportunity
you can. You can also ask people to ship the free items to
you if they are not in your region but of course that will be
an expense that comes out of your money. I would only do
this if I think I can get a really good return on my
investment and if the items are selling pretty good on eBay.
Real Estate
Believe it or not, a lot of people have had great success
selling real estate on craigslist, wait that’s how the website
was founded. One story I heard on a forum was that a man
wanted to get out of paying his rent and move somewhere
else, so he simply put his apartment on craigslist and got
several calls, and the first person purchased. No need to go
and purchase classified ads or local media in your area, just
use free craigslist, that what makes this website so unique.
This could also be a good way to sell real estate very cost
effectively. You can put up a description of the house with
some pictures and have people email you questions about it.
This way you are investing zero dollars in listing the real
estate and you can charge your local real estate agent
twenty dollars per lead or whatever amount for each
question you receive, and if it sells ask for a slice of the
commission. It is truly a win-win situation for you. It is also
a nice way to add an additional stream of income to your
business with doing very little work. The only way this can
work is to find a real estate agent who despises the
computer, you can give him a suggestion that you know how
you can help boost his business in very little time--just some
food for thought.
Figure 3
The real estate section is located under the housing category
of craigslist. To get an example of what people are doing
and how they are selling real estate I would recommend you
checking some of the classified ads out. You can also use
this method to help car dealers sell more cars if they are no
getting much business. If the car sells then just ask them for
some commission, it’s sort of like affiliate marketing in a
sense.
Market Research
A little off topic, but what I like to do is to make sure that
my idea is something that people are really interested in,
because that is the main objective with marketing, selling a
highly demand product because those are one of the very
few products that will sell without much advertising. I don’t
need a salesman to get me to purchase water because that
is something I need to survive. Anyway, you can use
craigslist to find out what people want by viewing the
“wanted” category. If you get something that is in high
demand I would highly consider tapping into that market.
Unlike in a newspaper ad you can get direct feedback from
individuals that read your ads at craigslist.
Viral Marketing
Word of mouth advertising works super great with craigslist
because if you provide a super high quality service then
buyers will casually talk about it in the forums they
frequently visit and it can spread very fast giving you some
nice buzz. However, if the opposite is true then that can hurt
your business dramatically, so when all comes to worse,
make sure to provide a high quality service.
You can also use Craigslist to outsource more locally
because some people feel more comfortable doing that, or
you can use it to promote your freelance services as well,
countless of graphic designers are on there. It’s great for the
buyer because they won’t have to pay a charge and great
for the provider because they won’t have to pay a charge for
the final fee like they would at popular freelance services
like elance for one
Affiliate Marketing
You can make some pretty good money with selling affiliate
products on craigslist and it’s a good opportunity because
not too many marketers know about this…yet. I have a
couple of checks that are in the hundreds range coming to
me from affiliate marketing and I have just recently got
started with it, I rarely took it seriously. It’s great because I
paid no money advertising the programs so it’s a good
return on my investment. What I did is post in the services
area of craigslist. This is the place you are supposed to post
your services but keep it to a minimum, no spamming. You
can repost, or copy that same message in a new city every
48 hours, or if you’re crafty you can take the time to modify
the descriptions just enough to dupe the bots and list it
under a multiple listing, the choice is up to you. You can also
set up numerous email accounts and post all of the listings
under different email address and have them forward to a
central account so it will be easier for you to handle.
It is important to have the right keywords for your proper
positioning with ads just like in a regular search engine.
Type in the keywords to see what shows up before you post
your ads and to size up your competition. If you want to
advertise your “catering services” then it is a good idea to
have the keywords “catering services” in your description.
Sounds simple but it can do wonders. Make sure that you
include enough about the product so that people have no
doubts. It is like offering a review for a product, make sure
to give enough details so the people won’t leave hungry.
Adding images help and there are no fees to upload images
so use it while you can. You can use html when listing your
ads but I will tell you from personal experience to stick to
the plain text, the html can cause a lot of complications. It is
important to know that craigslist don’t like affiliate links so
you should use an affiliate cloaking software or simply
purchase a domain name and have it redirect back to your
affiliate link.
A disadvantage of craigslist is that it’s too populated which
means that your ad will fall under the radar after a couple
hours to days. To keep your ad fresh on the first page you
can re-list it every 7 days so you can get a lot of exposure to
that affiliate site and hopefully it will generate some nice
revenue for you.
The important thing about craigslist ads is to make sure that
they are getting seen… it is very similar to any other ad
campaign. The only way you can determine this is if you
record how many times people are clicking your ad and you
can do this by making a landing page for your ad and use
your traffic analyzer program to determine how many people
visit there over how many people purchase.
Crafty Craigslist Affiliate Technique
You can sell all types of affiliate products on craigslist, and
here is another-really-crafty technique that I use to sell
affiliate products. Remember earlier when I mentioned that
you can use craigslist to research your market? Yes, you can
and a lot of times find exactly what a potential customer
wants so the only thing next for you to do is…? Sell them the
product.
Figure 4
Have you ever heard of Amazon? I’m quite sure you did, and
you can also sell various products through their affiliate
program known as Amazon Associates program. You have to
fill out an application before you can sell products, but once
you do so you will be in the mix. It is not spamming because
people are asking you for a particular service, so you just
have to be the nice person that you are and provide it to
them. Once you do that you should be racking in some easy
affiliate checks through Amazon in no time, and as again
you have invested zero dollars in advertising, just provided
them the direct text link to the item or your Amazon store.
Hope you enjoyed,
Frank Williams
www.trade24-7.com/craigslist |
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