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Sunday, December 9, 2007

How to write a good ad for craigslist posting

When you post on craigslist you need to keep a check and balance between attractive nice looking ads and ads which have high survival probability. Highly HTML decorated nice looking ads may catch more visitors but may reduce the probability of going live, at the same time.

Following are some tips for writing a good ad for posting on craigslist.org:
  1. Avoid HTML unless you are posting under the services section. Plain text ads increase the possibility of going live.
  2. Avoid hyperlink to an website. Put the domain name as text without www. or put it into an image.
  3. Titles must match corresponding category you are posting to.
  4. Avoid using a particular word/phrase (i.e. brand name, email, telephone number etc) in the titles or descriptions.
  5. If you need to receive query from visitors use anonymous email feature of craigslsit, don't insert your actual email in body of the ads.
  6. Don't use external image using HTML tag in the categories which allow image uploading. Upload the images during posting your ads in such categories.
  7. Check spelling and punctuation. A badly punctuated ad with wrong spelling can really be a nuisance and compel the visitor to flag.
  8. Short relevant descriptions works well in terms ad survival rate. So use a lot of short variations of your description instead of using a few long descriptions.
  9. Don't use too many special characters in titles.
  10. Avoid using blacklisted keywords. criagslist has a long list of blacklisted keywords for each category. For expample: "instant cash" may be a blacklisted keyword phrase for "financial services" category but not for "small biz" category. Study the posted ads under your intended category before you start writing your ads and try to identify the blacklisted keywords for that category.
I hope this will help you to write ads for craigslist which will actually be listed on craigslist's listing page.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Craigslist is planning to limit use of HTML tags in description as most of those HTML tags are used by spammers for harmful purposes, such as cloaking spam links, embedding false keywords, and overriding the flagging system.
Proposed changes are listed here

Anonymous said...

I have found just the opposite to be true. Fill in the complete url, make it clickable and you'll do better. Using HTML can be good, complete with imbedded graphics. Use your real email address.

Craiglist has been a very valuable tool for http://www.legalizeferrets.org/ and even my new start up company
http://www.panoramamarketinggroup.com/.

Anonymous said...

Very good Information provided in this post .
We do provide some kind of software that can search CL post of your interest.

http://scrappingexpert.com
Web Data Extraction Specialist

Anonymous said...

I too thought that not using html makes your ad Simple and easy. Here is a good web page that gives FREE information on unliited pictures and using the html on craigslist. Also there a few sight that offer free templates but I found that I never can adjust them to how I want my posting to apperar. I use this sight as a Great reference in My craigslist postings.
http://DeadBrokeTim.synthasite.com

Mr. Wolfe said...

I like your commentation on craigs list advertisments! Although nothing sells like integrity.

Mr. Wolfe
Network Marketing Specialist
networkmarketingpower.blogspot.com

saveras said...

Try:

http://www.entirecraigslist.com/

SEARCH THE ENTIRE CRAIGSLIST WITH ONE CLICK!!

Unknown said...

If you want a straight forward craigslist ad maker with ad performance tracking try www.slipdex.com. Free, no sign up, up to 5 images can be uploaded, it is pretty great!

Jason