How To Make Money on Craigslist: Simple Steps to Success on CL

Very simply – if you have a product – or you have a service to promote – you can make money on Craigslist just using your ingenuity, creativity and the strength of your offer.

If you are a skilled tradesman, a dentist, a landscaper or any similar service oriented business – you can use CL to post your ad for service for free – to a potentially huge demographic of potentially interested parties ( some

CL cities get dramatically larger pager views – obviously the bigger cities are going to have a larger populace to draw from – but I've found that some medium sized cities on the left coast performed far better than larger cities on the East coast where I live for larger affiliate offers I've worked with )

How successful you are will very simply be a function of how often you post, how aggressively you mix and match categories, and most importantly – how well you write your copy - ( and how you position your offer within the copy – ie – are you offering a free white paper on the 7 mistakes most homeowners make when installing hardwood flooring – the 4 deadly sins of teeth bleaching, etc )

My simple rule for Craigslist – and in any other marketing venture – is when in doubt, be very aggressive..:-)

So – if you are a service professional in Portland, Oregon you want to post your ad in multiple categories, re-write the ad copy so that you ad can be positioned in as many categories as possible – (ie – there is only a slender shred of copy difference between making a business offering in small business service – vs – repositioning that offer as a financial services proposition – or within the creative category, etc. )Be creative and think outside the box a little bit. You'll find most of your competition is not only in the box – they've got wall to wall carpet and are pretty comfortable in there..:-) Re-post the ads every two days - ( don't top post – or post multiple times in same category, same day – as eventually you will be deleted and draw attention to your copy, email address/account – and depending on how aggressive and who you believe – potentially even your ip address )

Reposting your Ads is simple – after 48 hours – log back in to your Craigslist account – click on the ad you want to work with ( it's green if live ) and click delete this ad. You will get a confirmation screen that the ad has been deleted – go back to your account – re-select the ad – and hit re-post..:-) One category and Captcha verification later – your ad is live and at the top of the heap once again. Spend a lot of time on your copy – using direct response principles in your CL ads is equally as important as using them in your squeeze pages, your postcards, direct mail, etc.

My standard approach for doing Craigslist work for a client who is in a service business is to make a time sensitive offer – write a great headline – offer a free report or white paper of some sort related to the topic –and send the person to an opt in form ( off CL obviously ) where you are collecting a name, fulfilling the free report or promise – and then bringing that new person into your sales funnel for follow up relationship marketing.

This works – as you would expect – very, very well.

If you have an Aweber or Auto responder account – rather than using your own email address in the ad – just plug in your Aweber list name. Then – in the ad copy – very simply state – if you are one of the first 29 people to email me/us before the clock strikes 12 on Labor Day Monday you will get a * free copy of whatever *. This will dramatically increase your response rate – which – as you already know if you are using Aweber – these people will be automatically* opting – in * to your list by virtue of emailing the aweber address to receive their free gift.

Of course they will be required to confirm their opt in as Aweber and other auto responders require confirmation on this type of subscription – but so what? Put it in the copy – right up at the top – and bottom of ad – let them know that as soon as they email you they are going to get a confirmation email for their protection ( because as we all know – you hate Spam as much as they do..;-) and once that is done – they will have their free gift automagically. Very, very simple – very, very effective.

Best way to build a list for free that I know of – and – if you are doing national or even international

Craigslist campaigns for affiliate offers or even your own products, if you aren't doing some variation of the above – you aren't optimizing your efforts.

Of course you could skip the above – and just send any prospective customer/client directly to your site where you make the offer – which is also effective. I'm a big believer in collecting names and building a list as the primary driver for any business building protocol so I'm partial to that process. But for simplicity – as long as you are testing different headlines and offers on your landing page – nothing wrong with just sending them directly to the offer page if you are more comfortable with that.

For competitive industries with high PPC prices (adwords/yahoo/msn etc) Craiglist is an absolute gift – because, as it is as they say, it's ummmmm…FREE? Rather than spending a whole boatload of cold hard coin trying your ad copy on a PPC campaign – stick it up on Craigslist and test it there.

Rotate your landing pages with different offers, different copy and keep what works best, chuck what doesn't'.

Simply put on Google Analytics ( Free ) and measure everything that you can control (everything on your side of what happens once they click through or follow up in any way on your offer)

Another thing I love to do with service related professionals is send your Craigslist visitors to a page that is nothing but testimonials — > If you are a Clown and perform a kids Birthday parties – and a parent is searching CL for birthday party entertainment – what could possibly sell your services better than a landing page – on your site – with video of a few 7 year old kids chattering on about the great time they had at Bobbies B-day thank to Cleo the Clown..:-) Or give incentives to the parents to have the kids write nice testimonials – in their own handwriting on your landing page - and test that as another alternative. Let them say it for you. No way you can tell me that wont' work – because it very simply just does.

If you are willing to learn, and experiment a little bit - Craigslist is easily one of the absolute best places to get started with direct response marketing online – and with a pretty light learning curve, you can be making serious money,very quickly – which I think is really exciting for lots of people just starting out.

Good Luck - and don't forget to ask me any questions if you have any problems!