Recently in the Warrior forum there was a thread called "Craig's List is Impossible!". Craig's List Marketing is tough, but not impossible. I have lived in San francisco for more than 10 years and I have seen Craig's List this site grow from a quirky site run by a guy to keep in contact with his friends, to the internet giant it is today.
Craig's List is definitely tricky because of certain principles they have maintained. You see, in spite of every other major Internet site selling out in one way or another to large corporations, Craig List has not done so, not at all. There are not even ad sense ads there. Think of how much revenue Craig's List could generate just by adding ad sense.
No, Craig list maintains a community feel. The only revenue comes from business ads in the largest markets. This community feel is the reason Craig's list is able to flourish. Understanding these reasons will also allow you to understand the concepts behind how to approach your relationship with them. Internet marketers are used to slash and burn approaches and "Black Hat" methods when approaching such giants. There is no need for this relative to Craig's List.
There are three main reasons why people's ads get flagged or they decide to abandon a Craig's List marketing strategy for their business. Those reasons are:
Flagged by the Community - You post an ad and some busybody with nothing better to do decides to flag it, right? -- WRONG!! - You do not know what you are doing, that is the problem.
Flagged by the Craig's List Staff, resulting in a mass deletion of ads - Someone at Craig's List decides to delete all of your ads for some reason, right? -- WRONG? - It is nothing personal -- it is their 'bot deleting you because of certain flags in your ad or rules you have violated.
Duplicate content filters preventing you from posting the same ad time and again - At this point you realize how much time and effort it will take to write ad after ad to slide in under the duplicate content filters, only to have them flagged by either the staff (bot) or community, leaving you to conclude, Craigs List is impossible!-- right? -- WRONG
There is a way to create ads very quickly that will: a) Slide under the duplicate content filtersb) Not set off the alarms with the Craig's list 'bot or c) Get flagged by the Craig's list community.
If you discover these secrets you will you have a free flood of targeted visitors to your website whenever you want them. If not, you will keep having to grovel at the feet of Google, MSN and Yahoo.
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