Craigslist Beginner Basics

Registering on Craigslist:

If you go to Craigslist’s main webpage: (https://phoenix.Craigslist.org/) at the beginning you will see columns of different counties in the US. After scrolling down you also see other countries. After choosing your location you can now see the main Craigslist categories menu. You will notice now that the URL address starts with the name of your location.

Now you can save this link into your bookmarks for faster access if you like. You don’t need an account to browse classified ads on Craigslist. Once you find what you are looking for you can either reply to an ad using Craigslist’s “reply” button, manually copy specified email addresses and reply to it or contact by using information in the ad.

You don’t need a Craigslist account. Simply click “post to classifieds” choose the category and follow all the steps for creating an ad. Craigslist will then link to the email that you specified. After clicking the link, your ad will go “live.” But by posting this way, you can’t take advantage of many useful features such as “renewing” an expired ad and also saving all your posts in one account where you can access them to copy to new ads etc. Therefore, create a Craigslist account if you want to get ahead.

Creating an account:

From your local Craigslist website locate and click “My Account” right bellow “post to classifieds“. (Don’t forget to read the warning) and you will see the “Account Log In” form. Click “Sign up for an account.” Next, type in your email address and verification code. Check your inbox for the message from Craigslist with a link. Just as it states, after clicking the link you will be asked to create a password. Click “Return to your account” and you will see Craigslist’s “Terms of Use” (“TOU”). After clicking “I Accept” you will see your account’s control panel.

At this point your registration is almost complete. To finish it, you need to create two ads. Don’t work too hard on creating these first ads. Although they will go live, you can treat them as part of the registration process. Locate and click on the “new posting” tab next to “your postings” and “account settings” at the top of the control panel. The following pages are self-explanatory. Choose the city where you will be selling your service/product and where you are physically located. Choose a category and subcategory that you want to post in. Create your ad’s title and description. Add photos. After reviewing your ad, click the “Publish” button. Even though you’ve just verified your email, Craigslist will ask you to do it one more time. To the email address that you’ve used to create your account a link will be sent. After clicking the link your ad will be published.

Once the first ad is ready, proceed to creating your second ad. You can’t just copy your first ad’s title and posting descriptions – Craigslist won’t let you. You have to make that second ad unique. You can advertise the same offer but use different wording in the title and description. Follow the same steps for creating an ad. After clicking the “Publish” button you will see the phone verification message.

Our app CraigsAccounts manages an unlimited number of Craigslist accounts from your browser, and the features are built right into the Craigslist login page for convenience (figure 2.1) . Every time you login with CraigsAccounts, it removes all existing Craigslist cookies, and loads new ones. You don’t even need to turn it on, it just does this automatically as long as that app is active. Select any saved account from the drop-down menu and login and switch between different accounts in seconds, import account lists with passwords, export as well.

Phone Verification:

Many internet services use phone verification to increase users’ protection and security. This is also another way in how Craigslist fights with spammers who open dozens of accounts and spam Craigslist day and night. A verified account with an attached phone number is called – Phone Verified Account (PVA). One phone number might be connected to only one Craigslist account. Since 99% of people have only two phone numbers, mobile and home, the majority of Craigslist users won’t try to create dozens of accounts. Only those of you who realize how many people on Craigslist want to buy something will go an extra mile and set up more accounts. Back in the old days you could create as many Craigslist accounts as you wanted. All you needed were new email addresses. But those times are over. Read about phone verification and what you can do to create as many free PVA’s as you like like the old days in the Ghostbusters members tutorials.

• phone number from outside the U.S. or Canada
• pre-paid mobile number
• toll-free number (area codes 800, 877)
• some Voice over IP (VOIP) phone numbers (including Cricket, MetroPCS)

Here is more guidance from Craigslist:

If you enter the wrong phone number, press “try again” after five minutes and enter the correct number.

• You may only try to call a phone number once every five minutes. You may only enter the code five times.
• You may only try three phone numbers per account every twelve hours.
• You may only receive three calls per account every twelve hours.

Shortly after entering your number, you will receive an automated phone call or text message (SMS) that contains an authorization code. Although Craigslist politely asks you about what option you would prefer – a text or a phone call, it is reported that sometimes it doesn’t happen as you were planning. When choosing a text you will get a call, when choosing a call you might get a text. That is another protection measure from Craigslist. Enter this code on the next page of the process. Your account will become Phone Verified (PVA) and your registration will be complete.

Control Panel:

Take a look at your new control panel. After successfully completing your registration, you will have two ads. Let me show you how your control panel might look like after following the instructions herein and starting your active new Craigslist life. At the top of the page locate 5 tabs: “your postings”, “new

posting”, “account settings”, “billing/accounting”, and “drafts.” Right now the “your postings” tab is open and it shows all the ads that have been posted from this account. In figure 4.1 you can see nicely arranged tables that have columns named: Status, Manage, Posting, Posted In, Posted Date and ID. Each of the columns gives you a piece of valuable information. Also, you can see that ads are highlighted in different colors – pink, green, purple and blue. The status of the ad correlates with its color: ad is deleted by Craigslist – pink, ad is deleted by you- blue, ad is active – green, ad is expired – purple. When you post an ad, it will be “active”/ green. The “Manage” section of an active ad will give options of “edit” “delete” and “renew.” The “delete” option removes an ad from Craigslist but keeps it in your control panel in case you decide to repost it. If you created an ad and deleted it, within 48 hours only, will you be able to un-delete your ad (put it back on Craigslist). Craigslist will politely notify you of your ads eligibility for reposting as is depicted in figure 4.2.

An additional “renew” option will appear in a couple of days after your ad has been posted. That function was introduced in spring 2013 and is amazingly helpful. It puts your ad back at the top of your category without you creating a new ad. Put your ad back on top with the “Renew” button when having a Craigslist campaign and posting every day. Read more about the renewing function in the Ghostbusters members tutorial on Posting. This specific function allows us to keep a copy of all of our ads in Craigslist, and use a simple reposter such as CraigsPoster Pro to automatically renew all the ads in up to 10 accounts at once. Since this “renew” function appeared, all of the full Craigslist auto posters are useless. They continue to exist by convincing people that their method is the most opportunistic.

This attracts opportunists of the non critical thinking kind (aka greedy fools). Think about it, why should you constantly upload all of your ads into their convoluted database and then constantly change them, and then get them to repost them for you? They still cannot repost deleted ads, they must spam more and get deleted more. This makes about as much sense as using a hand gun to fire at the trigger of a different rifle that is pointed at your target. This whole auto poster scenario reminds me of the Myth of Sisyphus. Instead of trying to shoot at the trigger of the rifle, just put away the hand gun, and automate the rifle, or in the case of the ak47, just switch to rapid fire.

Some people don’t get it. It is easy to con greedy people into believing that solutions must be so convoluted to bear successful results. Just use Craigslist’s database, and follow the rules in our Ghostbusters members area. I cannot get into the specifics of what makes a good reposter and what does not, because what’s under the hood is strictly proprietary. I can tell you that your ads should be strong, and it should handle a minimum of 10 accounts, hint hint. We made our CraigsPoster Pro for us, to play by our rules, because there wasn’t one single other one out there that was anything more than just a junk gimmick to take people’s money.

If you ignore Craigslist’sTOU or use junk gimmicky software (https://www.Craigslist.org/about/terms.of.use) when posting on Craigslist, your ad might be banned (“deleted”) and will turn from a green to red color in your control panel. The deletion is usually done through “flagging” by Craigslist’s users,Craigslist’s staff or Craigslist’s automated spam-bot systems. Every Craigslist ad has a “Flag” function. (Read more about “Flagging” – https://www.Craigslist.org/about/ | https://www.Craigslist.org/about/help/flags_and_community_moderation | and also http://www.craigsflaggerpro.com).

Obviously, one person flagging a post won’t usually remove the ad. A post needs to be flagged an unspecified number of times before it is automatically removed from the system. Craigslist developers for implemented this technology to mitigate the so called “flag” wars between Craigslist users. Similar to DDOS attacks that some Craigslist website sections might experience, a “flag” war requires an organized group of people pursuing the same goal – to remove a targeted ad, or our CraigsFlagger Pro. We cover this topic deeper in the Ghostbusters members tutorial by explaining exactly the specifics of how it’s done and teaching you how you can have direct influence over whether an ad stays or goes with our Craigslist flagger software. Here is a YouTube video we made to demonstrate what can be done by a Craigslist master with our tutorials. If you can manage to avoid these flagger wars, you will get more out of Craigslist by being nice and polite with its community. Once deleted by Craigslist your ad won’t show any options in the “Manage” section. Whereas an active ad allows you to “edit” and “delete”, you can’t do anything with a deleted ad. This way Craigslist makes sure that you won’t “renew” or “repost” an unqualified ad.

The life-span of your ad depends on what category you’ve posted it under. Here is information provided by Craigslist. As you can see by the images, ads posted in 19 major cities stay active shorter than in less populated areas. Don’t forget that your ad can stay active for an even shorter period of time if Craigslist (or somebody) considered it inappropriate and “flagged” it.

Once expired your ad will be colored purple on your control panel. An expired ad has an amazing “repost” feature that allows you to repost the same ad again as we mentioned earlier, you can automate this task if you are tired of keeping track of all of that with CraigsPoster Pro. Some of you have multiple accounts with huge numbers of ads coming up on a daily and even hourly basis. CraigsPoster Pro never sleeps, the moment your ad is again available to renew, the program puts your ad right back on top. You can also set a timer for CraigsPoster Pro to schedule when you want it to work, and how many posts to renew in each account per cycle.

How to Search Craigslist Like a Pro:

If simple keywords don’t find what you are looking for, here are some advanced features to try. Phrase Search. You can use quotation marks to search for a phrase: “low miles.” That will find posts that contain the term ‘low’ followed by ‘miles.’ Excluding Terms (filtering). To specify one or more words you’d like to exclude, use a minus sign to negate them: honda black -red. That will look for postings that contain ‘honda’ and ‘black’ but not ‘red.’ Note that a search must contain one non-excluded term. “OR” Searches. By default, every term in your search must match unless it is excluded with the minus sign. You can specify a list of terms that you want to find one or more of (instead of ALL of them) using a “pipe” character ‘|’ like this: honda | toyota. That query
looks for postings that contain ‘honda’ or ‘toyota’ (or both). Grouping. Finally, you can group terms together in parenthesis when queries are complicated: red (toyota | honda) -2000 -2001. That query tries to find all listings that contain ‘red’ and either ‘honda’ or ‘toyota’ (or both) but do not contain 2000 or 2001. Wildcards.

You can perform a wildcard search using a prefix of at least two characters followed by an asterisk. You may use several wildcard terms in the same search query. The following examples are valid wildcard searches: hond* civ*; hardwood floo*; ipa*. The first search would match “honda civic”, “honda civil”, and so on. The second search would match “hardwood floors”, “hardwood flooring”, and so on. The last search would match “ipad”, “ipads”, and so on. Please keep in mind that you need at least two characters (numbers or letters) before the asterisk and you may not follow the asterisk by any other characters. Posting ID. If someone has given you the Posting ID (10 digit number), you can use that number in the search box to find the posting as long as you are searching within the posting’s same location and category.

About Craigslist Forums:

Craigslist also has “discussion forums”. Why is there a forum on a classifieds website? That’s where Craigslist’s community hangs out. There are two types of people who visit Craigslist. First one just needs to sell/buy something used or find/rent out an apartment. They go on Craigslist only when they need something. They rarely go to the “community” section, or the “discussion forums.”

Representatives of the Craigslist community are the second type. They visit Craigslist more often without any specific goal, they just like doing that. They are the opposite of the first type of visitors and spend more time surfing the “community”, “forums” and “gigs” section. Such people might read certain Craigslist categories on a daily basis. If you learned how to spam Craigslist by bypassing its automatic ghosting feature (Ghosting Tutorial – Ghostbusters members), you will never be able to bypass Craigslist’s community that will manually flag your spammy ads unless you learn precisely how in our Ghostbusters members tutorials.

To post new threads/replies or to view someone’s profile you will need a “handle.” To create a handle, go to one of the forums. Log in with your account info and click “add a handle” in the upper right hand corner You will see a form that represents your profile info. You will notice that you can create up to 5 handles.

An option of creating more than one handle is made for staying anonymous on certain forums. As a small business owner or an entrepreneur, there is not much for you to do there. There are no signatures in thread answers, however you can place a link to your website in one of your handle profiles. Craigslist forums are not a good place to promote your business, but there are a couple that might be of some value for you.

For example if you’ve noticed that your category is being spammed with the same ads over and over again, you can try to get the community’s attention by creating a thread on one of the flagging forums. “Get attention” means asking people to flag a particular ad. If your issue doesn’t get the “attention” you think it deserves, perhaps you need to step it up a little with our flagging software, which puts more horsepower behind your flagging campaigns. Unfortunately, where there is one spammy ad, there may be hundreds. Our Craigslist Auto Flagging software automates this task, and even presents Craigslist reporting options within each ad title as well as a last resort.

A list of flagging forums:

• main flagging: https://forums.Craigslist.org/?forumID=3
• flagging: animals https://forums.Craigslist.org/?forumID=4915
• flagging: animals: discussion https://forums.Craigslist.org/?forumID=4914
• flagging: bad ads down https://forums.Craigslist.org/?forumID=5194
• flagging: bad erotic services ads down: https://forums.Craigslist.org/?forumID=5820
• flagging: for sale mega spam: https://forums.Craigslist.org/?forumID=5199
• flagging: freely https://forums.Craigslist.org/?forumID=4194
• flagging: greyly https://forums.Craigslist.org/?forumID=4729
• flagging: mega spam https://forums.Craigslist.org/?forumID=5196
• flagging: prostitutes https://forums.Craigslist.org/?forumID=5195
• flagging: real estate mega spam : https://forums.Craigslist.org/?forumID=5198
• flagging: zoophilia – https://forums.Craigslist.org/?forumID=7111

Some other useful Craigslist forums are found here:

• Help Desk Forum – https://forums.Craigslist.org/?forumID=9
• Feedback Forum – https://forums.Craigslist.org/?forumID=8

Paid ads:

Although Craigslist has an “.org” in its web address, it is not a non-profit organization. In order to maintain such a huge and popular website, some substantial financial support is required. As you might have noticed there are also no banner ads. So how does Craigslist make money? The answer is – through paid postings. In order to post in a certain category you might need to pay up to $75 per ad. Here is a list of those paid categories with prices:

1. Job postings in San Francisco Bay Area – $75 per job per category (e.g. 1 job in 2 categories is $150).

2. Job postings in the major US metropolitan areas – $25 per job per category (e.g. 1 job in 2 categories is $50):
Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston,Inland Empire, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, Orange County, Orlando, Philadelphia, Portland, Phoenix, Sacramento, St. Louis , San Antonio, San Diego, Seattle, South Florida, Tampa, Washington DC

3. Brokered apartment rentals in New York City – $10.

4. Therapeutic services in the United States – $10 (reposting of live ads $5)

On March 13th, 2014, two more categories were added:

5. Tickets by dealer in the US – $5

6. Cars/Trucks by dealer in the US – $5

Keep an eye on this page – https://www.Craigslist.org/about/help/posting_fees to know for which ad you will have to pay. There is no doubt that more and more categories will become paid in the future.

If you are looking to post in those exact categories, you might be interested in applying for a “paid posting account” or “block account.” Paid posting accounts have some additional features, but are not required. Discounts on posting fees are available only for jobs in the SF Bay Area and brokered apartments in NYC.

Paid posting account features:

1. Tools for paid jobs posters.

2. Tools for paid brokered apt posters (NYC only).

You can pay by Visa, MasterCard, and American Express credit cards. Paid posting accounts provide additional payment options in many cases.

3. Pre-purchase postings – avoid entering credit card information for each posting.

4. Discounts for bulk purchases (SF Bay Area jobs, NYC apartments only).

5. Multiple authorized users.

6. Invoicing (requires $2000 minimum purchase within last 3 months).

To apply for the paid postings account:

1. Complete the online application form (https://www.Craigslist.org/about/help/user_accounts)

2. Craigslist accounting staff will contact you

3. Pay for block of postings

4. Account activation

This process is usually quick, but give Craigslist staff up to seven business days. Having a “block account” will allow you to post much more than one ad in 48 hours. There is no limit for the number of ads. If you want to post 500 ads per month, you will have to buy a $6000 ad block. But in this case, you are paying for each ad. Therefore, it is advisable that realtors, “Human Resources” managers and car dealers purchase the “block account.”

Craigslist’s Demographics:

Admittedly, your leads from Craigslist may not be the best customers in the world. One of the reasons why people venture to look for products and services is their decision to save money. If they had more money, they would happily go to established businesses. They know that Craigslist is full of entrepreneurs who often don’t have an office space and therefore can offer the lowest prices. When creating your ad, you should keep in mind everything that you know about your clients. Are they looking for the best bargain in the city? Give it to them in your ad: “Cheapest (service/product) in the city!”; “Save on (service/product) with us.”; “80% discount on (product/service)”,etc. But don’t forget that customers aren’t stupid. They can smell a rat a mile away. Yes, they want to save money, but they don’t want to give their money to scammers and one-day businesses. Your ad copy is all that you have – your main equity. If many people are viewing your ad, but only a few are dialing your number – consider changing your ad.

Ad’s Copy writing and HTML

What should you write in the ad itself?

There should be 3 blocks:

• contact information
• list of services and prices
• 3 or 4-sentence pitch about your company or some details about services
• ad’s keywords

Start with your contact phone number, followed by prices of services, followed by the company’s website and address. This info will appear first when an ad is viewed on some mobile applications. There is more about how your ad is displayed on most popular iOs apps in the Ghostbusters members area. All your contact information will be the same in all ads that you create. If Craigslist decides to go after you and ban some of your ads, it will use that against you.

There are a couple of tricks that you can use to avoid that. Read more in the “Writing Ads” tutorial in our Ghostbusters members tutorials. To divide your ad on those logical blocks, use HTML tags. I’ve mentioned them before, but here you will learn about HTML more in depth. HTML or Hyper Text Markup Language helps to lay out content in any webpage. It is a markup language which is different and easier than a programming language.

Your favorite browser reads that code and shows pretty much everything that you have seen online. HTML consists of tags that tell to your browser where on the webpage a piece of a content should be. Here is an example of an outrageously minimalistic webpage that you probably will never see in real life: “My First Heading” and “My first paragraph” will actually appear on the page. All the rest “<body>”, “<h1>” are HTML tags that tell to your browser what it is and where it should be. There is an opening tag without a slash “<h1>” and a closing tag with a slash “</h1>”.
That’s probably enough of general information. Back to our Craigslist ad. When creating your ad, in your posting description you can use the source code of the simplest webpage HTML tags to change the way your ad’s webpage will look.

Craigslist supports a limited number of HTML tags in paid categories and even fewer in free categories. The problem is you will never find out which tags you can use in free categories, because Craigslist doesn’t tell you. Don’t worry though, we do map it all out in our Ghostbusters members tutorials. There is a page dedicated to supported HTML tags in the “help” pages – https://www.Craigslist.org/about/help/html_in_Craigslist_postings/details – but it only states that: “The HTML below is generally supported in paid housing, paid jobs and tickets by dealer posts.” You can revisit this document to be reminded what works and what doesn’t.

You can use the following tags for your ad:

• h1 h2 h3 h4 h5 h6 – headers
• p – start of a paragraph
• ul – start of an unnumbered list
• li – list item
• strong – thickens fonts
• u – underlines
• br – creates a one line gap

Here is how the “Kitchen Remodeling Contractor” ad looks with all the HTML tags:

<h1><u>&nbsp;&#9733;kitchen remodeling CONTRACTOR&#9733;</u></h1>

<p><br>Los Angeles kitchen remodeling contractor that pays attention to design and details. Our remodeling experience and customer service make us one of the best contractors for kitchen remodeling in Los Angeles. We offer affordable kitchen remodel services and will be with you to help in every step of the way.</p>
<h2><u>Kitchen Design</u></h2>
<ul>
<li>Contemporary
<li>European
<li>Modern Kitchens
<li>Earthy
<li>Traditional
<li>Custom Kitchen
<li>Luxury</li></ul>
<h3><u>Kitchen Cabinets</u></h3>
<ul>
<li>Swinging Doors
<li>Glazed Doors
<li>Paneling
<li>Kitchen Lighting
<li>Custom Kitchen Cabinets
<li>Kitchen Additions
<li>Sliding Doors
<li>Double Windows
<li>Sliders
<li>Wallpaper ti
<li>Kitchen Countertops</li></ul>
<p>Our large selection of countertops and kitchen cabinets design will give your house a special beautiful look. <strong>Call us for a free estimate</strong></p>
<p>XXX XXXXXX XXXX , INC.<br>&nbsp; A Professional General Construction Company <br><br>XXX XXXXX XXX
Inc.<br>XXX – XXX – XXXX <br>XXXX <br></p>
<p>&#9733; R E M O D E L I N G &#9733;&#9733; PROS &#9733;</p>
<br><br><br>
</li></li></li></li></li></li></li></li></li></li></li></li></li></li></li></li>

That is probably the most that you can take from HTML tag usage in a free category. Let’s break it down, tag by tag.
To make fonts bigger, usually the <font size=”x”> is used, however it is allowed only in the paid categories. The solution? Use “h1, h2, h3” tags. These “header” tags increase fonts, underline them and make them bold. Other 3 header tags “h4,” “h5,” and “h6” don’t make much difference to your fonts. Inside the “h1” tag, the “u” tag is used. It makes the header not just big and bold, but also underlined. The “&nbsp” is not an HTML tag, however it creates a one line gap just like the “br” tag. The marketer behind that ad went even further to attract our attention to the header by including two special characters – stars (code &#9733;) The “p” tag is used to specify a piece of text and stands for “paragraph.” There is no real value using it in your ad, since it doesn’t help you anyhow. Don’t forget about closing tags at the end of an element.

The “br” tag is very handy because all one line gaps that you make in your posting description with the “Enter” button will be ignored by Craigslist and your text will be jammed together. To avoid that, use the “br” tag between logical parts of your ad. The “ul” along with “li” tags create nicely rendered unordered lists of items. They are perfect for listing your services, features or other related information. It is a proven fact that when a user faces any text, he looks for digested information such as lists of items or headers of paragraphs. Make human psychology your ally and use list tags. The last thing that helps that ad to stand out is the “Call us for a free estimate” phrase that shows up in bold. The “strong” tag is responsible for that. You may wonder “how can I use all the listed techniques together?” In HTML it’s all about keeping the sequence of tags. Whatever specific formatting you want to apply to a piece of text, place that text between opening and closing tags. One step at a time you will be
able to create beautiful layout ads. Notice how on the last line there are sixteen “</li>” closing tags. The number of opening tags should be the same as the number of closing tags.

You can search around Craigslist for an interesting ad on your own. When you encounter an outstanding ad you can take a look at how it was made by viewing the “Page Source.” In the Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer web browser, right click (or Control- click) on the page with an interesting ad and choose “View Page Source.” For Safari browser you have to first enable the “Develop” menu. Go to Safari –> Preferences –> Advanced –> check “Show Develop menu in menu bar.” After that you will be able to right click on the page and see the “Inspect Element” option that will reveal the HTML of the page. Most of you may be using Firefox, again, just right click the page, and choose view source.

Address your Customer’s Worries:

Creating a distinguished Craigslist ad with beautiful graphics and video reviews will set you apart from your competitors. Besides being beautiful, a Craigslist ad should address your potential customer’s worries. And every person who uses Craigslist has them. We’ve all heard those Craigslist horror stories. Want some bed time reading that might give you nightmares? – http://voices.yahoo.com/Craigslist-horror-story-unleashing-hell-innocent-3523649.html?cat=7 . Whenever someone types into their browser “Craigslist”, they have those worries in the back of their minds. Those worries can be the fear of getting poor quality service, getting scammed, robbed, raped and, finally, killed. People are paranoid and you, with your ad, will be guilty by association. Regardless of how beautiful, professional and advanced your Craigslist ad might be, it should answer all worries and uncertainties that can occur in the most suspicious mind. Everything should point out how trustworthy you are and that you are a professional with many years of experience in your field. You aren’t a startup, and have a long and successful track record of many happy customers. You have such a great reputation that almost everyone on Craigslist is using your service. To establish a personal trust, place your smiling face, as well as those who are going to perform the advertised service, on your ad. Post a greeting video for your potential clients or a link to it. Show your store, office or place where the transaction is going to take place. Show a street view. Don’t try to look trustworthy – be trustworthy.

Ad’s Body for Paid Categories:

Although you can’t use the “img” and “a” tags anymore in free categories, you can use them in the paid categories. It is actually more logical from a business point of view to do so. Before, you could create amazing flyer styled ads anywhere on Craigslist and paying for an ad didn’t give you any advantages. It was unfair to paying advertisers.
You would be foolish to not take advantage of accepted HTML tags, because soon it will become a standard. Once again, let’s list those categories that are “paid” as of 2026:

• brokered apartment rentals in NYC
• jobs posting in Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Central NJ, Charlotte, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland,  Columbus, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Inland Empire, Jacksonville,  Kansas City, Las Vegas, Long Island, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Nashville, New York City, North Jersey, Orange County, Orlando, Philadelphia, Phoenix,  Pittsburgh, Portland, Raleigh, Sacramento, St. Louis , San Antonio, San Diego, Seattle, South Florida, SF Bay Area, Tampa, and Washington DC.
• tickets by dealer in the US

Secret of “flyer” style ads:

In addition to simple HTML tags that were introduced above, the following tags and their attributes are accepted:

• <big> , <small>
• <font>   with attributes “size=”x” “ (x = 2; 3; 4; 5;) and “color=”x” (x= black, blue, fuchsia, green, maroon, navy, olive, purple, red, teal)”
• <p> with attributes “align=”x”” (x= left; right; justify)
• <br> with attributes “clear= “x”” (left; all; right; none)
• <blockquote>
• <hr> with attributes “align=”x”” (x = left, center, right] size=[] width=[]
• <h1><h2><h3><h4><h5><h6> with attributes “align=”x”” (x =left, center, right)
• <ul><ol><li>
• <dl><dd><dt>
• <a> with attributes “href=[]” and “target=[]”
• <img> with attributes “src=[]”
• <pre>
• <table> with attributes “border=[]”
• <tr>
• <th><td> with attributes “colspan=[]” and “rowspan=[]”

The way the Rover.com made their Craigslist ad looking nice and professional is by creating an image with all necessary information, uploading it to one of the image hosting websites (in that case “imgur.com”) and employing the “img src” tag in the “Posting description” of the ad. Such images appears much bigger when an ad is opened than
attached images. You can fit more information on it and achieve better results.

One of those is the “<img src>” tag (short for “image” and “source”). It places a picture on your webpage. The following “src” tells to your browser where that picture is located by giving it a direct link of the
image. When you want a picture to show on your ad you simply write the following line of HTML code with the “<img>” tag into your posting description: “<img src=“http://www.DirectLinkToYourPicture.com”>”

Here is a great example from Los Angeles / Jobs Craigslist:

Full source code with HTML tags of the Rover.com Craigslist ad:

<a href=”http://dogsitinyourhome.com/etc” rel=”nofollow”> <img src=”http://imgur.com/TOOREg1.png” width=”1000” height=”1426” alt=”dog boarding”></a> <br><br><br>
&#9733;    Check out our latest TV    commercial: <a href=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/XQFI1zryto8?rel=0”
rel=”nofollow”>HERE</a><br><br>
&#9733; Apply to become a host by making a FREE profile now. Control your own schedule and set your own rates.
Simply state the services you’re willing to provide.<br><br>
&#9733; Rover gives back to local animal shelters! Rover members can pledge to donate a small portion of their sitter profits to the animal shelter of their choice.
<br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br><br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br>
<font size=”3”>freelance, work from home, side income, part-time, part time, flexible schedule, vet tech, foster dog, teacher, stay at home, animal shelter, animal care, pet sitter, dog walker, education, health care, non-profit, pet service, volunteer, charity work, telecommute, work at home, nurse, healthcare, veterinary, vet assistant, dog trainer, groomer, grooming, part-time dog sitter, part-time pet sitter, full-time dog sitter, full-time pet sitter, student jobs, seasonal work, seasonal jobs, intern, make money dog sitting, make money pet sitting, dog sitting jobs, dog walking jobs, part-time dog walking, part-time dog walker, full-time dog walking, full-time dog walker, dog care jobs, pet care jobs, pet sitting jobs, pet sitter jobs, dog sitter jobs, animal care jobs</font>

Image Hosting:

First, in order to obtain a link you need to host your picture on one of the free image hosting websites (google “image hosting website”). One of them is photobucket.com. Create an account on www.photobucket.com and upload your picture. Then open your uploaded picture. To the left you will see “Image links”. You need to copy the “Direct link” and paste it into your line of HTML code between the quote signs. Here is an example:

Direct Link To The Image “<img src=”http://i1284.photobucket.com/albums/a579/flostik2008/iPhoneRepairAd3copy13_zps9aac1520.png”>”

After you finish editing your ad, you will see a preview of it. Check to see if your picture fits into the ad and is big enough. If it shrinks, it’s possible that the picture dimensions are too big. Change dimensions, reload the picture to Photobucket, copy-paste new “direct link” and check again. For example Rover.com ad has dimensions of 1024—1426 pixels. Some people were claiming that Craigslist banned ads with links to Photobucket. If that is the case, you can use other free image hosting services such as:

http://www.twitpic.com/
http://www.imageshack.us/
http://tinypic.com/index.php
http://www.imgur.com

Even more customization with HTML Besides adding an amazing and sleek image with all of your information about your offer, you should also write a couple of lines after that image. Those lines should contain again – your main service
and prices, just like you would do in free categories where HTML tags usage is limited. You might have an amazing image for your ad, but that is not an excuse to not include a text version of your ad below the image. Take advantage of all acceptable HTML tags.

How Spammers Work and Why You Shouldn’t:

How can I post 100 ads per day? How can I dominate my category? How often should I post so my ads appear above the fold (without scrolling down the page)? All these questions have the same answer – spam Craigslist. Remember: spam is bad. Therefore, there won’t be a spam technique in this book. Although you might be thinking that by spamming (over posting) in your category you will get the most exposure, it isn’t correct. The technique of constantly posting your ads will make your offer appear on the first page more often and give you the most exposure, but you won’t get too far with such a marketing strategy. Over posting is Craigslist’s number one problem and in 18 years (since 1995) of its existence they learned how to fight it. If you start to post too often, you will exceed Craigslist’s limits on the number of ads per account and/or per IP. Your account will then raise red flags and the following will happen. First your newly posted ads will be “ghosted.” The ad will appear on your control panel as active and you would think that it is out working for you. But it’s not. It just never went “live.” There is a way to check to see if your ad was “ghosted” that I explained in the “Craigslist methods against “too often”. If you don’t check your ad’s status and continue posting, soon your ads will be automatically deleted within the first seconds of being active. Later, if you continue over posting and close your eyes to the fact that many of your ads are deleted, Craigslist might block your IP address or even IP address range and no ads coming from that IP will be posted. That process is automated by Craigslist’s algorithms and you can’t fight it. Sometimes when users encounter this problem they think that they became a victim of the “flag” war or their competitor out there keeps flagging their ads. Whereas the truth is – over posting resulted in a suspended account. From time to time different software appears that claims to help you with Craigslist posting. Those might be auto posters, auto ad renew or both. You should be careful with those type programs. Most are written by programmers, not seasoned Craigslisters. If those programs are not designed to follow Craigslist’s rules, and the secret requirements they will do more harm than good and the software for which you’ve paid money can become useless. All your ads posted with the help of poorly designed programs become ghosted or deleted. We were seasoned Craigslisters before we ever made any software for it, and we know exactly what we are doing. We have been in business for years.. and we have seen a ton of garbage programs surface and disappear quite quickly. We used to warn people about specific junk developers, but they have each folded and disappeared from sight. – We remain.

Think about things this way – sure posting an ad every minute will get you to the first page and result in more “impressions” (a.k.a “people have seen it, but haven’t clicked on it”). But after seeing (and maybe even clicking on it) your ad more than 3 times, a potential customer will perceive you as a spammer. And the main goal – to convert a potential customer to an actual customer – will fail. He won’t dial your number, and he won’t choose your service. That is the last thing that you need from your Craigslist campaign. All he wants is to see a couple of options to choose from, to “shop around” and then make a decision. Once you are a spammer in his eyes, guess what he will think of you in general as a business? “This guy just spammed Craigslist with his ads; he seems like a very trustworthy guy!” Yea, right. What a great start of a customer relationship for a business that is trying to grow.

On top of that, other companies in your category will switch from being your competitors to being your rivals since you are dominating a certain category and taking away their business. They will do everything to put you back in your place. That might include buying our software and using it to flag your ads, cooperating with other companies in your category to flag your ads (flag war) and the best one – reporting to Craigslist about your abusive techniques, something that will end your Craigslist game with the speed of lightning.

They may also discuss the issue on Craigslist forums trying to solve the problem as fast as possible. You don’t need such fame. So first you will spend time developing and establishing such a system, next you will have to sustain it and deal with all the troubles that will follow. After deducting newly involved costs and time – the whole thing wasn’t worth the trouble. In business schools they teach you that opportunity costs are the most expensive part of any business. Managing and sustaining such a system will take a lot of your time that you could spend on other things. Eventually Craigslist might catch up with new anti-spam techniques.

Reporting overposting:

The same rules apply to any spammer on Craigslist, not just you. If one of your competitors is spamming your category – take a proactive position and report that spammer to Craigslist. To do it, from your Craigslist account locate “Help pages” and find “Contact Us.” Fill in and send the form. Our CraigsFlagger Pro has a quick link for this, and exposes the ad id number which you will need to have in order to report the spammer so you don’t even need to open the ad and copy it from the url or ad, just grab that number from the search page easily for all the spam ads all at the same time.

As mentioned earlier you can also flag spammers’ posts. People go to Craigslist to save money and they are willing to do more research to find the best offers. Those people spend more time on researching than you might think. Only a small share of them will search on Craigslist and take an offer from the first page. The majority will scroll down the search results and look for the best offer available. Here is where your amazing and appealing offer comes in. Instead of thinking of how to game Craigslist and its community anti-spam features, focus on enhancing your ads and conversion rate of those who ended up clicking on your ad. Read about conversion in the Ghostbusters members area.

Here is a short video demonstrating 3 Craigslist Secrets that everyone should know about. These secrets are working in the paid postings, and are just a sample of what can be done with a little know how found exclusively in our Ghostbusters Members area.

We hope you have enjoyed our introductory guide to posting & profiting on Craigslist! As mentioned earlier in the article, once you get some practice with the techniques we have just outlined for you, come back and check out our Ghostbusters members area for the next level information you cannot get anywhere else.