HTML tags
In late 2013, Craigslist stopped supporting many HTML tags such as A, IMG, FONT, TABLE, DIV, SPAN, and CENTER in the General posting categories. You can no longer make a graphically rich flyer style Craigslist ad in a simple language and include a clickable link back to your website in the general for sale sections. This caused a huge uproar among many Craigslist advertisers along with a drop in Craigslist traffic:
This update caused some information in our original members area to become irrelevant since many posting techniques included usage of those HTML tags that were banned. Before this ban on HTML, to stand out on Craigslist and appear as a trustworthy as well as respectable business, you needed to follow these simple four steps:
- Create a colorful image with all the information about your business and offering service.
- Host that image on any image hosting website.
- Using the HTML img tag, paste a link to your externally hosted image into a Craigslist ad’s description field.
- Using the HTML “A” tag, make the image “clickable” so that an ad viewer could visit your website.
By following these steps, you could easily score dozens of leads daily since most Craigslist ads contained only a few lines of copy writing without any graphics, whatsoever. Now, you simply can’t do the nice graphic ads in most sections. The message that Craigslist was going to remove the img tag started to appear in the summer of 2013:
Taking this big change into account, we reworked our Writing Ads tutorial adding alternatives to “img” tag. Three months later, starting from the end of October, only advertisers from big cities reported that their ads didn’t show images and their links weren’t clickable. Craigslist was still testing. On November 1st, the new update took effect in every local Craigslist website, but not in every category. Paid categories still allow those tags. To conclude this introduction of the 2nd edition, with the new update the “Craigslist game” became even more interesting because now you have to stand out from your competition while having fewer tricks available. Since the update is universal, everyone is affected by it, including your competitors. Craigslist forces you to focus more on “what” you offer and not on “how” you offer it.
Impressed with CL’s numbers but still doubting if you should join, too? Some of you might think that CL already reached its peak of popularity and majority of visitors – old loyal community members.
Take a look at the following graph:
This graph was built by Google Trends. Google Trends’ source of data is what people type in Google Search. It knows how often a particular search term is entered relative to the total search volume across various regions of the world, and in various languages. As you can see, the search volume is growing meaning more and more
people all over the world are visiting CL for a solution to their problems. Why don’t you “scratch their itch” and offer them your product/service? The sooner you establish your presence on CL the better.
Since CL is always evolving and upgrading – it might be harder to enter with introduction of new features. Who knows what’s coming next? For example a couple of years ago you didn’t need to confirm your account with a cell phone number. You could simply create an email address and proceed to posting on CL. Phone number verification
is a welcomed feature that keeps scammers and abusers away. But where is the border between a spammer and a trustworthy person who wants his ads to be noticed on CL? That border is definitely blurred.
Craigslist does care about the end user’s experience. If you go on Craigslist and want to find something, you will spend less time searching for it. Everything looks, works and feels plain and simple. Those of you that have been with us from the beginning know that Craigslist has actually added a number of features that our software used to provide. The star for the favorites button, right next to our flag button. The “X” to make posts vanish was done a couple of years back by us first.
There are also links on the site that we used to put exactly where Craigslist eventually decided to put them, on the main search page, the account link, post link, and on the account page, we have our CraigsAccounts app that added the option to create a new Craigslist account until they added the second login box in that spot. Everyone who has supported us through the years has actually been a direct part of remaking Craigslist into an elegant yet simple advertising solution. And thanks Craig for paying attention to our ideas, and trying out our software.
Much of Craigslist’s growth is expected overseas since very few classifieds websites can withstand the temptation of placing banner ads or an implementation of other monetization techniques. Another thing that motivated us to create the Ghostbusters Members tutorials was how unprofessional the majority of business ads on CL look like. I can understand that since people who advertise on CL aren’t professional marketers. They are small businesses and “solopreneurs.” I’m glad that they (and you) have chosen CL but you have to fight for your
customer/client. In this day and age, people are bombarded with information and advertisements from every possible angle. Your amateur “3 lines” ad will go simply unnoticed. You need to step up to the plate.
Taking all the latest updates into account, closely collaborating with some of the experienced Craigslisters with many years of experience that have compiled and written this resource area – you now have access to a great source of knowledge and the latest techniques on how to grow your business by using the free classifieds website Craigslist.org.
