Still getting flagged?

The reason most of you are here, is because you have been getting flagged. If you’re just here to flag people, it’s because at some point you were getting flagged. Once you understand what’s happening, it’s easy to fix. We get emails all the time that go sort of like this: “My competitors are flagging me.. my ads stay up for 10 minutes then they are gone! HELP!!” Forget your competition for a moment, and look at what’s really happening. Craigslist is doing this to you, they have lowered your flagging ratio / threshold, (the number of flags it takes to remove your ad) you are SOFTBLOCKED!! Many of you are so frustrated by this point, that you’re working against yourself. Desperately adding new information to the old information, trying to force your way back online. Craigslist is using psychological tactics to bring you to this point of total frustration to deter you from using their site. That’s how the softblock is intentionally designed by the programmers at Craigslist. Much of the information here is interchangeable with the Ghosting section as well of course, its all the same animal your dealing with.. The spambot.

Step one:

Stop. Relax. Forget what you knew, or what used to work! They have changed things! Things can change by the minute, or by the post even. Automatic robots are busy rewriting all the rules and flagging ratios just to keep you guessing, and keep making the process more and more difficult. Due to you violating their terms and over posting, or possibly a competitor posting your phone number for you in ways that will get it blocked, (hint, hint..) the posting robots may have rewritten the spam patrol robot to search for your phone number, or the title of your spammy ad now.. So, get new accounts, from new emails. Create brand new ads, new titles with NO LINKS TO WEBSITES IN THEM! They allow it to be posted, but they also lower your threshold considerably for adding links. Do not reuse any old titles. Use our free Title Spinner if you need it.

Step two:

You might also want to get a cheap new phone number from tossable digits. This way the spam bot can’t track you from account to account. Just have the tossable digit phone number forward to your private cell number, and your back in business. The flaggers wont know your new number. You can also filter out the undesirable phone numbers, and record all conversations. You will want to redirect any incoming calls from problem callers to a different competitor you believe is causing you trouble. If your competitor is calling you, and really a jerk or a problem for you, just get them to threaten you while the call is being recorded by tossable digits. That’s the end of that competition. You can then have them arrested and charged for harassment, uttering threats, etc. Have them admit to flagging you, then use the evidence to sue them.

Step three:

Now you need to create at least three new accounts, preferably from 3 different ip addresses. don’t cross post, one category per account. For example, don’t buy phones in one category and sell them in another from the same account. Craigslist has algorithms to watch for that, and softblock you. Make no more than 3 ads in a day (3 is recommended, but by all means test your limits) from the same account. Then the next day, use a different account. Make sure when you create your new accounts, and use your new accounts, to keep them from being instantly softblocked do not mix your IPs! If you make an account at the local coffee shop, then only use that specific account at that location. Never login to any account from any browser with old cookies from a different account. CraigsCookies is included with all flaggers, CraigsPoster Pro, and all bundles, you can use this to manually delete all your Craigslist cookies when you are on the account login page, then refresh the page and get fresh cookies, or you can use our CraigsAccounts app built into your your CraigsFlagger Pro or CraigsPoster Pro, and this handy little application always does this every time you load the Craigslist account page automatically. CraigsAccounts also has its own database which can save all your Craigslist username / password combinations and allow you to simply select the account you want to use from a drop down menu in a flash. Irregardless of how you refresh your cookies before every login, do not omit this step, you you will be instantly softblocked!

Step four:

If you want to hide all your personal information (phone number, website, business name etc) from the Craigslist bots, make a photo of it and post that instead. To avoid the spambot fingerprinting you, it is best to keep your own domains out of their database. See the Writing Ads section.

• You must first change parts of your text ad to an image. You may use this tool to convert text to images, then upload them.

Step five:

As a last resort, after you changed everything else, you might already have batch of good IP’s for flagging and posting. Using the same technique as flagging, (revolve ip’s while flag forever option is going) you can reinforce your own ads with the reinforce feature found in CraigsFlagger Pro / Trinity Bundle. If you don’t have this feature in the version you bought, you can upgrade your software. This technique cancels out negative flags. BUT.. don’t bother wasting your time defending a softblocked account! So many people buy this version so they can just keep fighting back while doing the same thing posting junk ads with a low flagging threshold, but their actual problem is their bad posting behavior logged to their softblocked Craigslist account. Fix that first.

Now, the Algorithm..

When Craigslist determines that enough people flag your ad (say 5-10 specially in the first 5 minutes your ad is up), CL will delete your ad. It is all “algorithm” – meaning there’s no human person checking all the ads. It all depends on the ratio of “flags” to the number of ad views. So if your ad is viewed 20 times and you get 8 flags, that ratio is 0.4 and your ad will likely be deleted. However, if your ad is viewed 100 times and it got flagged 8 times, your ratio is 0.08 and most likely, your ad won’t get deleted. I really don’t know the exact ratio for each person’s ads because its different for every section, every account and every ad, because each has a score which influences this ration directly, but suffice it to say…the lower it is, the higher your chances that your ad won’t get flagged.

Since it’s all about the ratio, then you can drastically lower your chances of your ad getting flagged and deleted by increasing the ad views. How do you do that? If you have CraigsFlagger Pro, or Reinforcer installed, you can select the “Reinforce” flagging option and select all your ads, and flag them automatically and repeatedly.

You’re creating an “ad view” every time you click on your ad. By auto-flagging your own ads with the “Reinforce” flag option 20 times, you’ve created 20 ad views. Depending on how big your market is, you may need to click on your ad 40 times to have a high ad views. Also, Craigslist has differences in their algorithm from city to city, section to section, so there’s no guarantee the “Reinforce” technique will work the same in all areas. This does work on softblocked accounts, but its just a band-aid for a softblocked account. A softblocked account means that YOUR flagging threshold / ratio is LOWER than every one else’s, so begin with steps one through five and replace your accounts, then use this technique to rapidly increase your ad views in the first 5 minutes.

The video below takes you through this simple process.

In Conclusion:

Don’t just do one thing at a time. Do all of this. Scale back later. Just solve your problems, and take back your control right now. These methods combined make it very difficult to target your ads. You have every right to use Craigslist just like every one else does.

Don’t be forgetting to use the proper proxy rules as well. That will get you instantly softblocked, and easily flagged.

If you still haven’t got our Foxy Revolver ip management software, you might want to check that out as well, or give HMA a try.

You can find more information on proxy management in our Proxy section.