Making a Great Craigslist Ad (part 1)

I would like to explain what I think makes a great ad on Criagslist so you have a better idea of how to improve your use of Craigslist and Backpage.

A great ad is going to be one that gets viewed for the right reasons and frequently. To understand what I mean by right reasons you need to know a little bit about how Craigslist works as a search engine.

There are two main ways to find an ad on Craigslist. The first is by clicking on a link in the main screen like "Real Estate for sale". Clicking on this will bring up all of the listings Craigslist has in its Real Estate section, in chronological order. That means you will see every post, regardless of geographic area or property type, from most recently posted to last posted. People who search this way are most likely browsing the titles that pop up, just looking to see if anything interesting is out there. Notice that because it is in chronological order, the ads most recently posted will show up the highest on searches. This is why you need to keep deleting and reposting you ad on Craigslist; you want it as high on these searches as possible to get the most visibility. So one important aspect of a great Craigslist ad is frequency of posting. The more frequently you post an ad, the more chance you have of getting viewed. http://www.ezposting.net/ is the service that offers to do this for you.

The second way of searching on Craigslist is by refining a search and using keywords. For example, after you click on "real estate for sale", you can type keywords into the "search for" bar at the top of the screen to refine the search more. You can also select the price (min/max) and # of Bedrooms to refine further. So instead of plodding through 100s of ads, you could type in "Tempe house" with a max price of 200,000 and 3 bedrooms. This refines a search significantly and is used by more serious viewers who are looking for specific properties to fit their budget and needs.

So the second key to a great ad is relevancy of information. Be sure to include a price with your post, as well as specific information about the property you are listing. Next time I will elaborate on some techniques that can improve the number of views you can get on Craigslista and Backpage.