Earning a living on Craig’s List
Thursday, March 6th, 2008
I’ve done some experimenting lately with Craig’s List. Most of you are no doubt very familiar with using Craig’s List to unload (or find) a variety of unwanted items, pets, and services. What most people don’t realize is that a guy or gal can actually earn a decent living from Craig’s List. But, it’s not easy by any stretch of the imagination and many people who try will fail.
- What does it take to earn a living using Craig’s List?
- In a word, perseverance. I know, you were probably expecting some great insight or revelation, but truly it is that simple. It just takes perseverance to earn a living with Craig’s List. Now unless you’re stupid you’re probably wondering how is that different that any other method of earning a living. Well, it’s not and that’s the beauty of it. You don’t need to learn something entirely new you simply need to adjust your thinking!
- First things first
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Before you do anything else you should familiarize yourself with Craig’s List. It is a very simple website yet can quickly overwhelm you if you aren’t prepared for it. Probably the first thing you should do is go to the localized version of the site that is dedicated to your area. It’s a huge waste of time if you aren’t targeting the right areas. As you can see by the picture over to the right the main page has been divided up into sections to help you better find your way into a local area.Once you’ve found the name of your city, state, or country click on it and it will take you to either a subdomain dedicated to your area or another page where you can drill down further to a more localized area. If need be keep narrowing it down until you are right in your local area. If you living in or around a larger city this won’t be hard to do, but if you live in the middle of nowhere you’ll need some extra effort.
Your next step is to figure out what category you will most likely have success in. For the most part they should be fairly self-explanatory with just a little bit of reading. Once you’ve figured out your category spend a few hours browsing through the ads in your area over the past few weeks. Give a few of them calls or send emails. You will quickly learn there are two types of people who advertise on services and sales on Craig’s List. Honest folks who are just trying to make a living and scoundrels. You don’t need a lot of insight to figure them out. The reason for calling these people is simply to learn a little bit about your competition. Would you hire them? If not chances are not many other people will either. Lesson 1: Don’t be like one of these people that others don’t want to hire. It will quickly ruin any chances you have of earning a living on Craig’s list.
- Setting up an account
- You don’t have to set up an account in order to advertise, but it makes it much easier. In order to get one set up look in the upper left side of the page and you’ll see a link that says “My Account”, click on it and you’ll be taken to a login page. Directly under the login you’ll see a link that says “Don’t have an account? Click here to sign up.” On the final page you’ll be asked for your email address and then to confirm the captcha code. After you click the “Create Account” button you’ll get an activation email. Click the link in it, create a password and you’re on your way!
- Creating your ad
- There are two schools of thought when it comes to advertising on Craig’s List. The first one subscribes to the thought that it should retain a classified ad, small community feel. The other view is that your ad should be as high class and as professional as possible. Let’s take a look at both kinds of ads and compare them.
Comparison point Professional Classified Cost to produce A few dollars to several hundred. Free, except for the time it takes Time to produce A few days to a few weeks for a very well done ad A few minutes to a few hours Reactions from customers More inclined to pay higher prices Expect you to work well below market value There are a lot more points we could use for comparison, such as cost vs return, but I just wanted to give you an idea of some things to look at. The next step is to actually create your ad. It can be a daunting task when you first start, but with a little effort and organization it isn’t actually too bad. Remember earlier I suggested you should read some ads on the site? Assuming that you did hopefully you’ve come up with some ideas for your own ads. Of course you can always hire a professional ad company, but in my experience it is just as well to take a little extra time to make your own. Especially when you consider cost.
The first thing you should do is familiarize yourself with how to write good ad copy, because no matter where the ad appears or who reads it if it isn’t good you’ve already lost the battle. Your next step is to actually figure out what you want your ad to say and who you would like to say it to. This is the part where you really need to figure out who exactly you are targeting with your ad
If you aren’t using one already I recommend finding some image editing software. If like most of us you’re not keen on paying hundreds of dollars for software you’ll hardly ever use I suggest looking into paint.net or the Gimp. Both work well and both are free. It really comes down to a matter of choice.
- Placing your ads
- The next step is figuring out where and when to place your ads. The where shouldn’t be too hard (in the local area, in the proper category), but the when can take a little bit of experimentation. I’ve found the absolute worst time for any ads on Craig’s List is early in the morning, before about 8am and late at night after around 9pm. Best time seems to be sometime between 11am and 2pm. Which makes sense if you think about it. It is the middle of the workday, people have likely finished up a good part of their duties and are just there because they have to be. Surfing Craig’s List seems to be a fairly popular pasttime for a lot of people during that part of the day. Of course you’ll need to experiment on your own when it comes time to placing the ad, but that’s jus what I’ve found to work best.
- Keep on top of things
- So you’ve finally placed your ad and now you’re ready to have a nice cold beer, kick back, relax and wait for the calls to come in? Unless you’re advertising “erotic services” give that idea up! Now is the time to keep on top of things. About 15 minutes after you place your ad it will very likely be pushed out of sight and out of mind. Just like anything else, keeping your name at the forefront will give you a great amount of leverage when it comes to your ads. It is a violation of Craig’s List rules to post the same thing more than once in a 48 hour period. Unfortunately no one pays any attention to that rule and if you want to be competitive you can’t either.
There are two ways to get around the posting limitations. The first is to simply change what your ad copy says and post the new ad, and deleting the old one. I don’t recall what percentage of the ad needs to be changed but I find if I change around 40% of it the spam check system seems to let it go through. The other way, if you use an image is simply to repost the image link. As long as you don’t use text outside of the image you won’t need to worry about being blocked.
Since Craig’s List is community moderated it helps to stay on their good graces. For the most part short of illegal, or spam postings no one will bother you. To avoid being labeled a spammer be sure to always delete your old ad once the new one is live on the site. Also try not to publish the same thing more than 5 or 6 times in a day to the same area. People will start to remember who you are.
- How much money can I make?
- I’ve found it really depends on what you are advertising. For example when I advertise computer repair I might get 2 or 3 jobs a week from Craig’s List. On the other hand when I advertise menial labor work I usually have 30 to 50 hours of work within a day of posting the ad. I’ve come to the conclusion that certain ads are expected, while others aren’t on the site. After all what kind of a professional computer tech would ever stoop so low as to post on Craig’s List? At least that seems to be what many people think.
Regardless you’ll only make money using Craig’s List if you treat it like a real business. That means being honest, doing the work you promise, showing up on time, following up, and all that other good stuff. I personally know of lots of people who make a few hundred extra dollars a week with it, and then there are 5 people I know of who make livings this way. The earning potential is huge it is just a matter of you being able to work the system.
- A few things to keep in mind
- When you start using Craig’s List to advertise there are a few things you should always be wary of.
- People go to Craig’s List looking for a deal. In other words they are
frugalcheap and will always go for cheapest, and most convient. Whatever you normally charge your customers consider cutting it at least in half, if not three quarters for Craig’s List customers. - Try out various ads and times of day to see what combination works best for you.
- It will take some time. Most people adversise for a few days before they get any return from it. Stick to it.
- Be careful! Craig’s List seems to attract some weird people looking for “services”. If you’re a lady keep this in mind because the service some of them are expecting might be more than you are expecting to provide.
- People go to Craig’s List looking for a deal. In other words they are
Good luck with your money making efforts on Craig’s List!
