OK, so I thought I would start out my first blog post by putting up my newest observations for correctly posting on Craigslist.  Those of you who don’t market on Craigslist, may want to considerit.  Craiglist gets over 53 million unique visitors per month, and over a billion page views.  That is 1/3 of the adult population in the  United States. Having multiple post on Craiglist can drive massive amounts of targeted traffic to your website.

Emails/CL Accounts/PVA(Phone Verified Accounts)

There are 3 ways to use accounts with Craigslist.

One is just using your email, and verifying the link in your email. **This is the least used method anymore on a bulk level, and you will get ghosted A LOT! Craigslist seems to like accounts. Two, Non-Phone Verified Accounts. If you have a clean IP you can use Non-PVA accounts which don’t require a phone verification. You can use NON-PVAs in every section except All Services, and Adult Gigs. Three, is Phone Verified Accounts (PVAs). PVAs are always required in the services section, and the adult gigs, and if you have a soft blocked IP, you need them in every section.

OK, so Craigslist has basically gone on a rampage in the last few months, and are blocking IP pools like crazy. The difference between a clean IP, and a soft blocked IP is that, a soft blocked account will require a phone verified account. If the IP is clean, a CL account(non PVA) or email is required.

**In my experience you will get ghosted a lot less if you use CL accounts(non PVAs), and Phone Verified Accounts (PVAs)**

The only place people seem to getting clean IPs anymore that post in bulk is either by DSL, or Dial Up. Most broadband cards, almost all proxies have been soft blocked. **If you go the proxy route, DO NOT use free proxies. Most of these are junk, and have been blocked by CL.

**If you use PVAs, and NON PVAs, CL will put them on hold. It’s part of the gig. If your accounts gets put on hold, just forget about it, move on, and buy or make new accounts. The general rule is try not to post more than one ad per 48 hours per account. You can do 1-2 ads per account, but you risk them getting put on hold much faster**

Titles

Try to variate your titles as much as possible. If you use software, you can use what are called tokens, which will variate them. If not you will just want to create a swipe file with a multitude of titles to choose from.

If you are posting 50 ads, try to have at least 20 titles. You hypothetically could post the same title if you are posting on separate accounts, but the next day you will have to create a whole new title for each ad, or you will get the duplicate ad error message.

**Google Loves CL**
Do some proper keyword research, and try to variate those titles with the keywords interchanged within the ads. Not all of CL has do follow tags, but if the page does, you can sometimes see the ad on the first page of Google within hours.

This is especially good with local businesses. For example “Plumbing Service In Los Angeles”, “Affordable Plumbing Service Los Angeles CA”. Use your keyword with the city, and bam, you can get first page rank a good amount of time depending on the competition. Backpage.com, and Kijiji.com are also great for this.

Ad Content

I personally only use image ads. Text ads are just so annoying with all the filters CL has, and words that trip them. I make every ad into a picture file. There are a million ways to do this, but use screen shot software to capture your image, and then upload it to Photobucket. This is the fast way to do it. I use Jing (ww . jingproject .com), which is a free screen shot software. Another popular screen shot video is Snagit. I did a couple video on my YouTube channel on how I make clickable images. Just look up WebsiteTrafficDude, and you’ll see them.

If I want a very professional ad I just pay my designer to builds the image ad for me for $50. This guy does killer image ads for $50 www. NextDayOnline .com You can also build the image ad yourself in Paint, or Photoshop.

Now, what you want to do is create yourself multiple Photobucket accounts. Let’s just say you want to post 50 ads per day. For that I would create 5 accounts, and I would upload 10 individual images per account. **It can be the same image, just rename the file 10 different times** For example: original image file name is jstover77…I would then rename it 10 times, and create multiple names for it. Usually I will just name them strings of numbers. Sounds like a lot of work, but it really isn’t when you get the hang of it. There are people that make image uploaders, so look around, and you will find one.

**Important**
After each account created, just clear your cookies, and cache just to be safe.

Also, don’t create more then 10 accounts on the same IP, or photo*bucket will block you.

The most important thing is just making sure that each ad body is somewhat unique and has some random text related to your category. Make sure you change your image files every week or two to keep them fresh.

Links in Your Ad

I do not put links in my ads, cause it just leaves a footprint for CL. What I do is put the URL in the image ad. From my experience, if the person is to lazy to type in your URL in the browser they are most likely not going to buy anything from you anyways.

Now if you are hell bent on using a URL in your ad or a clickable image, then you best buy up a bunch of domains, and redirect them to your main site. Otherwise using the same URL will get you blocked sooner than later. If you are in need of a redirect service, there is a guy in the Troopal forum that sells it.

Flagged Ads/Ghosted Ads

Ghosting occurs when it shows green in your account, and says it is posted, yet it never shows up. Ghosting happens to even the best posters. I would say 10-20% is the norm. If you are getting ghosted more than that, you need to strip your ad down, and figure out what it is that is causing the ghosting. Start with the ad content/image. Next try a new title. Then try another account. Ect, ect…

Flagging occurs all over Craigslist. There is just so many loosers out there who have wayyyyyyyy to much time on their hand, and God only knows why they sit there and flag like it’s their job. If you ads are very spammy, then you will get this a lot. If you are selling a legit product or service it is usually a competitor. I post a lot of ads in services, and I rarely get flagged there.

Unfortunately you can not control flagging, it’s part of the gig. Here is one thing I do if I know it is a competitor. Email them and tell them you know they are flagging your ad, and if they do not stop, you will just flag right back. On top tell them you have flagging software that is push button, and will flag according to keywords. Tell them if they don’t stop you will flag all their ads. Trust me this will work 90% of the time. If your ads are spammy, don’t even waste you time.

Changing Your IP

This is the single most important thing you need to do. You must rotate IP addresses regularly. I try to not post more than 2-3 ads per IP per day. Preferably you only want to post 1 ad per IP per day. Many people don’t understand how to change your IP, but it really isn’t that complicating if you know what you are doing.

Here is the list of ways you can change you IP.

Dial Up- simply disconnect, and reconnect, and you have a new IP. Try to use a lesser known dial up company in your area. The IP pools tend to not be used and abused.

DSL- a lot of people like Verizon due to the large amount f IP pools they have. To change your IP with DSL, just reset you modem.

Proxies- If you can find a vendor that sells exclusive proxies, then this is a good route to go. Most proxies will come like this IP:Port:User:Pass. If you can find a good vendor then they should give you directions on how to use them. It’s a very simple process. You can just go to the Proxy section here and you will find a bunch of vendors.

IP Rental- You can rent IPs from IP rental (www. IPrental .com) **Note** Almost all of IP rentals IPs are softblocked, so you will need PVAs to post with these. Right now this is my favorite option right now, because you can geo target the area where the proxy is located.

Broadband- Simply disconnect, and reconnect. Be careful though. CL knows all the broadband providers IP pools, and your accounts will get put on hold much faster than some of these other tactics

Cable- Not worth it unless you know how to screw around with MAC addresses, and IP config release.

FIOs- Forget about it. Not even worth it.