There are many opportunities for the average person to make money online, perhaps none of which are more accessible than Craigslist.com. With Craigslist you can advertise any object or service in your local area – and do so without paying a cent. Furthermore, due to Craigslist’s popularity, there is an extremely high likelihood that multiple people will read your advertisement within days of its posting. There’s no doubt about it; for those who seek an online marketplace without the shipping pains, transaction hassles, and online reputation management requirements of eBay, Craigslist is certainly the place for you.
A Craigslist poster has a few core goals when posting an ad on the site: get the ad noticed, appeal to consumer needs and wants, and confer upon the post an air of credibility. Fulfilling these three goals can translate into a quick and easy sale – assuming, of course, that you are offering up an item that someone out there would find desirable.
So how can these goals best be achieved? Here are a few tips:
Create A Quality Balance in Your Picture
If you are selling an item of any sort, it is highly advantageous to post an accompanying picture as studies have shown that Craigslist shoppers will routinely pass over an ad that contains no image. But the picture itself should be carefully tailored so as to insure your credibility. A dark, grainy, low-quality picture will give your advertisement an air of sketchiness. An extremely high-quality, professional image, on the other hand, may look too much like a stock photo or cause consumers to think that you are posting online as part of a big business – a business less likely to provide great deals. The solution, then, is to find a balance: make sure your picture is of good quality, but at the same time insure that it still looks like a “home-made” photograph.
Include Price In the Ad Heading
Before clicking on your ad, a Craigslist user will see only a short heading that advertises the product you’re trying to sell. This heading is yours to create, and many sellers attempt to be unique and edgy in the hope of standing out from the crowd. Such an approach is fine so long as your heading still includes certain necessities, including a rough description of the item and a clearly demarcated price (or negotiable range). Many Craigslist shoppers will refrain from clicking on an advertisement that contains no price.
Repost Your Ad
Craigslist is a busy site, and although a posted ad stays up for over a month it will keep dropping from the top of search results (all of which are ordered reverse-chronologically) as new advertisements are added. It is in your best interest, then, to repost your ad whenever it drops from the first 25 or 30 results in its local sub-section. When you do, make sure to slightly alter the advertised heading. This will make your reposting less obvious and less frustrating for consumers who have made it into the second or third page of results.
Hopefully these tips can help you insure visibility and credibility with your Craigslist postings. That last goal – fulfilling consumer needs and wants – is completely up to you and your discretion. Good luck.
No comments:
Post a Comment