Craigslist Mania

What is Craigslist? Why Should I put My Inventory on it?

Posting Tool for Craigslist

Craigslist is to the internet what the classified ads used to be to newspapers, it is a classified ad placement service where people can place and browse through classified ads on the internet.

And it is all FREE (in most states)

According to the current internet rankings at Alexa, Craigslist is responsible for getting an amazing twenty billion page views each month. That is good enough to crack the top 25 worldwide and the top ten in the United States. Its only source of income comes from people placing ads for jobs for money, with amounts from $10 to $75 depending on which Craigslist site is going to be getting the ad. Even with that source of income however, Craigslist still makes in the range of tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in a single calendar year.

One of the biggest reasons that many sellers these days are interested in Craigslist is the potential for making money on the website. The internet is really the ultimate free market in many ways with people trading goods and services for different values that are designated between two people. There is very little government interference in what goes on in places like Craigslist and that certainly suits many people just fine.

When you take a look at Craigslist, what you will see is that there is such a high volume of ads posted that you really need to post things frequently in order to compete. For this reason, a much more hybrid strategy has developed on the part of many that now use Craigslist as part of a much broader and a much larger web 2.0 marketing campaign.

When Craigslist is used in this fashion, it actually does have the ability to help people drive traffic to their websites. This is especially good if you have content-based websites that you think people will like. This is because Craigslist tends to have ultra-responsive internet types that will bookmark your site and visit it frequently if it has good content that is regularly updated.

For Car Dealers, Craigslist has become an ultimate Auto Mall:

Where thousands of dealerships compete for the top listing.  It has turned into all-out war for car dealers to keep their ads fresh and on the top of the other daily ads, and since all the listings are free, the Return on Investment is a huge home run.  The problems with posting inventory, is trying to remain compliant with Craigslist Terms of use.  The rules change weekly to keep Car Dealers from over posting and duplicating ads.  These rules can be confusing to dealers and the ads can be very time consuming if you have over 20 cars on your lot.  If 2 hours were spent posting inventory, only to notice that none of your ads appeared, would be very alarming.

A posting tool for Car Dealers is imperative to showcase all inventory and drive more traffic back to website or webpage, save time and make sure all the ads appear and remain live for the classified shopper to reach and call back into the dealership.  There are several different types of posting tools a car dealer can use for getting inventory on Craigslist.  One way is to use a manual posting tool, with a dashboard that shows your ads and keeps you informed on ghosting ( ads that disappeared), flagged ( marked inappropriate or reported for spam by competitors) and/or deleted postings .  It should also include a comprehensive way to see how many people looked at your ads and how many clicked or called.

The other type of posting tool used by many car dealers is a Hands-free posting tool, where the software will post for the dealer, and all the dealer personnel has to do is to answer the phone calls and answer the emails. As far as the software, it is important to always check to see if the software is Craigslist compliant, to avoid your dealership from being fined or black listed.

No matter what system you choose, it is very important to get inventory on Craigslist, and keep it there.  There are a high volume of ads posted daily, so you really need to post things frequently in order to compete.  With over 20 million visitors, it is a huge marketplace for buyers, not just shoppers.  It is a huge Auto Mall and the shoppers are going to choose the best ads to call inquire more information.