How to Use Craigslist to Increase Website Traffic

It is very easy to get overwhelmed with all of the

rapidly changing marketing strategies and online

advertising schemes that seem to proliferate

across the Internet. Your average online

entrepreneur, such as a small business owner,

author, artist, or website developer, often finds

themselves struggling with implementing many of

these seemingly foolproof techniques. I know,

because I have been in that position myself after

launching my website about my personal passion,

open source website design. I was a computer

engineer and a writer, not an Internet marketing

expert, and I had to work out a way to get web

traffic to my sites, one that I could actually do

with my limited time and money. This article is a

way to share the insights I have found that

started boosting my web traffic and sales.

Let’s start by looking at some of the reasons why

the “systems” you read about in typical online

marketing books do not work well for the average

person:

1. Many of these guides or strategies are

written by people who do not have REAL-WORLD

online business experience. Things are different

in the actual Internet trenches than in some

academic marketing class, as you probably already

have found out. I got really sick of reading

books, written by so called experts (probably

professors) because it wasted my time and money.

2. Most online marketing strategies are geared

for the “big guys”, websites and online businesses

with the deep pockets and specialized personnel

needed to implement effective, large scale

marketing and sales campaigns. I didn’t have a

team or seed money, it was just me. No matter how

well written a strategy is the only thing that

counts online is (traffic & sales) per (cost &

time of doing it).

Most of you reading this are starting online

products and/or websites have real strengths and

passions - that is what drives us forward. You may

also be trying to bootstrap an operation on very

limited funds, alone or with a small team, with a

laser-like focus on getting your online product

(website, e-book, etc) completed. If you are like

me, you may have already found that your

“finished” website is only getting a dribble of

visitors, with almost no sales - very

demoralizing. You need web traffic to generate

more product sales or Google Adsense advertising

revenue.

I knew that I needed a way to convert my sweat

equity (writing about what I am passionate about)

into a marketing strategy that reached real people

interested in the lessons and materials I was

providing on my website. I found that the best

vehicle was Craigslist.org, which for years has

been one of the fastest growing websites on the

Internet, and which provides almost the ideal

environment for viral marketing. I say “almost”

because there are some limitations to Craigslist

(these turn out to be critically important

strengths) which have to be understood before you

can capitalize on this amazing resource:

* Craigslist.org is not a single, unified

national or international website.

* It is intrinsically a local resource only.

It is designed to do one thing and that is to

provide each craigslist market city or town or

region with a local classified ad system.

* If you spend any time reading about

Craigslist.org or about its creator Craig Newmark,

you will see that it actually limits you to

posting “local” ads only. You can’t go to

tampa.craigsist.org for instance and find a way to

post your information to all 289+ cities across

the US or world with one click.

* I found that it is best not to waste time

and money on the automated posting software that

is available out there. It blatantly violates the

Craigslist.org terms-of-use, and will ultimately

get your posts banned.

* People like you and I that use

Craigslist.org sites to buy things or find out

information are in general extremely savvy about

ignoring anything that looks spam-like, and they

will quickly flag spam-like postings for deletion,

ultimately wasting your time and effort.

* Knowing the demographics of the areas

covered by each of the 289 “local” Craigslist

markets (where are they located, how many people

use them, what are the race, sex, and ages?) will

help you reach the most people with the

demographic “profile” you want to reach out to,

with the least effort.

As a Computer Engineer, I have over 15 years of

experience using Geographic Information System

(GIS) to analyze things like population changes,

so I used that knowledge to help me put together

maps and demographic reports for each Craigslist

website. First I used the GIS to geolocate each

website based on the city, town, or region in its

website name. This was not trivial, but resulted

in terrific map resource. See the resources at the

end of this article for a link to a free map of

the sites I put into a Google Map. Then I used

Census and other available demographic data

sources to mine for data I could link to each of

them. It was a very time consuming process, but I

ended up with a unique series of maps, reports,

and data files profiling each of the 289 US

craigslist.org market areas. I then began using

these to focus my own posting efforts to reach the

most potential customers for my open source

website. I started seeing results, which I could

track using Google Analytics. Slow but sure is how

I would characterize my campaign, always being

respectful of other craigslist users. I learned

how to use the built-in craigslist.org account to

manage my posts, and honed some simple techniques

to make professional, but not over-the-top posts.

I started sharing my materials with my friends,

and then decided to offer this all as its own e-

book. Here are some other observations about how

things have gone while doing this myself:

1. There is one important indirect benefit for

using Craigslist.org as a primary marketing tool -

increasing traffic from Google searches. Now a lot

of material is out there on Search Engine

Optimization or SEO, and you should follow every

recommendation you reasonably can to make your

product pages and websites look enticing to all

the search engines; however, that in itself can be

an overwhelming project for the average webmaster.

I do not know if my craigslist.org posts, which

are essentially links back to my website, directly

boost my page rankings, but I do see those posts

appear as first page search page results in many

cases.

2. It is amazing how fast Google and the other

engines pick up on new posts. I have experienced

that using craigslist.org in this way has been

more effective for me than paying for Google’s

Adwords system.

3. Using Google Analytics, I can see the

traffic coming from my various posts. This gives

you a method to track which Craigslist sites are

producing the most visitors for you. Once again,

it helps you redirect your efforts.

You can learn more about these techniques in my e

-book, where I cover the “how-to” in detail and I

include all the demographic data and maps that I

talked about earlier. While I can’t guarantee that

you will have the exact same experiences as I

have, the fact that my original websites are still

generating visitors and revenue means that I am

still out there, like you, fighting for my piece

of the Internet’s exciting and elusive web

traffic. Good luck with your project.