For many, the CraigsList is a community website that uses Web 2.0 technology. This website, like many others of its kind, focuses on providing users with the ability to build an online community. Serving more than twenty million users each month, Craigslist.org is among the highest ranking sites on the web today.
So what does this mean to you? And how can you use Craigslist to your benefit?
Every month, more than 5 billion people hit Craigslist.com for information about products and services. Alexa.com reported in December of 2006 the site had 10 million unique viewers. That is a lot of publicity. Each day, more than 500,000 companies and individuals post job availabilities. Imagine, the biggest and best place to find a job, and even post a resume!
Founded in 1995 and incorporated in 1999, Craigslist offered listings in just nine US cities. Since then, Craigslist has expanded to include more than 450 cities across the globe.
The company became popular mainly by word-of-mouth as more and more people started using the site to place their classified and other assorted ads. The reason for its popularity? Ads are cheap and get a lot of exposure.
Craigslist now offers forums and message boards for its members. Among the more popular forums on the "List"is the "Erotic" forum, (for users over age 18). Craigslist allows just about anyone to post information about anything they have to offer. It is also heavily policed because of this to ensure ads are legitimate and legal.
I'm sure you can see the potential for building traffic by using Craigslist. Mostly, You do this with the free advertising available. As long as you follow a few guidelines and rules set up by the site, you can post classified ads relevant to almost 450 cities globally.
Finding Your Target Audience on Craigslist
We’ve already discussed the number of visitors using Craigslist each month but the key to taking advantage of these numbers is to target your advertising in a way aimed at reaching your target audience as opposed to a wide audience of individuals who have no specific interest in your products or services. It is much more worthwhile to reach a small audience of those with a keen interest in your products or services than to reach a much larger audience of those who are not interested. Those who have an interest in your products or services are your target audience.
The key to reaching your target audience on Craigslist is placing your advertisement in the most appropriate locations. Craigslist has a specific section for businesses to advertise their services. This section is broken down into a number of categories. Those who are in the business of computer repair would be wise to place their advertisement in the computer section as opposed to the automotive section because individuals looking for computer help will naturally migrate to the computer section. It may sometimes be appropriate to place an advertisement in more than one section. This is acceptable as long as it does not cross the line to spamming the section.
If there's not a specific section for the products or services offered by your business there are a couple of options. Business owners can place an advertisement in the section for small business advertisements where it might be found by those doing a search in this section. Alternately the business owner can contact Craigslist to suggest the addition of a new category. They might be willing to oblige if they believe this category warrants an addition.
To really take advantage of this method, you'll need to offer Craigslist users something of value for free or for a really great price... in order to get them to your site in the first place. Typically this would be a free report or ebook, or a deeply discounted video or something along those lines. This is how you build traffic via Craigslist.
Okay folks, that's today's traffic generation idea.
Until tomorrow,
Terry
