By now if you haven't heard of Craigslist, welcome back to the real world from under that rock you've been living under for years. Craigslist isn't just a place to sell your used Buick or pawn off a broken blender, it's an amazing way to drive tons of traffic for free. The key is knowing how to word your ads so the flag happy community doesn't bring your CL campaign to a screeching halt.



Spam has become Craigslist's worst nightmare and it's not hard to see why. Go to the electronics section in NY or LA and you'll see hundreds upon hundreds of ads that all follow the same format and have annoying characters in their title making it incredibly hard to wade through ads for genuine posts. In any of the major markets an abundance of spam is going to be your main competition so to help yourself stand out, try to have several accounts so you can post a few times throughout the day to make sure people see your ad.



One of the easiest groups to target is younger kids who use Craigslist trying to find video games or cell phones for cheap. Just like any incentive traffic, the better the promise, the more likely they are to fill out a survey to find out what you are offering. CPALead's ASD is perfect for targeting kids on Craigslist. Set up a quick site offering the hottest new cell phone or the hottest new video game(right now it would be the Droid and Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2) for completing surveys. Set your bar ridiculously high. The more surveys required to get the prize, the less likely they are to complete all the way to the end. People will still do a few surveys to see if they can get close to getting the prize but will 95% of the time give up after completing a few so you get paid for the ones they finish and don't have to pay out a prize since they didn't meet the requirements to cash out.



When you go to make your post for Craigslist, don't just say get such and such for free, entice people into reading the ad while being vague enough so that you don't get flagged and have your ad taken down. It's also a great idea to not make the surveys jump out at people on the main page of your site so that your ad will be more likely to stay up longer. You need to make your ad believable so don't just say "Free game or free phone here" and then link to your survey page. Instead you want to offer up a story as to why you're giving it to them. Saying you have an easily fixable broken phone or received multiple copies of a game are more likely to be believed and help your ad stay live.



For any deal that seems good people will click through and if people don't like what they see, your ad will be flagged. Having a good story as to why you want someone to do a survey will help extend your ad time. Say you've had an unbelievable amount of spam from posting Craigslist ads so you had to put a gateway up to make sure it's a real person answering the ad. Be Creative and the amount of profit you have can multiply exponentially.



Everyday people on Craigslist see scams and everyday scammers try to switch strategies to stay one step ahead of the flaggers. Be different and set yourself apart and you will be rewarded with bigger returns. If something is not working in one city, try switching cities and changing up your ad wording. Always make sure to check your ad(s) 10-15 minutes after you post to make sure they haven't gotten ghosted(where CL tells you it posted but your ad doesn't show). Nine times out of ten an ad gets ghosted because of a flagged word. Unfortunately there is no list of banned words, but words like participants, get rich online, etc. will keep your ad from ever being seen.