How to not get Ghosted on CL

17 replies
So Ive been reading a lot of threads lately about CL. People are talking about how powerful of a tool it is and there is no doubt about that. However, people are mentioning that it can be powerful if you dont get ghosted. My question is, what does it take to get ghosted? Ive always heard a general rule of posting no more than 3 ads a day and obviously no duplicate content. What advise do you guys have?
#ghosted
  • Profile picture of the author OrangeBull
    Don't violate the TOS.

    Sounds simple, but if you play within the rules, you should be fine.

    The problem with not playing within the rules is that such activity has been deemed to be a felony under federal anti-hacking statutes that weren't designed for such instances, and there is an unresolved dispute amongst the federal circuit courts as to whether or not a violation of a TOS IS or IS NOT a crime.

    My simple rule is, don't do anything that could be construed as a felony. Felonies are bad, they land you in jail.
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    • Profile picture of the author ThePhantom
      Originally Posted by OrangeBull View Post

      Don't violate the TOS.

      Sounds simple, but if you play within the rules, you should be fine.

      The problem with not playing within the rules is that such activity has been deemed to be a felony under federal anti-hacking statutes that weren't designed for such instances, and there is an unresolved dispute amongst the federal circuit courts as to whether or not a violation of a TOS IS or IS NOT a crime.

      My simple rule is, don't do anything that could be construed as a felony. Felonies are bad, they land you in jail.
      Yes everything he said. Play by the rules and you are good.
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  • Profile picture of the author jvm127
    Or if you don't want to play by the rules since I assume you don't or you wouldn't be asking try this...

    All you need to have multiple Craig's list accounts is multiple email addresses with multiple phone numbers. It's extremely easy to do this. Open as many gmail accounts as you want and add a google voice account to each one. Google voice will give you a unique phone number for every account and you can have all of them forwarded to your cell phone so you can get the confirmation code Craig's List sends easily.

    Some rules to remember:

    -Never post the same exact ad
    -Do not post a similar ad twice in the same city
    -Do not post more than one ad with the same phone number, link to a website, etc..
    -Never post more than 3 ads/hour per account. There is actually a chart somewhere where you can see how many Craig's List will allow you to post. It may be more than this but I use 3 as a rule of thumb.
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    • Profile picture of the author mbreezy
      Originally Posted by jvm127 View Post

      Or if you don't want to play by the rules since I assume you don't or you wouldn't be asking try this...

      All you need to have multiple Craig's list accounts is multiple email addresses with multiple phone numbers. It's extremely easy to do this. Open as many gmail accounts as you want and add a google voice account to each one. Google voice will give you a unique phone number for every account and you can have all of them forwarded to your cell phone so you can get the confirmation code Craig's List sends easily.

      Some rules to remember:

      -Never post the same exact ad
      -Do not post a similar ad twice in the same city
      -Do not post more than one ad with the same phone number, link to a website, etc..
      -Never post more than 3 ads/hour per account. There is actually a chart somewhere where you can see how many Craig's List will allow you to post. It may be more than this but I use 3 as a rule of thumb.
      When is the last time you used G Voice to pva a CL account? I don't think that has worked for a long time. There are other solutions but it's more expensive.
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  • Profile picture of the author OrangeBull
    If you're going to break the rules in the way jvm suggests, then my other piece of advice would be do what must be done to not get caught.

    Buy a burner cell phone to forward that information to so that there is no easy link to you.

    Also use Onion Routing from a laptop on a free public wifi location, posting via multiple paid private proxy servers that you have gained access to via an anonymous prepaid Visa card, like Vanilla Visa offers which can be used for anonymous online purchasing.

    Just my two cents on how to avoid being detected when choosing to operate in such a manner.
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    • Profile picture of the author TroyCo
      Originally Posted by OrangeBull View Post

      If you're going to break the rules in the way jvm suggests, then my other piece of advice would be do what must be done to not get caught.

      Buy a burner cell phone to forward that information to so that there is no easy link to you.

      Also use Onion Routing from a laptop on a free public wifi location, posting via multiple paid private proxy servers that you have gained access to via an anonymous prepaid Visa card, like Vanilla Visa offers which can be used for anonymous online purchasing.

      Just my two cents on how to avoid being detected when choosing to operate in such a manner.
      this is ridiculous, posting to CL doesn't make you a meth dealer with the feds about to bust down your door.

      1 - the number of ads you can post depends on the section, for services you can post 3 daily

      2 - you can set up a CL account as long as you can access the phone number to get the text code they will send you a few times when your account is new, I have 3 accounts

      3 - change up each ad, post no more than 3 times daily and clear cookies and search history after you log out of your CL account and you will be fine

      I get 2 to 3 new customers every week that pay $300 + from craigslist
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    • Profile picture of the author Bruce Wedding
      Originally Posted by OrangeBull View Post

      If you're going to break the rules in the way jvm suggests, then my other piece of advice would be do what must be done to not get caught.

      Buy a burner cell phone to forward that information to so that there is no easy link to you.

      Also use Onion Routing from a laptop on a free public wifi location, posting via multiple paid private proxy servers that you have gained access to via an anonymous prepaid Visa card, like Vanilla Visa offers which can be used for anonymous online purchasing.

      Just my two cents on how to avoid being detected when choosing to operate in such a manner.
      Wow. Remind me not to piss you off.
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  • Profile picture of the author DWaters
    Some other ideas are to not post too many ads in the same category, even if it is in a different city. The use of special symbols in the title could cause you a problem and some URL shorteners are banned by CL. Image location needs to be varied and some image storage sites may cause a problem. CL watches a lot of stuff!
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  • Profile picture of the author AlohaSoldier89
    Wow a lot more complicated than I had thought!
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  • Profile picture of the author DWaters
    Yes, Craigslist can follow into the "nothing is as simple as you think it should be" category. They are constantly changing what they do and sometimes it seems that it does not make a lot of sense.
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  • Profile picture of the author Moneymaker2012
    How craiglist posting can be beneficial and what does ghosted means? sorry but i do not know any thing about CL so far.
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    • Profile picture of the author onSubie
      Originally Posted by Moneymaker2012 View Post

      How craiglist posting can be beneficial and what does ghosted means? sorry but i do not know any thing about CL so far.
      Craiglist is a huge online classified ad site that is almost the number one online classified site in most cities in the US and Canada. I don't know about other areas of the world- although they have boards.

      The categories make it easy to target specific markets and you can put images and links in your ads so people can click right through to your site.

      And it's free.

      "Ghosted" means your ad looks like it posted. Your posting is confirmed and it says it is active in your list of ads, but the ad never actually appears on Craigslist so nobody can see it.
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      • Profile picture of the author Bcable37
        CL tools / sites I like:

        cladtracker (tracks your ad views and click throughs)
        PVAspot (geo tartgeted pvas for multiple accounts)
        Ccleaner (to easily delete cookies after each ad posting)

        If CL starts ghosting you, they usually continually get stricter on that account and it eventually gets to where no ads will stick. When it gets to that point you need another account.

        3 things needed for each new account:

        different email (gmail)
        different phone number (cell, home phone,pvas)
        different IP address (proxy or what I have done sometimes is power down my cell phone and then power it back on. A new IP is normally assigned and I use my cell to create the new account. I have an iphone, not sure if androids work the same way.)

        I used to do a lot of text ads with links and constantly ran into ghosting issues. I started doing clickable image ads and my stick rate was 10 times better. With an image ad, CL's bots do not decipher what content is in the image so the only thing they go off of is the source of your URL. CL does seem to like some plain text added to the listing. A friend recommended that I add something like "reference # 12345" or "ad # 12345" after the image. Change the numbers around for each ad. Adding the text like that further increased my stick rate.

        The job section is usually under the most scrutiny by CL and getting ghosted is likely to happen if you post there frequently.

        My first day marketing on CL I made $250. I started last November.
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        • Profile picture of the author serryjw
          Originally Posted by Bcable37 View Post

          CL tools / sites I like:

          cladtracker (tracks your ad views and click throughs)
          PVAspot (geo tartgeted pvas for multiple accounts)
          Ccleaner (to easily delete cookies after each ad posting)

          If CL starts ghosting you, they usually continually get stricter on that account and it eventually gets to where no ads will stick. When it gets to that point you need another account.

          3 things needed for each new account:

          different email (gmail)
          different phone number (cell, home phone,pvas)
          different IP address (proxy or what I have done sometimes is power down my cell phone and then power it back on. A new IP is normally assigned and I use my cell to create the new account. I have an iphone, not sure if androids work the same way.)

          I used to do a lot of text ads with links and constantly ran into ghosting issues. I started doing clickable image ads and my stick rate was 10 times better. With an image ad, CL's bots do not decipher what content is in the image so the only thing they go off of is the source of your URL. CL does seem to like some plain text added to the listing. A friend recommended that I add something like "reference # 12345" or "ad # 12345" after the image. Change the numbers around for each ad. Adding the text like that further increased my stick rate.

          The job section is usually under the most scrutiny by CL and getting ghosted is likely to happen if you post there frequently.

          My first day marketing on CL I made $250. I started last November.
          An Abundance of knowledge!! Thanks...HOW do recommend to get into the CL search engine w/o text keywords below the clickable image ads?
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  • Profile picture of the author Reese Fabro
    you can post the same ad 3 times but then you cant post a 4th and you can post multiple ads from the same account.
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  • Profile picture of the author optimization
    I also having problem in Craigslist posting that is quick flagging.

    I just trying to post multiple ads using a single PVA in single category (for sale/by owner). But I've noticed that all of my posted ads are showing flagged before it's going live !

    What's new rules in For sales section posting? 1 PVA for 1 ads in 48 hours? or something else.

    Did somebody faced same problem like me?
    Have any solution to post multiple ads in same city (For sale) using single account?

    Thanks
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