I can post on Craigslist. How do I monetize?

Post an offer that is too good to refuse

There are many ways to monetize off Craigslist. Usually you can find a joint venture who has affiliate connections and split the profit together.

Many have made a living off Craigslist. If you're not getting the margins you want, it's time to look for a different niche.

Just curious. Are you able to successfully post in challenging sections? And are you using a freelancer or service to do so?

If you're able to post in cars/trucks, you should be able to find many affiliate networks that will take Craigslist leads. I know of a few myself.

I'm able to post in the difficult sections fairly successfully. Cars/trucks, apts/housing but I'm still struggling to find networks that takes Craigslist leads.

Many of the networks have very stringent requirements that make my margins incredibly low. For instance, a housing affiliate network that I know only pays out when the lead is on their site for 2+ minutes.

Very frustrating because they could count anything as a "lead".

The other idea is to build a business that will be profitable so long as you funnel in your own leads. That might be worth looking into.

I would look into maximizing your conversion if that's what you're struggling with. Set up appropriate analytics and look at bottlenecks of conversion. If you can increase conversion, you can increase your profit.

As others have said, this is a great problem to have.

You only need to find an easy and consistent monetization method and you should be good to go.

Question for you, how did you start posting consistently on Craigslist?

There are a lot of great resources on this forum detailing how to do it. The problem is that a lot of them get deleted quickly so I generally try to save the content and try it out for later.

Use the search functionality and look up some of the Craigslist posting question/advice on the main forum.

There should be plenty of opportunity in the cars/trucks section. Especially the "by owner" section.

Perhaps post something in the Joint Venture section?

What is the best way to know if an affiliate ad network is worth it or pays out well.

Is there a list esomewhere that has reviews on which networks are good?

Thanks for the info, guys.

Thank you. What advice would you have for maximizing the conversion of the ads.

Like I said, my biggest issue is finding reliable networks that have standardized way of counting what "ads" go towards the payout, rather than maximizing conversion. Though that is important, I admit.

The best affiliate ad networks I've found are for smaller niches. I would recommend searching there first.

Avoid the bigger ones, simply because they are so well known that the payout is low. But the "measure" of the payout is quite standardized and easy to understand.

Justin, thanks for the insights on your posting processes.

Would you mind sharing how you get your live ratio so quickly? Pehraps pwe can help each other out.

For me, the biggest challenege was finding a reliable poster.
There are plenty of "in-house" solutions, but of course you need a ihgh-level of expertise in order to even begin doing that.

I would recommend a few members here to help you. You can easily find them via search on the threads or by just private messaging me.

One advice that worked well for me was keyword stuffing for Craigslist. It actually increases live ratio and maximizes the conversion when the lead sees there are relevant keywords in your ad. They are more likely to click / follow-through on the funnel.

How are you finding relevant keywords for stuffing though? It seems like you would have to put arbitrary keywords in the bottom of the ad itself, which would lead to LOWER conversion, no?

I can also say that keyword "stuffing" has worked well for me in terms of squeezing out the payout per ad for the affiliate network. I disagree that it would affect the conversion of the actual ad -> link. But it definitely helps for getting ranked within the search terms that users are searching for.

You must think like your target audience in this case.

I advise almost all of my clients (many are on this forum and can vouch for this advice) to NOT stuff keywords. Not only does it result in a lower live ratio in the long-run because Craigslist is explicitly against it, it also tends to lead to a lower conversion ratio. This is from many split-tested experiments.

You might see a short-term gain in revenue, but it's not a wse idea for long-term.

Craigslistpostingclub, what would you recommend for content? I am having trouble putting up content that is able to convert my ads -> leads?
I've tried many different ways (domain / phone numbers / emails).

Best way to maximize your ads -> leads:

- Ensure that your ad copy is concise. Bullet point format. This not only makes it easier for the eyes, but it also avoids unnecessary trigger words with the Craigslist filtering system.
- Make sure you are able to accommodate all modes of contact (email, phone number, phone text). The more people you accommmodate, the better you conversion rate.
- Leave just enough information out that you entice the reader to click and contact you. Too much information overwhelms the reader.

I've started to optimize my campaign thank to your advice, Craigslistpostingclub.

I am wondering... do you handle the "lead funnel" system for your clients? In other words, one of the issues I'm having is that a lot of my affiliates want the "real email" of the leads, not the Craigslist masked email. What would you suggest for that?

Justin, why not use the Craigslist masked email as default, and then via email, you can set up an autoresponder to simply ask for the real email?
That way, you get the best of both worlds -- maximization of ads -> leads conversion and you are able to fulfill the requests for your affiliate.

An auto-responder is one solution that many of my clients use in order to respond to emails.

At a scale of 100-300 ads/day, it becomes very hard to manage all the emails with custom replies. At the end of the day, many people just want the lead response anyway.
I would recommend using an auto-responder (and it is fairly easy to setup), but I would not recommend asking for the real email in that capacity.

Many people severely underestimate how sophisticated the Craigslist email filters are which get applied when you respond to Craigslist relay emails. They have fortified that email filter to defend against spammers who harvest and scrape hundreds and thousands of CL relay emails and market to those Craigslist advertisers. I have seen so-called software solutions which attempt to automate that process encounter complex Google captcha codes from those Craigslist email filters which are very difficult to solve.

So, it's strongly advisable to mix up your outgoing email adress, email subject, email body text, etc when responding to CL relay emails. Unless auto responders are customized, they cannot accomplish all that spinning. That means although you think you are reaching those respondents, your email responses are not being delivered. This all applies when you are responding to a high volume of CL relay emails.

I would not recommend the above approach because Craigslist tightly monitors the content of the email.

One of the advantages of using the proxy system is that all content passes through the main server for analysis.
This means it would be trivial to identify any emails passing through in the body of your response.

Stfenhuse, can you elaborate more on what you mean by "analyze the content of the email"?

I've been using an auto-responder with the posting service, posting 100+ ads/day and it seems to work fine.
Just curious to know why that's a bad idea.

Of course, not everybody knows how Craigslist works. But the simple idea is that they maintain a main server where they can analyze all content.
Whether they choose to blacklist you or not is up to them.

It is trivial to look for a regex pattern of "@yahoo.com" or "@gmail.com" to detect if you are requesting the real email from the masked relay.
That's why it's a bad idea.

When I post at scale (700-1000+ ads/day), any kind of campaign footprint like that is a dead giveaway. You want to be sure to mix things up.

I am having the same issue where affiliates are requesting the real email of a lead.

One solution, that may lower your conversion, is to promote a website that requests a sign-up of a landing page.
Basically, I use a LaunchRock page that requests the email of my leads. That way I don't need to mess with the masked relay.

Does anybody else find that setting a "no-reply" or a "reply with real email" lowers the live ratio of their ads?
I thought this would be a good solution, but it's tough to handle the tradeoff of live ratio.

As I mentioned before, it's best to accommodate all avenues of traffic.

The wider your traffic channel is, the more leads will come in. It's that simple.

With my clients, I let them know off the bat that they should use masked relay + phone number + text.

It's also not worth the hit in live ratio to check "no-reply" or "reply with real email"

Craigslistpostingclub, do you usually recommend split-testing the landing page of your website for your leads?

What tools would you recommend for that? How do I gather analytics on my site. My ads span different domains.
And it gets difficult to manage.

With my posting, I set all my domains (they are fairly cheap and I always recommend .com's because they get the highest conversion).
Then you just set the DNS to point to the same server. You can easily rotate through different domains and obscure a campaign footprint in this way.

For split-testing, I help my clients set up different tools:
- Google Analytics for tracking metrics (unique users)
- Mixpanels for more advanced funnel tracking. You're able to define different steps in your funnel and see where people drop off.

But the best advice I can give you is to set up Google Analytics and track the way your uniques change when you tweak your campaign.

With Craiglist, I am able to post multiple ads across many cities. When Craiglist used to allow HTML, I was able to post a large banner into categories like business opportunities multiple times throughout the day without getting sand boxed. The ads would stay live for weeks, even months, able to generate leads on virtual auto-pilot with a few copy and pastes throughout the day. I was able to then place those leads into an aggressive marketing campaign generating thousands for me.

Everything changed however. They no longer allow HTML, they sandboxed me more, and I was only allowed to use a few ads throughout the day. NOT LIKE THE OLD DAYS. So I was spoiled, and did not like the change in the results. Without getting upset, I just focused on more on my campaigns with Twitter, Facebook, etc in order to generate leads. However, it is a lot more work, and to really get the results with not as much work, you have to generate a paying ad campaign with a big return on investment. Since I have always been spoiled with the FREE - Then make income route, it became difficult because the learning curve with paid tactics are horrible. I just do not have the budget or I guess the expertise to run a successful paid ad campaign. I could make money but not the monies that will allow me to just sit back and live off the income like most people Preach and show in the various video offers, etc. What I can say is most likely these people have a large budget, maybe even a trust fund that allows instant access to a lot of capital that will allow them to find out exactly how to run a successful ad campaign and then being able to budget accordingly in the future.

Can anyone recommend the legit honest low cost Craigslist advertising companies they use?

When Craigslist allowed for HTML, I was able to convert a lot more. These days, it's extremely difficult to convert from Craigslist.
The ads you post get deleted by your competitors so quickly, and it's simply hard to monetize. I don't even know why people try.

There are many of us here that make quite a profitable living off CL without posting even that many ads.
I only post about 150-200 live ads/day and I'm making a handsome living that I'm able to do what I want to do.
No need for a 9-5 ... it is difficult, but these days, there are some really good posting services that you'll be able to post extremely quickly.

I've been using CL for over 5 years now to generate leads for my web development business. It's not a consistent lead source, as I rely on PPC, SEO, and strategic partnerships, however, I've gotten several deals from CL over the years, including a $20k+ web dev deal.

It's all about testing out variations of ads, posting at various times, etc..

I'm currently starting a new campaign. I can still post VERY successfully.... how much time do you guys spend optimizing your landing page?
I can send a lot of Craigslist traffic around, but I struggle to be able to monetize it still. Currently, my focus is in optimizing landing page.

Very interesting that you're able to get a lot of Craigslist traffic via posting. A lot of people have the opposite problem.
When I started posting, I found that the easiest way is to take the optimization process step-by-step.
Start with a funnel, and add successive steps until you find out where your bottleneck is.

Being able to post a lot of traffic isn't that great if you're able to only make $0.20 or $0.30 off of each one.
Still in a sticky situation and looking for more answers.
I think the conversion of my ad -> landing page is pretty good. Any suggestions?

Justin, my suggestion, if you are struggling so much but still able to post about 150-200 live ads/day is this...
Find a network of affiliates that will buy Craigslist traffic and simply hand it off to them.

Any recommendations on where to find an affiliate? I feel like it's so hard these days to find them. I was referred to a few but all of them seem to require an application.
And I just haven't heard back yet.

In my experience, the best way to find affiliates is via word-of-mouth. You'll need to ask around to be able to find ones that pay out regularly AND accept Craigslist traffic.
Many of the affiliates that I know simply do not accept Craigslist traffic.

I second what beat ship is saying... I used to make money off of affiliates via banner ads HTML like another poster was saying.
You need to double-check the terms and conditions to make sure that the traffic you send is accepted.
For instance, a lot of affiliates hate apts/housing because nobody on CL is looking to put down a 50k down payment.

However, since you can post 150-200 live ads... you can just find some other profitable niche and experiment.

Justin, like others have said, it's great that you're able to post at scale. That's what many of us are trying to do.

Some friendly advice... befriend the Google Keywords tool - then find yourself a profitable niche. While you could just pass off leads to affiliates, you will make a LOT more money if you find a niche that suits you.
Then you're able to control the entire vertical, so to speak.

Starting a business is the best way to own the entire vertical. Instead of being a lead middleman, you can increase your margins by just taking control of the business itself.

I used to struggle with monetization myself on Craigslist. So few are accepting Craigslist traffic, that I wonder if CL leads are just bad.
What I realized is that you have to find the right niche. Think: what demographic of people are searching on Craigslist?

I cannot agree more with the idea of thinking like your niche demographic.

Most who are looking on Craigslist are generally looking to find a "deal" for local sources. This is the same way it works on local Facebook groups.
So you have a lot of subletters and used cars sellers. I would like into niches like those.

I have been looking into the subletting and low-income apartment renting niche and have been finding a few affiliates. However, most of them still require an application.
I am wondering how long this process takes... whether application is supposed to take week long? I would start a business if I could... but for now, I want to monetize on Craigslist posting first.

Personally, I think that Craigslist is dying because the traffic volume has fallen a lot since the past year or so.
It used to be that I could get a lot of traffic just by posting one live ad. Now I have to post 3-5... Anybody else have the same experience?

Honestly, I have not noticed significant traffic changes. I feel like if the traffic rate fell, then the affiliates would be charging more per sign up. That hasn't been the case for me.
Affiliates are still very happy with Craigslist leads, but it really depends on which niceh that you're working through.

Justin, can you comment on how you found your profitable niches? We know that posting is the hard part, but I feel like finding good niches is just as hard, if not harder.

I found my niches through the following strategy... which I will share here

1. Use the Google Keywords Tool you use for Adwords. This will show the general interest in certain keywords
2. Search on Craigslist to see populate keywords and niches in separate sections. What other people are advertising should give you a good idea of what's interesting.
3. Don't look for difficult niches that are obvious and overly advertised. There's too much competition there.
4. Once you find a few interesting niches, start posting with your posting system. Weigh the cost per ad between the generated revenue.

I second the Keywords tool. It's been extremely helpful in finding good niches to post in.
The toughest part is finding the delicate balance between a good niche that is interesting financially-speaking, and a niche that is overly saturated.

Finding the right niche to advertise in is definitely more of an art than a science. Or maybe it is a science, and I haven't figured it out yet haha.
Posting on Craigslist is easy if you can find the right connections. Craigslist traffic is still #1, in my opinion. It's one of the top 4 trafficked sites.

I'd be curious to hear about people's opinions on the Craigslist traffic. Interestingly enough, I've also seen a steady decline in Craigslist traffic, making it no longer useful to advertisers.
Craigslist is not a public company, so they don't release their financials. But I would be interested in seeing their margins.

Justin, another interesting thing you could do is expand to different classified listings... generally, a good niche performing on Craigslist will perform well in other niches.
It's a good idea to test your niches in multiple markets at once.

I'm interested in testing OfferUp and Letgo... if anybody has experience with these. The difficulty is that my posting system works so well for Craigslist but it has trouble with OfferUp and Letgo.
Unfortunately, if anybody can comment on the profitability of those websites, I'm all ears

I've tested those websites before and it's hard bargain to convince existing affiliates to accept traffic from these unknown websites. The best way to convince them is to give them a free trial of affiliates from those sources.
Then see what they have to say.

Justin, could you comment a bit on your posting system. What has made it so successful?
I'm interested in several niches myself on Craigslist but it's getting difficult to get them live.

The first thing I would advise anybody to do is to test out their campaigns on a small scale, to see what works.
Only when you see that it is profitable, should you start scaling up. It's interesting because I'm having an issue with monetization, not scaling.
I can post as much as I want, it seems, but it's difficult to find the right monetization opportunities these days.