Craigslist? Puhleaze....

If I see one more WSO talking about how great Craigslist is for marketing an offline consultancy business, I may scream. Beyond that, I may personally hunt down and eviscerate the person touting it!

Now I am perfectly willing to admit that maybe it's just me, but...

I've rarely encountered a site that is a bigger waste of time or pain in the ass.

First, they make it harder and harder to use in any effective way day by day. There are more and more hoops to leap through, and more and more restrictions.

Second, assuming you have the patience to use it at all, it's nigh-on to worthless anyway.

Then there's another issue. That being, with all these purveyors of WSOs telling would-be offline consultants to use CL, it's like having a pack of sharks in a koi pond. In other words... there ain't nuthin' left sans the blood in the water.

IMHO, the pickings on Craigslist are thin to begin with. After all, this is a haunt of people with no money or those looking for cheapo bargains. Is that who YOU want to work with?

Sure, you might—occasionally, if you're very lucky—run across somebody who is realistic and has a real budget. But don't count on it, and don't tell me that busy businesspeople who know the score are spending time there—'cause they aren't!

The freebee seekers and time-wasters are rampant!

Now being an incredibly stubborn cuss, I've tried anything and everything I can think of in both listing ads and responding to them. I've tried long listings and short ones. Long headlines and short ones. Clever headlines, shocking headlines, snappy headlines...

Whatever.

It doesn't seem to matter. I either get incredibly crappy results—or none at all.

Frankly, it just isn't and never has been worth my time. And unless you're a CL genius, it won't be worth yours either.

So when a WSO provider tells you that "all you gotta do is go on Craigslist," run the other way, brother. The "glory days" of CL are about 5 years in the rearview mirror. Like Google Adwords and eBay, it's now become a total pain in the ass to use. But unlike those, one of very dubious efficacy.