You're in a tough spot.

As far as IM goes: CL marketing is, believe it or not, among the hardest platforms for marketers. If we go back to the inception of CL, and a few years thereafter, any fool could make a huge ROI. And if anyone missed the boat - that really is a crying shame. Then, always happens, people discovered the profit potential. Money was earned. People wanted more. But there's only so many hours in a day and only so much of one marketer to go around. Solution? Bots. Money - for some - escalated around this point. Trouble is - most of the people hammering CL were using BH tactics, bots being one of them, so CL had to combat the issue or risk the usefulness of their service being eroded.

The climate you're working in now is one where competition is harsh as hell and CL themselves are just as harsh. Hard. As. Hell.

Which is not to say, it's a poor place to market. It just isn't a location I'd ever advise for anyone but the experienced - with cash to spend.

Upshot...

If I were in your situation, I'd concentrate on growing a strong social presence.

Tom

If the ad is getting flagged before it goes live then it's not your competitors. You are being flagged automatically because cl thinks your ad is spam.

To help other people in this situation. If you're being flagged before going live, as midasmarketing points out, it's because your account is marked as spam.

Usual reasons:

- Multiple flags
- Posting the same content in multiple locations
- Multiple location posting
- Keywords in ads
- Flagged links in ads
- Negative words in ad (cumulatively lead to reviews)
- Posting too fast
- Certain type of content
- Complaints
- A few other things you don't need to know if you're WH (mentioning them will only aid BH marketers, by giving work-arounds).

What can you do? Contact CL.

You're going to be tempted to make another account, which will only lead to further problems, unless you know the workarounds (which I'm not about to explain).

Tom

If I were you I would stay away from craigslist and use Backpage instead.

It is so much better because they don't stalk you as much as Craigslist plus you
get better leads and customers!

Hope that helps!

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Here you mentioned that before published your ad, it removed. That means the authority remove your ad. I am sure, you are breaking the rules & regulations of the CL. If you want to use the CL, you must accept the terms & conditions of the CL. The CL does not allow the redundancy. You are not allowed the same post / same content/ some image to use in various place. It is one kind of SPAM. You should read the Terms & Conditions of the CL, then you should start again. Thanks for sharing.

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Try a VPN like Hidemyass, you can test it for a month at $10, that way there's a buffer between you & CL.

Obviously don't use the same email or CL account. Clear browser history/cache.

I would try back page and see how it goes.

Haven't checked on this thread in awhile. The problem was CL robots had identified my account as a spammer.

Problem fixed simply by (gasp) creating a new account and limiting new postings to once per 24 hour period.

To people saying CL is not a good way to advertise - I disagree. Depends on the business of course, but I get solid response/sales from CL. The flagging wars with competitors and constantly creating and bumping ads is extra work, no doubt....but brute force wins.

Glad you sorted out your flagging issues. No doubt it's extra work, but you get out of it what you put into it. The range of lead quality from Craigslist is no different than any other platform but you can at least fine tune your ad content to somewhat target your audience.

In terms of competitor flagging, your best defense against that is diversifying your ad content utilizing multiple ad versions, ad titles and even phone numbers. Don't make it easy fro your competitors by leaving too many bread crumbs. That also applies to the Craigslist filters, so worth the effort also.

My feeling on CL is "abandon all hope." They only allow you to post 3 ads a day. Once you post an ad, it can easily be flagged. If you put an online dating affiliate site ad in the personals section, for instance, you can probably expect that will be flagged and removed very fast. If you just stick to 3 ads only per day and don't place them in sections where you shouldn't, then you would be okay, but that's a paltry amount, so CL is not something you want to invest much energy in. I know there may be schemes out there to try to work around it, but I don't recommend that.

P.S. You can also use BackPage.com.

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