Sounds like your on the right track deckman. Although i don't see what rule from craigslist you may have violated and since i don't know what you posted it just may be an unjust flagging. Other than that, you seem to be correcting course to accomplish your goal. I use craigslist all the time and have to be careful what and where i post. Be creative and hit the keyboard consistently like i have. One idea is to make your own video of the process on youtube or vimeo and have pertinent info on it, then use that link to post on craigslist and other related sites. If they can see part of the process, it becomes more clear to them and more attractive. This may help set you apart from others who are doing the same thing you are. I see that you are a fellow Texan.

What exactly is 'ghosted'?

Could anyone who is successful in CL share some tips? thank you

Ghosted is when your ad post but it doesnt actually show up in the listings. I dont know how this is done or by whom but this is my understanding.
Maybe someone that understands it better will chime in.

LOL Yeah we get a lot of people migrating down here to escape the weather challenges from all over the U.S. Some good tips on how craigslist is changing. Posting several times helps to get that ad more visible because it moves down the line as more people post in that section. Ghosting is their tool for keeping down unwanted clutter due to many issues that they have been having. What helps is to have a post with a pic and a title in caps and attention grabbing wording. You can't go too overboard because someone may get offended and flag. If you make a video link, the video should be short and to the point maybe 3-5 minutes average time. I will be making a video for a product that is new and appeals to women's intimacy enhancement. That one will be interesting!

Craigslist is a fantastic place to get traffic. But you do need to know a few things about it, too.

1 - There's stiff competition, and many "lowballers" (as iAmNameLess so affectionately named it lol). You will most likely get better pricing and more customers using a different method such as organic SEO and PPC (PPC not recommended unless you know what you're doing).
2 - People who visit the site often want to squeeze your service for as much as they can possibly get. (Think Fiverr customers who want you to design their website, answer all of their questions, and give them a bag of cookies for only $5!)
3 - I have not been flagged on Craigslist lately, so unless you have been doing ridiculous spamming, then don't worry about that too much. If you are new and people have not seen you around, then you may get flagged AT FIRST, but once people see that you are a regular poster (and quite possibly a legitimate business), then you can post without worry.
4 - When you actually do get phone calls, you have to respond right away or your customers WILL find someone else! There are professional CL posters who will work fast and for lower pay, so do your best! Remember that you don't need all of the pieces of the pie to make a decent living, just enough.

Hope this helps. Cheers!

Try this: Hire someone or get a scraper bot that will scrape a specific category of CL that you want to send your offer to via email. I find it saves a lot of time VS trying to post CL all the time and worrying about ghosting etc...

Thanks to everyone that has had a input here. I have not gotten any call from the ad so I am thinking that the wording was a flop. So now its time to try another approach.
I have lots of great ideas from you guys and I still think that CL ca be a great source for leads. I just need to get that right combination. Quitting is not an option!

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In my opinion craigslist is not good for lead generation.I guess...If you want to generate lead generation so use linkedin and other social website

Being a contractor I use CL to post ads and it works although be it not quite as good as it used to. Now you have more and more competition and you have some that think this is the norm to be fighting for position, giving better prices than the competition as well as fighting the flagging. The areas that most contractors or other service oriented categories are free. You give them a better way to get above their competition and not have to fight all the BS that comes along with Free Ad Posting and the question is "Can they afford it?". But the real question is "Can they really not afford it?" when it gets them ahead of the game with out all the BS.

When you use CL you are getting amongst the people that really need a website, SEO or a well done Local Listing.

IMHO So all in all I have to respectfully disagree with rosesmark on "In my opinion craigslist is not good for lead generation." but agree with "If you want to generate lead generation so use linkedin and other social website "

Being a contractor I use CL to post ads and it works although be it not quite as good as it used to. Now you have more and more competition and you have some that think this is the norm to be fighting for position, giving better prices than the competition as well as fighting the flagging. The areas that most contractors or other service oriented categories are free. You give them a better way to get above their competition and not have to fight all the BS that comes along with Free Ad Posting and the question is "Can they afford it?". But the real question is "Can they really not afford it?" when it gets them ahead of the game with out all the BS.

When you use CL you are getting amongst the people that really need a website, SEO or a well done Local Listing.

IMHO So all in all I have to respectfully disagree with rosesmark on "In my opinion craigslist is not good for lead generation." but agree with "If you want to generate lead generation so use linkedin and other social website "

I will be straying from what this post was originally about here but I will tie it all together at the end so please bear with me as I think that some may find this useful.

I have been working with my ads on craigslist that I run for my local contracting biz for the last few days and it has actually been a lot of fun.
CL dosent allow any video but I learned a really slick way to have a video tied to the ad.

1-After you upload to youtube you can take a screenshot of it. Take the screenshot and load it on photobucket.

2- Copy the html code from photobucket and paste it in your CL ad.

3- Go to Edit ad and look for the html code you pasted from PB.

4- When you see href= "........" highlight the .... and paste the code from the youtube vid there.

5- It is actually a picture that looks like a youtube video and when they hover and click it will take them directly to the video.

You have not violated CL TOU and you have what one will think is a video directly in your CL ad. I think that videos are slowly taking over and someone would rather watch a video with a real voice to it giving info about the ad/company than having to just read some text.

Now to tie this with my original intention with this thread.
Use this technique to place a CL ad video explaining what a local listing can do for your traffic.

This may be old news to some of you veterans but its new and exciting to me. I know that the ultimate destination will be to outsource this stuff but being the hands on person that I am I need to understand what it is that I am doing before I can show/teach to outsource.

Craiglist got a lot of traffic. If you can use it to channel your business, that would be great. I myself use Craiglist in my marketing effort and it does create conversions. It's a free advertising medium, so you can always maximize the results. Craiglist is free but they have very strict "spiders" so it's important to follow their set of rules and guidelines or at least you know a trick or two on how to get around Craiglist.

1-2 ads a day honestly wont cut it. If you want to see real results your going to have to most more daily. Also change up your headlines so they dont get lost in the crowd of "be on page 1 of google"

Actually I have several ads up a day and they all have different titles. Even though I have gotten some ads indexed mostly CL is no follow. When I got the ads indexed as I was posting I changed the "no follow" to "follow" in the html code and got them indexed but the CL system caught on and and added the "no" back in to the code.

I have three different email accounts that I use and when one ad gets flagged I will then transfer it to another account and repost. It gets to be kind of a cat and mouse game so you have to stay at it. Once you get tour ads in there then every two to three days you can repost the same ad from the same account with out violating TOU.
I spend a few minutes in the morning then a few minutes in the evening posting and reposting so that I will catch people early and then late.
It works for my contracting biz now I am just trying to implement the same Local Listings SEO.

I have used craigslist for sometime and I created a video about how to generate leads with craigslist

here is one
How to generate leads with Craigslists | Internet Marketing Montreal

And in this one I will tell you how to maximize the effect of your posts to get the maximum response.

Craigslist As Part Of Your Online Marketing Strategy | Internet Marketing Montreal

Craigslist -> Offer = Bad/CL Traffic
Craigslist -> Optin -> Email = Good/Email Traffic