In our last article, Zehnya explained why “safety” and “security” are the two most important things that your ad should beam with and some best practices on making your ad get notices.. People are afraid of Craigslist and especially meeting strangers from the internet.

But you know it , and I know it – if they are on Craigslist – they are ready to take that risk. All your ad needs to be is a little bit better than that of your competitor. This is where tiny details can make a big difference.

Unfortunately, Craigslist made it extremely difficult to stand out from other ads. “Difficult” is not “impossible,” and that is why you need some real “Craigslist master’s techniques.”

Make a HUGE difference in your posting. Photo by JD Hancock

Make a “Huge Difference” in your Craigslist Ads

Right now you will learn how to make a “huge difference” rather than a “big” one.

If you’ve been posting on Craigslist, you know that you have an option of attaching a couple images to your ad. When someone clicks on your ad, an attached image will be hanging at the top occupying limited space. The area with your ad’s copy will follow.

Many small business owners simply ignore that option of adding images. They assume, since they don’t sell products – they don’t need to post any images.

WRONG!

You MUST Add Images to Your Post – Even if you don’t sell products!

With Craigslist’s limited possibilities, you must take advantage of every little tool that is offered. And images? OF COURSE!

Adding great images to all of my ads is the best thing that I learned after running different campaigns, because it makes such a big difference in the way your ad looks and feels!

Photo by Uri Baruchin

Imagine a billboard on a highway, where instead of a graphically rich image, there is a white background with copy presented in a black “Times New Roman” font. Actually, you WOULD pay attention and read that ad.

Why?

Because it’s different from all the other billboards out there.

The same applies to Craigslist medium. Be different and people will read your ads.

Photo by Dennis Skley

What kind of images should you add?

Let’s say that you sell services. What kind of images should you add?

Photo by Everjean

1.Work you’ve done.

An image of a great haircut, amazing pedicure, or a beautifully painted house – all of them will speak to a potential client of yours and deliver one simple message: “buy from me and you will get the same, if not better!”

Already being predisposed to buy, your future customer will have a relaxing feeling that he found what he was looking for, and he doesn’t want to proceed and click on all the other hundreds of ad titles (just a look at a Craigslist’s search results page intimidates people).

2. Your Business Logo.

You can get a great logo for $5!

Does your business have a logo? No? Stop reading this and go get yourself a logo for $5. There is absolutely no excuse for not having one.

By attaching an image with your business logo, you show a high level of professionalism. Most people on Craigslist are amateurs and it is extremely easy to differentiate yourself from them by being one step ahead.

A business logo also adds a feeling that there is an established organization behind an ad, with many departments and people working in them. People aren’t aware of that since it occurs as a “gut feeling.”

Photo by
Anssi Koskinen

3. Yours or your employees’ personal photo.

Are you the one who will be delivering your service? Take the “creepy” worries out of a potential customer’s mind. Let him see with whom he’s going to interact.

If he doesn’t like you, that’s okay. He is not your customer so don’t spend a minute wasting your time on him. If he likes you, great. He might become your loyal customer to whom you will be able to sell many times.

Personal photos: +1 to transparency of your business.

Photo by Bill Ward

4. Photos of the place where you will provide your service.

Once a customer buys from you, where are you going to deliver your services? When building my cell phone repair business, I was fixing iPhones in my bedroom. So, I attached an image of my desk with all the tools on it.

To leave room for a customer’s imagination, I didn’t say that it was in my bedroom. Together with a business logo and great copy writing many probably assumed that it was an actual office. Also, images showing where on the street you are located help to find you.

5. Any other visual information that you would like to share.

Every person is different, every market is different; try to find something that will help you earn your customer’s trust and business.

How to Create Images for Your Craigslist Ad

Creating images for your Craigslist ad takes several steps.

1) Choose the Image

First, decide what would be on an image based on the five points listed above. Grab your camera and start taking pictures. (By the way, your smartphone’s camera is good enough for this job, but a decent DSLR camera will work better)

2) Decide on Additional Info

Second, decide what additional information you would like to see on your image.

This is something that I haven’t mentioned yet, but your end image should look like a billboard – some image and some information or call to action.

Craigslist doesn’t give you an option of styling your copywriting in the ad’s body, so feel free to experiment on your image.

The type of information to add on your images is also important. Because some details should be on the image and other things are perfectly fine in the ad’s body in a plain text.

On page 38, of “Craigslist for Small Businesses” I listed what information you should share on your images.

3) Make a Professional Photo

Third, hire a graphic designer to combine your photos with information about your business. Let’s face it, you are probably not a master of Photoshop to create a good looking graphically rich image. And everything about your ad should imply professionalism. Therefore, hire a freelance graphic designer to craft your image ad. It can be as low as $5.

Supply him with all necessary information, images of your customers, company employees, etc. You will use that image hundreds of times and it will pay for itself.

This might sound intimidating.

In reality it is easy. So, fight your fear or procrastination or whatever is holding you back, go on Fiverr.com and hire someone for $60 to do your graphic design. Done.

Don’t forget that you still can and should have copy along your images.

It is possible to fit your whole offer on images, but NOT having your copywriting in the ad’s body is an absolute deal-breaker if your customer is browsing Craigslist from his mobile device.

How is your Craigslist campaign so far? Hopefully going pretty well with all of the tips we’ve been sharing so far. First we talked about what categories to post in for best results. Last time we talked about how to make your ad stand out. If you haven’t had a chance to read about , go do so now. This third tip will be waiting when you get back.

Turn Craigslist’s Biggest Weakness into a Strength for Your Company

People who go to Craigslist (CL) to find some sort of service are risk takers. They are willing to take that risk mostly because of cheaper prices that an individual entrepreneur can provide.

There is no guarantee behind a CL ad, there is no established reputation, and there are no track records or independent reviews that a prospect can check.

Therefore, “safety” and “security” are the two most important things that your ad should beam with between the lines. Not some fancy, “best-selling” copy writing.

Make your ad trustworthy. Photo by Christian Scheja

Make Your Ad Trustworthy

Your ad should deliver exactly those things that aren’t available on CL – that there is a 100-year guarantee on your service, that you had thousands of happy customers in the past and that your service is the safest compared to others.

And the easiest way to deliver exactly that message is through a professionally crafted ad.

Let me put it this way:

You have a skill for a particular thing and decide to get your first customers for free by posting on CL. Well, you already deserve some respect for that.

You might write something like:

“My name is Carlton and I am a handyman with over 7 years of experience. I am currently working as an on-call handyman for proprietors of investment properties; my job entails full house/apartment renovations, carpentry, plumbing, painting, masonry, and electrical. I have my own tools and vehicle. I offer reasonable rates. Get to the bottom of your to-do list with expert handyman services for projects large or small.”

This is an actual ad that I found in, literally, less than a minute. It is the perfect example of how your CL ad should NOT look.

Common Craigslist mistakes. Photo by Chris Brown

Common Craigslist Ad Mistakes

Fortunately for you, the majority of CL ads look exactly like Carlton’s. Use simple tips from these emails and you will be way ahead of your competition.

Here are some of Carlton’s mistakes:

• You get the idea that it’s his first time trying to provide service on his own. Nobody wants to be his “guinea pig.”
• No images were provided. The best scenario would be if Carlton put his own photo so that we know with whom we are going to be doing business with.
• No prices of services listed.
• People don’t like “Jacks of all trades” when it comes to home renovations or repairs. It would be better to focus on one thing and advertise only in that niche.
• No guarantees were provided. No insurance or licenses were mentioned.

Best Practices for Craigslist Ads – Do This!

Turn on your imagination and read the following:

Be an army. Photo by waffeli

Be an Army of One

Your ad should seem as though you are a multinational corporation.

Instead of writing “I am a professional,” write “We are team of professionals.”

List Prices

List all your services, with fixed prices. Bullet points will help your prospect to process information faster. People are more likely to call you if they know how much they are going to spend.

Use Photos

Place photos of those who will be performing the job. It can be you or your team. Your prospect will be less paranoid once he sees who he’s about to deal with.

Especially Photo Testimonials!

Place photos of your happy customers along with their “raving”, “5-star” testimonials. It’s called “Social Proof” and it works! You will convert more ad viewers into leads and leads into customers if they see that other people are buying from you and are happy with your service.

Don’t Say You Are Starting Out!

Don’t say that you are just starting out. If you are an established company with hundreds of happy customers in the past who keep coming back to you, say so. You already had “1538 happy customers and counting.”

Offer a Guarantee

Put a “100%, money back guarantee” on all your products and services.

Mention Your ‘Proofs of Trust’

Mention all your licenses and business insurances. Did you have to pass a test, get certified or do something to get the knowledge to go into this line of work? Put that in your ad!

Do you belong to a professional organization? What about the local Chamber of Commerce? Or maybe you’re listed in the Better Business Bureau? Great! Be sure to mention that in your ad!!

Offer an Incentive

Give some sort of incentive for a prospect to call, for example “mention secret word “Craigslist” and get 17% off of your first order” or “call today and get ‘this’ for free.”

Mention your “office” phone number, email, and link to your website (if you have one). If you don’t have a website, read this!

You Don’t Have to Do It All Yourself!

If the idea of writing all this and presenting your business in such a way seems intimidating – don’t write your ad. Hire a professional copywriter on Fiverr.com. For as low as $60 or $70, you can get a couple versions of your ad to test against one another. After all you are not a copywriter, so why should you write it even if it’s your ad? Some people out there are better at that so delegate it to them.

One of the biggest chapters in “Craigslist for Small Businesses” is dedicated to the contents of your ad.

Did you know that you can change the font size or highlight text in your ad’s body? On page 39, chapter “Enhancing Your Ad” you can learn how to make your copy writing even better by emphasizing important parts. Prospects’ eyes will slide right to information that YOU want them to read.

In the next article, I’ll write about what will convince your prospects in your legitimacy as a business more than the best professional copy writing possible.

It’s a shame that so few CL ads have it.

Last time we covered the #1 rule of selling on Craigslist; Choosing the right category. If you missed that, definitely go back and read that first. Not to worry, this tip will be waiting for you when you get back.

Anyhow, at the end of that article Zhenya promised to talk about a simple trick that will make people click your Craigslist Ad.

So, as promised, more tips on Craigslist advertising.

Why how Craigslist got started matters to how you use it. Photo by Diana Robinson

How Craigslist Got Started … and Why That Matters to You

Craigslist (CL) is known to be a platform to jump start a business by posting free ads and gauging demand for an offer.

That is not the only thing that CL is known for…

… it is also famous for keeping its initial design since its establishment in 1995.

It started as an email list and kept that spirit – being a list and nothing more than that.

When your potential customer types in “painter NYC” in the search field – he gets a long list of ad titles, one after another, densely placed on the page.

Pretty intimidating.

Big Lists Are Intimidating: Information Overload

Whenever we see such a layout of information, our brain is more likely to process the first 4 or 5 search results. After that, it will look for incentives to proceed down the list.

Those incentives can’t be an attractive offer or a discount for your most popular services.

Remember , he will not even read it! He already read the first 4 titles and is more likely to click one of them.

The first conclusion you can make – be one of those top 4 ads, but that is easier said than done.

How to stand out if your Craigslist Ad isn’t first. Photo by Steven Depolo

How to Stand Out if Your Ad Isn’t First

Since CL shows the most recent ads first, your ad will stay at the top for a very short time, and for the rest of the time – further down the list.

As an entrepreneur, your goal is to see opportunities in every challenge that life gives you.

Stand out with your ad by placing special characters in your ad’s title.

The human eye will immediately catch if something is different and that will be a desired incentive to read and click your ad.

Use Special Characters in Your Title

Here is a list of eye-catching symbols that you should use to catch your prospect’s attention and stand out from your competition:

▲ (ampersand#9650);
(ampersand#9654 ampersand#9654);
▖ (ampersand#9622);
▆ (ampersand#9606);
★ (ampersand#9733)

-substitute “ampersand” for “&” sign.

Those numbers in parenthesis are a special Unicode code that represents that character. Place that code when writing your title and the desired symbol will decorate it after you publish your ad.

Some of the special characters may not display correctly. In such a case, you can use simple symbols that you can find on your keyboard: _ < >* ~ etc.

What to Write For Immediate Calls

In the next email you will learn what to write in your ad to make your prospect immediately pick up his phone and dial your number.

It is easy to spot a first-time advertiser because the copy simply screams “amateur,” “one guy,” or “one day
fraud.” Don’t want your ad to invoke such ideas?

Stay tuned.

Photo by Hermkan Yung

Hi all. Thanks for visiting PostingTips.com. I’ve partnered with some great entrepreneurs to bring you the best material possible. We’ve assembled a great set of resources here for you. I’m confident these tips and tricks will dramatically boost your Craigslist campaigns.

First up is Zhenya, an entrepreneur who used Craigslist to build a smart phone repair company. He has an amazing story, which you can read here. Plus he’s the author of Craigslist for Small Businesses, Entrepreneurs, and Marketers; a great resource that details how used Craigslist to build his company from working in his apartment to getting so many customers he had to hire a full staff. Great stuff!

He’s agreed to share 4 of his best tips to getting Customers to Click on Your Craigslist Ad and Buy from you. And seriously, you can apply these lessons everywhere (Craigslist, Ebay, Pinterest – even your very own website.)

Without further ado, here’s Zhenya.

Craigslist is the best way to advertise a small business. Just check how many ads are posted daily in the “sm biz ads” category.

While I’m writing this very text, I am curious myself – how many are there?

Are you ready? …

…close to seven HUNDRED. Seven hundred ads in just ONE day, in ONE category!

Do you know why there are seven HUNDRED ads in the “sm biz ads” category? Because those business owners are getting customers for FREE from Craigslist.

The Secret Rules for Craigslist Success

Whether you are an experienced Craigslister, or want to give advertising on Craigslist a shot, you absolutely have to learn some of the most important rules of Craigslist.

Rule 1: Know Your Category

The first one is – know your category.

On Craigslist’s home page you will see dozens of different categories and subcategories. Clicking some of them might reveal another set of subcategories.

When creating your very first Craigslist ad, you will be guided by Craigslist through several steps to determine which category is the most appropriate for your offer.

Wrong Category == Fewer Clicks == Fewer Sales

Ads that don’t belong to a given category will get very few clicks since people visiting that category would be looking for what the category was created for.

The wrong category can get you flagged. Photo by Alyssa

The Wrong Category Can Get You Flagged

Also, your ad can be “flagged” by a diligent Craigslister. “Flagged” ads will be removed from the website and you won’t be able to “renew” it.

It is true that some categories are visited more often and your ad will get more views if your ad is in the “casual encounters” category, but how many customers will you score for your moving business?

Think “quality,” not “quantity.” Photo by Jason Taellious

Think “quality,” not “quantity.”

The Exception to This Rule

But… there is always a little “but,” an exception.

I found out about that “but” only after months and months of practice and hundreds of posted ads.

On page 62 of the “Craigslist for Small Businesses” there is a chapter called “Where to Post?” There you can learn about one simple, yet unknown for the vast majority, exception to the rule “Do not post in different categories.”

In the next article we will cover Rule 2: How To Make a Title That Stands Out

I will tell you exactly how to write your ad’s title to stand out from a long and boring list of search results that your potential customer will see.

Photo by Miki Yohsihito</>

So many of the visitors here came here from my many articles about Craigslist that I thought it would be a good idea to review a few similarities between effective Craigslist campaigns and website development practices.

Headlines are Important!

A headline is really a way to convince a person to take an action. On Craigslist you want a headline to get a user to open an ad. An email subject line is a headline where you are trying to convince them to open your note. Your website is the same way. On line people are searching for answers to some need. The headline lets them know if they are in the right place and convinces them to stick around.

Images Needed!

Images help open rates. You’ve probably noticed that articles (and Craigslist ads) with an image tag next to it get opened far more frequently. Same with websites. Images are a very efficient way of conveying information and it helps center a viewer’s attention if they are skimming.

Professionalism counts!

A little bit of civility goes a long way on-line. Grammar and spelling count, too. Take the extra step to present your business in the best possible light – your prospects will notice.

If Your Competitors have a Website, you need one, too!

‘You don’t have to outrun the bear, you must out run your competition.’ You do not need to build the next Amazon. However, if a competing business has a professionally-made website that backs up their offer and you don’t, they have an advantage.

That’s my list. What other similarities do you see? What else have you learned?

Photo by
Sohel Parvez Haque

Craigslist is great for attracting an audience for your business. Every personal trainer, handyman, landscaper, and home re-modeler I know tells me it is absolutely essential for their business. It’s incredible that a free service can bring so much value to so many people. Today I am going to show you how to make your Craigslist efforts bear even more fruit.

Craigslist giveth and taketh away

Agreed, Craigslist can be wonderful. But even if you are the very best in your business at getting clients from Craigslist, it has it’s draw backs, too. Let’s review a few of them.

You must keep posting and posting and posting…

One is that you have to keep posting and posting again in an arms race to be at the top of the rankings. Because if you’re not on top of the listings when people come to look for what you’re selling, you’re toast.

Multiple ads.. multiple emails

Craigslist of course doesn’t want spammers on their website so they prevent you from running the same ad too many times. So now you have to juggle 8 different ads, possibly using God-knows how many email accounts – all in a effort not to get banned as a spammer!

Fighting the spammers

Speaking of spammers, most of the time you have to compete against a bunch of sharks that have nothing better to do than sit all day, mark your ads as spam, and re-post their ads. How are you supposed to both run your business AND be on top of Craigslist AND try to battle the spammers?

Convincing readers to open the blasted ad

Even after you post an ad you have to convince the reader to take an action – actually, you have to convince them to do 2 things.

The first thing is to get them to open your ad through some sort of clever headline. You see people trying ALL CAPS AND LOTS OF EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!!!!!!!! Like they are screaming at people.

***Other people try funky characters or slashes or asterisks in order to grab attention.***

In any case, it takes a lot of experimentation to figure out what kind of headlines will get people to open your ads.

Convincing people to buy!

The second thing is to get them to call you or email you – which they do in the middle of the day while you’re working! And if you run multiple ads – which you have to do so you can be on the top of the Craigslist pile – you really have no idea which ad they are referring to. And once they are on the phone, you have to see if they are for real or not – which takes a lot of time.

Now put yourself in their shoes. If you’ve ever bought something from someone on Craigslist you know the script. You’re wondering if the poster is a real person or a serial killer looking to rip your face off. OK, maybe that’s too extreme but you are wondering if they are going to scam you or not. If the deal is going to take place at your house, you’re wondering if you really, really want to give them you address and if it’s safe for them to be around your family. Finally, you’re wondering how many of these ads do I need to go through before I find the right one?

The Worst Part of Craigslist

And the next morning, you start it all over again. It’s like Bill Murray in Groundhog’s day. It never changes.

But you can’t stop. That would be suicide. That would dry up your leads and take food off your table.

There has to be a better way, doesn’t there?

What can you do? That’s the name of the game. The rules of the system. You can get better at it. You can hire an intern or a high school kid to post all day. But you can’t escape it…. or can you?

The better way

Instead of asking them to call you, try driving them to your website where you have a standing offer.

You have more time to explain who you are, what you do, why you’re the best.

You can get their contact information.

You know exactly what they are looking for.

Put them to a landing page. Or put them to a contact form. Or put them to an order form.

They can buy immediately or they can leave their contact information with you along with all the other info that would normally interrupt your day. You an have tons of testimonials on your page to seal the deal. You can expose them to other work you do. You can show off your BBB or Chamber of Commerce logos proving you’re a real business. You can put a video on your website showing the products and services you are selling and the quality of your work.

Once your visitors leave their contact information, you can call them that evening or first time the next morning – or you could put a ‘best time to call’ feature on your form and call them whenever or however they indicate.

The best part is that your website will be there for them to bookmark. They’ll come back to it. They can share it with their friends, families and neighbors. No one will do that with a Craigslist ad.

And this works with every kind of listing service. It works with Ebay. It works with Angie’s list. It works even with the ads you place in your local paper, mailers, or phone books. It works with Twitter, Facebook, and everything else. Get people to your website, show them you can be trusted to do a great job, and reap the rewards.

Getting a great business website up and running is not difficult. I can either build one for you or you can use my free website guides to get started. The key is to just get started.

So what do you think? Why not build a website to help you dominate your competition? Any questions on how to get started? Let me know in the comments or contact me here.

Note: This image is from the Collective Commons collection at Flickr.

Last week I posted an article about helping you on Craigslist. One of the questions I was asked was ‘How should I accept payment through Craigslist?’  Here are my thoughts:

I think Paypal might be the best way to accept payments online. It’s good enough for Ebay & a billion other shops. You can accept credit cards without having to set up complex banking arrangements. Also, you can embed Paypal Buy Now links in your website.

Also, why not redirect people from your Craigslist ad to your website where you might have other services / items you can sell them? Since you have pre-qualified your leads, you could capture their information and then market to them again as a warm lead.

As always, if you have any other website questions at all, please let me know and I’ll do my best to help out. If you’d like to get free tips like this delivered to you via email, please put your address in the form at the top of the page. That will stay absolutely private, I promise. Thanks for reading!

How to put your Picasa Images on Craigslist

Last week I posted an article about helping you on Craigslist. One of the questions I was asked was how to put Picasa images on Craigslist. This is a tricky one, but I’ll get you through it.

Step 1: Go to Picasa

Picasa is tricky because you have to right click on the image to see what the real file is. Let’s take my logo image on Picasa for a moment.

Here’s the link: https://picasaweb.google.com/106273101224393545862/May122012

While this may show you the image, it’s not the image file – it’s a page. You can tell because there is no file type associated with it. Ex. It doesn’t end in .jpg, .gif, ..png, etc.

Step 2: Right Click the Image

In order to find the file type we have to right-click the image and look under properties.

In my example the file location is:

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-zaG53KetqRM/T67jFLshMRI/AAAAAAAACAo/1BahY7bwcB8/s128/CWD%20logo%20circle%20250×250%20pixel.png

See how this ends in a .png suffix? That’s how we know it’s an image file.

Step 3: Write the Image Code

Now we can follow the usual steps. Click here to go to Step 2 in putting an image on Craigslist.

Hope that helps. If you are interested in other ways that Picasa can help your small business, check out my write up here. I also wrote a quick tutorial on how Picasa can help you with SEO.

As always, if you have any other website questions at all, please let me know and I’ll do my best to help out. If you’d like to get free tips like this delivered to you via email, please put your address in the form at the top of the page. That will stay absolutely private, I promise. Thanks for reading!

Modified Photo by Elco van Staveren

A few days ago I wrote an article on how to link your Craigslist ad directly to your website. In the comments section of that article, Johnny asked me how to link an image in his Craigslist ad to his website. Today I’ll show you how to do just that.

Linking images to your website is a good habit to get into. People click a lot of images – sometimes just to see what happens – and having a link behind your image can generate some good traffic. Having an image with text on it saying something like “Click here for your free quote… or to learn more .. or to do anything else” is a good way to expand your sales funnel.

Again, these steps can be used all over the web. Not only will this show you how to create a link from the image on your Craigslist ad to your website, you will be able to use this technique to link from multiple other platforms like eBay, bulletin boards, your Facebook corporate page and elsewhere on the web.

Step 1: Create a Hyperlink.

Follow the steps I listed in the How to Link your Craigslist ad Directly to your Website.

Again, your hyperlink code should look something like this:

<a src="http://www.CharlotteWebDevelopment.com/SomeLinkHere">The text you want to be linked</a>

Once you have that hyperlink code set, proceed to Step 2.

Step 2: Get Your Image ready.

Make sure you have a photo set to be put up. Following the steps I wrote in this article How to Post a Picture on Craigslist

Your code from this part should look something like this:

<img src="http://www.CharlotteWebDevelopment.com/Charlotte_Website_Design_Logo.jpg">

Once you have the image code, move on to Step 3.

Step 3: Combine the Image Code and the Hyperlink Code.

Now we are going to delete the hyperlink text and put the image code inside the hyperlink code.

You should come out with something that looks like this:

<a src="http://www.CharlotteWebDevelopment.com"><img src="http://www.CharlotteWebDevelopment.com/Charlotte_Website_Design_Logo.jpg"></a>

Once you put it on the web, the results should be like this image. Go ahead and click it. It will bring you to another page. Don’t worry, I’ll be right here when you get back!

Try it out and let me know how it goes. Any questions, just leave a comment below.

Photo by Franco

A few days ago a reader asked how to link to his website from a Craigslist post. This is an excellent idea and I’ll show you how in this article step-by-step. Not only will this show you how to create a link from your Craigslist ad to your website, you will be able to use this technique to link from multiple other platforms like eBay, bulletin boards, your Facebook corporate page and elsewhere on the web.

First off, it’s a great idea to get into the practice of linking back to your website from all over the web. While making Craigslist or similar type ads can be a cheap and effective way to advertise your business the problem is that they are short-lived. Once the ad expires, so does your advertisement. However, if you can get a prospect to click over to your website, a whole world of possibilities opens up!

Linking to your website from Craigslist or elsewhere on the web gives you multiple opportunities. Here’s a few:

1. Bring qualified leads to you.
2. Capture their contact information.
3. Cross promote your other services and products.
4. Give prospective clients a place to bookmark and come back to.
5. Also, more links to your website can help you move up in search engine rankings like Google.

How to link to my website in my Craigslist post?

In short, you need to make a hyperlink tag to your website.This is similar to the process I wrote about when describing how to put an image in your Craigslist post.

Start with the following code:

<a src="http://www.CharlotteWebDevelopment.com/SomeLinkHere">The text you want to be linked</a>

Step 1: Identify the link destination.

Copy the address of the place you want to link to. In, this example I am pretending to link to the page here: http://www.CharlotteWebDevelopment.com/SomeLinkHere

For the rest of this lesson I am going to refer to the page you are linking to as the URL.

Step 2: Put the link destination as the source.

Just replace the part I have in quotes after src= with the address of your contact page and the link will go to that page. Be sure to keep the quotes on either side of the URL!

Step 3: Write the text you want to be linked.

You can change the wording that appears linked by editing the part in the middle. In the example I have above this is the part that says The text you want to be linked.

In the website design business this is called anchor text. Anchor text can be very useful to you in a few ways. For one it drives action for people to do something you want. In the case of linking to your site from Craigslist, you are asking viewers to leave the site they are on – a site they know well – and go an unknown site, yours. To accomplish this mission, you probably want to write something compelling.

The other way this link can be advantageous to you is in Search Engine results. Some search engines rate your site higher depending not only one the number and quality of the links you provide, but also for what words you use in the anchor text. For example, if you use the terms Barbie in your anchor text, it will count as a point in the Search Engine algorithms for the page you are linking to for Barbie. If you would like to rank higher for the terms for your business, you should include those words in your anchor text.

Step 4: Paste the whole Code into the Craigslist ad.

This part is simple. Just take the work you have done in steps 1-3 and paste it into your Craigslist ad, bulletin board forum, or where ever.

Presto! You have a link back to your website!

Now remember, Craigslist only lets you post html in certain categories and certain circumstances. If you’d like to learn more about that – and tips and tricks the pros use to make sure that their ads get clicked and sales get made, check out this comprehensive how-to guide.

Let me know if this technique works for you. If you have any questions, just write a comment below and I’ll do my best to get back to you with some help. All the best with your business!