What is Craigslist?
Craigslist is a community website that allows users to post and view classified ads. These ads belong to various niches, including business opportunities through MLM. Craigslist was the brainchild of Craig Newmark who started it in 1999. The ads are city-sensitive. In 1999 when it was launched, it was meant for the San Francisco Bay Area, but soon it expanded to cover most areas of the globe. Today, Craigslist has ads from over 50 countries.
Online marketers look at the online classified ads on Craigslist as a method to promote their businesses. The website is Internet's 47th most visited site and records 9 billion page views per month. This humongous amount of traffic cannot be ignored by multilevel marketers who are constantly trying to build their networks.
What are the Pros of Craigslist?
Craigslist predominantly uses text based ads. These can be worked at quite easily for SEO so that they become more visible on the Internet. This helps in attracting more traffic.
The cost-effectiveness of online classified advertisements with Craigslist is an important point. Thus, Craigslist is a method much favored by amateur marketers who are just trying a hand at the game and do not want to put in a lot of investment.
Once the ad is submitted and approved, people can respond directly to the advertiser. This begins to happen almost as soon as the advertisement is live on the website.
What are the Cons of Craigslist?
There are rules to be adhered to, which would otherwise lead to the disapproval of the advertisement. It becomes important to learn about the system in advance.
Posting the ads is expensive, though not as much as traditional classified ads in newspapers and the like. The costs of the ads depend on the kind of service being advertised. Placing a couple of ads could cost more than a $100.
The number of ads present on Craigslist at any given time is quite huge and that may hide individual ads. These ads would need compelling copy to make any kind of impact.
