Learn how to sell successfully and safely on Craigslist. The 7th most popular website.

1. Selling Successfully and Safely on Craigslist

2. craigslist
What is it?
Craigslist is a classified advertisements website with sections
devoted to jobs, housing, personals, for sale, items wanted,
services, community, gigs, résumés, and discussion forums.
Craig Newmark began the service in 1995 as an email
distribution list of friends, featuring local events in the San
Francisco Bay Area, before becoming a web-based service in
1996 and expanding into other classified categories. It started
expanding to other U.S. cities in 2000, and currently covers 50
countries.
Also can be found at cl.com

3. Craigslist Trivia
• Jim Buckmaster has been CEO since the year 2000.
• Supports 13 languages,
• more than 700 local sites
• in 70 countries.
• Craigslist is a for-profit company that has more than 60
million users per month in the US alone, receives more
than 2 million job listings per month. Has around 30
employees in San Francisco.

4. Some of the most popular uses
Looking for places to live
Listing places to live
Selling stuff
Buying stuff
Looking for jobs
Posting job listings
Discussions
Looking for a date

5. Is it Free?
• Most postings are free
• It costs to post job listings
for San Francisco -$75
• Many other major cities job listings $25
• Brokered apartment rentals NYC $10
• Therapeutic services $10/$5 repost
• Some post services under Skilled Trade
Services to avoid fee.

6. Create Your Account
• Do you already have an account?
• Create an account by going here:
https://accounts.craigslist.org/login/signup
• Enter your email address and fill in the
captcha.
• Check your email inbox for confirmation
email.

7. How to Create a Successful Posting
1. Prepare your item for sale. Clean it, fix it, clear out
contacts in a cell phone, etc.
2. Research similar postings to see your competition for
pricing, etc. Look on ebay too.
3. Take a good photo or three.
Photos increase your success.
1. Provide details. Model number, size, specs.
2. Be honest! The buyers will find out anyway.
3. Publish the listing (save your listing link).
Here’s some good reminders:
http://www.moneycrashers.com/craigslist-selling-tips/

8. Step 2: Communication
• Let craigslist create an anonymous email address
for you to protect your real address.
• If you want to communicate
by phone, you can use your
real number (but don’t post in
the ad, just share it with serious buyers).
• You can also use a phone number created with
sendhub.com, inumbr.com, google.com/voice.
Google is free, sendhub has a free plan, and
inumbr has a monthly fee.

9. Follow the Rules
• Craigslist can remove your ad if you break their rules
such as:
• Ticket scalping
• Porn
• Illegal transactions (don’t sell drugs using craigslist! )
• Posting someone else’s personal info.
• Posting in the wrong category
• Spamming (MLM ads, links to other websites, etc.)
• Overposting (1 post each 48 hours, one geo area)

10. The Sale
• Stick with cash
• Make sure the price has been agreed upon
before meeting. You don’t want more
negotiating once you meet.
• Enjoy the experience.
• Remove your posting after the sale so you
don’t keep getting emails/phone calls.

11. Be Safe
• Don’t accept cashiers checks or money orders. Scammers
often use these methods.
• Meet in a public place with plenty of people around. Never
meet a buyer at your home nor his. Choose a coffee shop
or other busy location. Avoid a big open area like a park
where other people are less likely to notice you. Bring a
friend or family member with you, or at least let someone
know where you are going and when. Take a cellphone with
you as an extra precaution.
• Leave personal details, address, phone #s out of postings.
• Read more: http://www.craigslist.org/about/scams

12. More safety suggestions
• Stick with local buyers in general. User your own
judgment. We have had buyers come to our
home and had a great experience. Sometimes
your item is too big to take to meet someone.
• If you have them come to your home, be sure you
have other people with you.
• Ignore email from scammers. Ignore vague
emails, they are probably scams.
• Read more:
http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/99249399.
html?refer=y

13. Typical scammer email
• ---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: kena mckenna <kenamckenna8eu@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 4:59 PM
Subject: RE: shimano pedals pd-m520l - $35 (truckee)
To: sale-y6uwd-1335705610@craigslist.org
** CRAIGSLIST ADVISORY --- AVOID SCAMS BY DEALING LOCALLY
** Avoid: wiring money, cross-border deals, work-at-home
** Beware: cashier checks, money orders, escrow, shipping
** More Info: http://www.craigslist.org/about/scams.html
Hey, I viewed your email on Craigslist.
I just wanted to let you know that my co-worker became un-employed recently because of the
credit crunch not too long ago. However, he learned of a a way to make money online from home
after reading a news article
He is earning 7,500 dollars every single month now working on the internet with Google.
Please take a look at the online article: http://docs.google.com/View?id=ddznbsd3_56c8rshzfv
A lot of people have improved their lives after giving it a go, and I am sure you can benefit from it.
Hope to hear your success!

14. Buying things on craigslist
• If someone wants you to wire them funds, it is
a scam.
• Deal with local sellers.
• Meet in a public place.
• Bring exact change.
• Ask lots of questions, such as if the car has
been smoked in.
• Compare prices and offerings.

15. Subscribe to a Feed
• Subscribe to RSS Feeds
• If you are looking for something specific, say a Queen Anne brocaded
couch circa 1965, you can set up a Craigslist alert to be notified when
something new pops up that fits your criteria. This is how you do it:Go to
your city's Craigslist, and click on "Furniture."
• Then enter your search term(s), what you're willing to pay, and whether
you're looking for something from a furniture dealer or private seller.
• When you're done, click "Enter."
• Scroll to the bottom of the page.
• You'll see an orange button with the letters RSS. Click on that button.
• You'll see a whole page of funny lookin' code in your browser window.
Copy that page's URL and paste it into your favorite feed reader.
• Depending on your browser choices and how you want to read the
feeds, this will be different.
• Now you can be notified via your feed reader every time an item is posted
on Craigslist that meets your criteria.

16. Caveat
• These are typical suggestions to avoid problems,
but you always need to trust your own judgment.
For every bad experience there are probably
thousands of good ones.
• We have broken all the rules and sold a set of
tires for a VW Jetta to an out-of-state buyer. He
was willing to send his check and wait until it
cleared our bank before we shipped the tires,
even paying for shipping. He was very nice and
the transaction was successful and enjoyable.

17. Case Study
• FinestFloors.net – Sheldon Hirsch
• The owner had not considered using something like
craigslist to advertise his flooring company’s services and
products, but was spending lots of money running ads in
the Sacramento Bee, etc. After talking with someone who
had been successful advertising on craigslist, he decided to
try it out. Currently he is receiving about $250,000 per year
in revenue from his craigslist ads. After that success, he has
started another business using craigslist.
• He shared some of his pointers for creating successful ads.
You can see his ads by going to the Sacramento craigslist
and under services/skilled trades do a search for “finest
floors”.

18. Sheldon’s pointers
1. Use HTML in your ads to include font colors, sizes and graphics.
2. Know your product
3. Use careful, descriptive wording (keywords that can be found when
buyers are searching)
4. Scammers tend to go for certain niches, like autos – so be extra careful.
He responded to a bunch of ads for cars that were too good to be true.
He said they all had the same story, divorce or emergency that required
the sale. Then typically they want you to wire the money, or have some
other predictable scamming method.
5. He once tried to sell a carpet remnant and received the typical scam
where someone from “out of state” really wanted the carpet and they
Fed-Ex’ed him a cashiers check for over $4K for a $120 item. They sent
him instructions to cash the check immediately and then someone
would come to pick up the balance. He checked with his bank and, of
course the check was fake.
6. If you are logical and careful, you won’t be taken by scams. (Why would
any out of state person want to buy a carpet remnant site unseen?)