Maximize Your Craigslist Experience: Buying, Selling, and Posting Tips
Discover how to effectively use Craigslist for buying, selling items, finding jobs, meeting people, and more. Learn about setting up an account, posting guidelines, essential information to include, and valuable tips for successful selling. Optimize your listings with detailed descriptions, attractive pricing, courtesy, and specificity to attract potential buyers on Craigslist.
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Presentation Transcript
What can I do with Craigslist? Buy/Sell Items Find Jobs Meet people Have a discussion Find housing Find out what s going on in your community
Set up an account You can post as a guest. Accounts allow you to manage your posts and give you a history of your posts. The posting process is the same regardless of whether you have an account or are a guest.
How to Post Double-click post to classifieds Choose Type of posting Choose Category
Boxes highlighted in green are required information. Other boxes are optional.
Condition: New, Like New, Excellent, Good, Fair, Salvage, Other Other requires text input regarding the condition of the item
Tips for Selling Pictures: Post a detailed picture of the item you are selling. People want to see what they are buying. Detail: Simply typing For Sale in the subject line does not give people any reason to click on your ad. Give a description detail about the condition of the item you are selling, why you are selling it, and why they should buy it. Price: People come to craigslist for a deal. People start seeing things as a deal when the price is set at about 50% of new or less. You would be amazed at how simply adjusting the price of an item you have posted for $285 down to $275 will make a difference between no responses and a full inbox just moments after posting. Courtesy: Be courteous! Make it easy for people to give you their money! Give a phone number (out of all my postings 90 percent of my sales were over the phone) I cannot believe how many people thanked me, not for selling them something, but for making it easy on them, contrary to their previous craigslist experiences. Specific: People are more likely to click on an add that reads 2 Ghz PowerMac G5 with 20 Apple Cinema Display - $1000 than one that reads Like New Apple computer - $1000 (Excerpt from The Complete Idiots Guide to Making Money with Craigslist)
Phrase Search You can use quotation marks to search for a phrase: "low miles" Excluding Terms (filtering) honda black -red This search finds postings that have 'honda' and 'black' but not 'red'. "OR" Searches honda | toyota This search finds postings that have 'honda' or 'toyota' (or both). Grouping You can group terms together in parenthesis when queries are complicated: red (toyota | honda) -2000 -2001 This finds listings that have 'red' and either 'honda' or 'toyota' (or both) but do not have 2000 or 2001. Wildcards hond* civ* (match "honda civic", "honda civil", etc) wood floo* (matches "wood floors," "wood flooring", etc) iphon* (matches "iphone," "ipones," "iphone5," etc) Use 2 or more characters before the * and none following it, e.g. "ip*d" will not work
Personal Safety The overwhelming majority of craigslist users are trustworthy and well-intentioned. With billions of human interactions facilitated, the incidence of violent crime is extremely low. Nevertheless, please take the same common sense precautions online as you would offline. When meeting someone for the first time, please remember to: Insist on a public meeting place like a cafe. Do not meet in a secluded place, or invite strangers into your home. Be especially careful when buying/selling high value items. Tell a friend or family member where you're going. Take your cell phone along if you have one. Consider having a friend accompany you. Trust your instincts. Taking these simple precautions helps make craigslist safer for everyone. For more information about personal safety online, check out these resources: http://www.staysafeonline.org/ http://www.onguardonline.gov/ http://getsafeonline.org http://wiredsafety.org
Examples of Scams 1. Someone claims your transaction is guaranteed, that a buyer/seller is officially certified, OR that a third party of any kind will handle or provide protection for a payment: These claims are fraudulent, as transaction are between users only. The scammer will often send an official looking (but fake) email that appears to come from craigslist or another third party, offering a guarantee, certifying a seller, or pretending to handle payments. 2. Distant person offers a genuine-looking (but fake) cashier's check: You receive an email or text (examples below) offering to buy your item, pay for your services in advance, or rent your apartment, sight unseen and without meeting you in person. A cashier's check is offered for your sale item as a deposit for an apartment or for your services. Value of cashier's check often far exceeds your item scammer offers to "trust" you, and asks you to wire the balance via money transfer service. Banks will cash fake checks AND THEN HOLD YOU RESPONSIBLE WHEN THE CHECK FAILS TO CLEAR, sometimes including criminal prosecution. Scams often pretend to involve a 3rd party (shipping agent, business associate, etc.).
3. Someone requests wire service payment via Western Union or MoneyGram: Deal often seems too good to be true, price is too low, or rent is below market, etc. Scam "bait" items include apartments, laptops, TVs, cell phones, tickets, other high value items. Scammer may (falsely) claim a confirmation code from you is needed before he can withdraw your money. Common countries currently include: Nigeria, Romania, UK, Netherlands but could be anywhere. Rental may be local, but owner is "travelling" or "relocating" and needs you to wire money abroad. Scammer may pretend to be unable to speak by phone (scammers prefer to operate by text/email). 4. Distant person offers to send you a cashier's check or money order and then have you wire money: This is ALWAYS a scam in our experience the cashier's check is FAKE. Sometimes accompanies an offer of merchandise, sometimes not. Scammer often asks for your name, address, etc. for printing on the fake check. Deal often seems too good to be true. 5. Distant seller suggests use of an online escrow service: Most online escrow sites are FRAUDULENT and operated by scammers. For more info, do a google search on "fake escrow" or "escrow fraud."
6. Distant seller asks for a partial payment upfront, after which they will ship goods: He says he trusts you with the partial payment. He may say he has already shipped the goods. Deal often sounds too good to be true. 7. Foreign company offers you a job receiving payments from customers, then wiring funds: Foreign company may claim it is unable to receive payments from its customers directly. You are typically offered a percentage of payments received. This kind of "position" may be posted as a job, or offered to you via email. Unless specified, all information is taken from craigslist.com
