Craigslist.org has become a popular advertising tool among a wide range of users, from everyday people to large, sophisticated companies. The website is known for its ability to attract a huge amount of traffic, probably as a result of its biggest selling point: almost all ads are posted for free. Investors who wish to rent or sell a property might also find that advertising on Craigslist is just as effective, if not more effective, than advertising on listing services that charge commissions and other fees.
Craigslist boasts more than nine billion page views per month, with more than 30 million visitors worldwide, according to a fact sheet they published. It has also been ranked as the 10th most popular website in the U.S., according to Alexa.com. There are 450 Craigslist sites covering all 50 states, as well as sites for more than 50 countries.
It’s hard to argue with the numbers: Craigslist has become an Internet celebrity.
But for all the business that Craigslist attracts, the website itself is strikingly non-commercial; there are no banner ads or obnoxious pop-ups to be found. The website’s sole sources of revenue to date are the nominal fees it charges for placing job ads in select U.S. cities and for paid broker apartment listings in New York City.
The website’s format is basic and mostly consists of plain text arranged in columns. Craigslist’s internal search engine and ad posting procedures are intuitive and accessible to even the most amateur Internet user.
Ads are posted in chronological order, with most recent postings listed first in any search results. Furthermore, ads posted on Craigslist sites in major U.S. cities, such as Boston and Los Angeles, expire after seven days. To maximize their exposure, many Craigslist users who advertise properties for sale or rent repost their listings on a frequent-even daily-basis for as long as it takes to fill vacancies.
Overall, Craigslist is a simple and unobtrusive website that appeals to popular demand for free Internet services. For these reasons, it is difficult for other listing services to compete for the same attention that Craigslist enjoys. If investors want to place an ad on a platform that is most likely to generate responses, their local Craigslist site is probably the best way to go; at the very least, they have nothing to lose.
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Contributed-By: Melana Yanos of Nuwireinvestor.com