Craigslist can be a gold mine for real estate investors.
Nearly all investors have used Craigslist in one form or another. Real Estate Mogul already has several lessons describing specific techniques for using Craigslist.
There are lots of possibilities for making money in real estate from Craigslist. Some of which include:
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Finding properties to buy
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Selling properties, either outright or through lease options
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Advertising rentals
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Building a buyer’s list
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Wholesaling properties
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Selling furniture or other stuff you find in your rehabs
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Buying furniture for Airbnb rentals
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Finding properties you can manage for someone else as rentals
Pretty much anything you can buy, sell or rent in your real estate market can be done on Craigslist.
This is part one of a two-part set of lessons about Craigslist for real estate investors. The second lesson will focus on tips and techniques for buying and selling more effectively on Craigslist.
But first we want to make sure you don’t get shot down before you even start working on Craigslist.
In order to use the site, Craigslist requires you to follow certain rules.
Why?
Two reasons:
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They don’t want spammers and scammers on their site.
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They want to encourage local buying and selling to build communities.
If you follow the rules, you can have lots of success with practically a $0 marketing budget. Run afoul of them, and nobody will ever see your ads, let alone help you make money.
The Official Craigslist Rules
Besides the crazy legal mumbo-jumbo that all big sites are required to post, Craigslist tries to get the word out on their rules through their Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page.
Craigslist also gives you a list of prohibited sale items here. None of the these should affect real estate investors much at all.
They also tell you how long an ad will run on the site based on the category of the ad.
Although Craigslist gives you these rules, the rules can be pretty vague. For instance, in their FAQ page, they have a question about how often you can post an ad:
“You may post to one category and in one city, no more than once every 48 hours. If you try to post something similar to an active post of yours on the site, you may get a blocked message. Removing the similar active post should help, unless it is less than 48 hours old.”
What does similar mean?
Does that mean if you post one house you are selling, you can’t post any other houses? Or does it mean you can’t put another ad about the same house?
Well, it would appear you can. If you spend any time searching on Craigslist, you will see multiple ads for the same item being sold. The ads are right next to each other, indicating the person did not wait 48 hours.
Keeping your ad at the top of the Craigslist postings is important for visibility with customers. So if you can change your ad sufficiently enough (new pictures, different copy, etc.), you might be able to post more often than once every two days.
It’s just good practice to change the ads up anyway to test new copy and see what works.
Try also not to put up ads for the same item right away, even if the ads are different. If you just wait a couple of hours between ads, your chances of being flagged go way down.
The Unofficial Craigslist Rules
Craigslist relies on 2 sources to enforce its rules – algorithms and other Craigslist users. They have algorithms to look for spammers, and they rely on other users to flag posts that don’t belong.
The algorithms are looking for words that are commonly used for scams. Things like sound pretty scammy:
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Credit Card
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Free
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Weight Loss
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Make Money
Putting all capital letters in your title is also not going to help you out. Most real estate investing ads don’t have to worry about these kind of words, but it’s worth looking over your ad before you post it to see.
Another problem the algorithms hunt down are Craigslist accounts that post ads in multiple cities. They believe the scammers like to post all over the place to have the biggest audience. Therefore, you will want to stay local, or at least in the same city with all the ads in your account.
Of course that doesn’t mean you can’t create multiple accounts. Say you are a virtual wholesaler who works in multiple cities. Having a separate account for each city might help you get around the algorithms.
The user flagging and policing can be a dicey situation...
Craigslist has an enormous ‘community’ of users. In any large group, there will be good people… and some not-so-good people. There’s no telling what people might think of your ad and decide to flag it.
The good news is that there are TONS of ads on Craigslist.
So, hopefully, people are not spending too much time trying to find your ad. Flagging can be a great way to get rid of a competitor’s ad, meaning unscrupulous people might take advantage of it.
All anyone has to do to flag an ad is hit the ‘prohibited’ button at the top of the ad.
Just because the ad is flagged once, doesn’t mean it will be removed. But it may not take many flags to bring it down.
Craigslist is not very helpful when it comes to finding out why your ad was taken down. Given that tens of millions of ads go up on the site each month, it’s hard for the staff to be very responsive to your query.
You can go to the ‘flagging forum’ for Craigslist and see about receiving some help there. Or maybe just write another ad.
Here’s another tip to help prevent flagging for your ads…
Don’t look too commercial. Just like handwritten bandit signs, the less professional ads work. Craigslist doesn’t want big corporations advertising their brand on the site. If you create a big beautiful ad, you may have just wasted your time on it.
Knowing the rules on Craigslist can save you a lot of time and headache with your advertising.
In a follow-up lesson, we will help you mine that gold that is sitting on Craigslist waiting for you.
I’m Listening
Got any posting tips for Craigslist? Share below.
Know the Rules – Doing some research up front will potentially save you a lot of pain later. This applies to all aspects of your real estate business.
Try Craigslist, it’s Free – If you’ve never used Craigslist, start small. Sell something from your house. Then build up your skills.
Keep Up to Date – Craigslist does change its rules on ads from time to time. Check the forums and rules to make sure you don’t get caught with the changes.