Get More ‘Horsepower’

Craigslist is a very popular free site for folks to list (and look for) items to buy, sell and trade. It receives a huge amount of traffic for all kinds of categories. There are, however, several features it lacks that are available on Better Horses Classifieds. One is the ability to post a video on BHC, track the number of ad views, and leverage the social links that allow your visitors to tweet or ‘Like’ your ad.

We (accidentally) discovered the power of linking the two.

We posted and ad on Friday just after Noon in the Wichita Craigslist under “For Sale’ / ‘Farm + Garden’ category.

In just 12 hours, this simple little ad generated 145 new visitors!

We thought it was a fluke or just because it said ‘FREE’, so to test it, we tried another on Sunday morning for one of the ‘high dollar’ horse ads on our site. By the end of the day, that ad had generated 177 visitors – at zero cost.

So, we thought it would be helpful to our users to post a tutorial on how to create a graphic ad in Craigslist and have it link directly to your Better Horses Classifieds ad. By the way, another thing the linking code accomplishes is it gets them off of Craigslist and onto your Better Horses Classifieds ad – so you can hopefully hold their attention for more than 5 seconds.

The Magic Trick – How It’s Done

NOTE: This looks complicated, but if taken one step at a time, anyone with reasonable computer and internet skills can handle it. If you get stumped, feel free to contact us for assistance. Our job is to help you be successful with your ads.

Step 1: Create the Ad Image for Craigslist

First, using some kind of graphics editing program like MS Paint, MS Publisher or Photoshop, you create a simple but compelling “CLICK HERE” image that is about 500 pixels wide X 375 pixels high. This is a good size that loads fast and is large enough to get attention and not have to scroll to view it on Craigslist. The key is to create a great ad title that opens a graphic that people are compelled to click on. Compared to all the boring text ads, these type of ads are very refreshing on Craigslist.

Another approach is to create a screen shot of a YouTube video with the play button (like we did here). Whatever you use, it has to be VERY CLEAR that they should click on the image to find out more. You should either have large text in the graphic that says “CLICK HERE TO …” or like the example below, create the natural urge is to click a “PLAY” button.

Here’s what the one we used looked like:

Yes, it does look like a video, so people naturally click the play button – which instantly takes them to your Better Horses ad with complete information and the video (if you used one). The image can be anything, but we know people love to click on ‘play’ buttons, so video screen shots work especially well.

Step 2: Host This Full-Size Image Online

If you don’t have access to your own server space via FTP, you can use a great free image hosting site called Imgur.

After you upload the image, you will need the ‘direct link’ to the online image location.

If using Imgur, find the ‘direct link’ and copy that to a simple text editor like Notepad for later.

Step 3: Copy the URL of Your Ad on Better Horses Classifieds

Click on the link to your individual ad and copy the URL to your text editor with the other link you saved.

 

Step 4: Bringing It All Together

If you’ve never posted on Craigslist, you’ll have to create an account first. Just go to http://craigslist.org and follow their directions. Next, choose the city where you want to post your ad, then the category. For most of the ads, for sale/farm + garden will be the best one.

When the ad posting window comes up, enter a short and catchy title. The whole point is to get them to click on the ad title and open it. Here’s our ad in the list of nearly 200 Wichita / for sale / farm + garden ads posted on Friday:

 

After your ad Title, for most categories, you enter the Price and the Specific Location.

Next, you choose whether to allow anonymous email inquiries or to “hide” your email. If you want to bypass Craigslist inquiries, and have them go to your ad, select “hide”.

NOTE: Some text editors will put in ‘quotes’ that are gray and slanted. This is an issue. If you see light colored slanted ” marks for double quotes, you should replace them with the straight text ” version. You will need a plain-text editor for the code. We recommend a free and open source editor called Notepad++.  You can download it free by CLICKING HERE

Next, download the following code that has the proper quote format and open it in your plain text editor:

———————————————————————————————————–

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE TEXT TEMPLATE FOR THE CODE

————————————————————————————————————

Now, replace the indicated portions of the above code with your information as instructed below. Be sure that you don’t erase the quotation marks.

Here’s How to Change the Code Template (Click to Enlarge)

NOTE: After you have made your changes to the code, you will want to save a copy of it in a text file for future use or to post to other free sites like http://backpage.com (another good one).

Next, just click ‘Continue” to proceed to the review screen – where you should now see your graphic. (If you don’t, click “Edit”, go back and check the code for missing quotes, etc.)

When you review the ad, it should look something like this:

Note: You’ll get a yellow-highlighted warning that you don’t have any contact information in the ad. That’s fine, because clicking on the image will take them to your ad with all the contact information.

When it looks the way you want it, then click “Continue”, solve the reCaptcha text puzzle and then click Continue again to post the ad.

Some days, the volume of ads on Craigslist is enough to bury your ad within days or even hours. If you want to re-post on Craigslist, you should delete the old ad and just re-post it. Otherwise, it might get flagged for deletion. Backpage.com doesn’t have the strict rules about duplicate posting that Craigslist does – it also doesn’t have the volume of visitors, but you can enter the same ad in multiple cities or multiple categories. Just don’t over-do it and spam people.

Summary

If you have a creative ad title and some good timing, a post on Craigslist can add dozens or even hundreds of viewers for your ad and increase the likelihood of a buyer or new client. Another reason to link it to your BHC ad is that you can see the total views and today’s views stats.

If you have gone through this tutorial and still have questions, feel free to email us at support@betterhorsesclassifieds.com If you have tried posting the code, please include a copy of the code to review it.

Once you have done this a couple of times, it will take a matter of minutes, and it will make a huge difference in your results.

We hope this will help you get more ‘Horsepower’ from the site.

Happy Trails!

Better Horses Classifieds Support