Glend Article

How to Make Money Overnight with Craigslist

Author: glend

A Pay per Lead Ad (the advertising term for this is CPA, or Cost Per 
Action) is similar to Adsense, except that the customer must enter their email, or 
sometimes complete a form (such as zip code, name, phone number etc). 
Sometimes they may have to fill out a small survey, or get a car insurance quote 
and often will need to complete a free trial. 

You may be thinking that it would just be easier to use Adsense; after all, it’s just 
a click. It’s not unusual to be paid well over $3 dollars per every sign up with 
some of these programs! While it is a little harder to get your customer to follow 
through with everything, the profits are undeniable. 

If you haven’t heard of craigslist, you can check it out at www.craigslist.com. 
Craigslist is a gigantic list of Classified Advertisements, very similar to the ones 
you see in the back of many newspapers. 

So why is Craig’s List a good marketing tool? Well, craigslist is often ranked 
within the top 50 websites on the entire internet. They receive an insane amount 
of page views every single month, and a large percentage of visitors on the 
website are both very targeted and eager to purchase. 

The single most important thing about craigslist is that almost everything is 
ENTIRELY free. That’s right, free! It costs nothing to create an account, nothing 
to post your ads (with the rare exception of a few categories in very populated 
cities), and you can post using full html. This means that not only can you use 
craigslist for simple text links, but you can also embed your own affiliate links 
into banner pictures. 

So here is a sample way that I use craigslist to net me profits overnight. First off, 
you’ll need to sign up for a few Pay per Lead affiliate networks. Here are a 
couple I like to use (several require your own website). 

www.clickbooth.com
NEVER, EVER USE CLIXGALORE.COM. I recently lost over $1400 in due affiliate commissions.
www.cj.com (this one is very popular)
www.directleads.com
www.cpaempire.com
www.azoogle.com

First, sign up for several of these websites, and find a program with a nice 
payout, and see what the terms of payment are. Sometimes you’ll only need a 

customer to sign up for a free trial, but sometimes that trial will require a credit 
card to start. You’ll find that the less your customer has to do, the more money 
you’ll make. For example, many banks, mortgage and insurance companies will 
often pay more than $7 per lead, but that lead will often have to apply for a 
loan, or an in depth mortgage consolidation. 

Now that you have found your target program, you’ll need to go to craigslist and 
sign up for an account. (you don’t need an account, but I found my ads go live 
much faster, and it’s easier for other people to contact you) Once you have 
logged in, you can navigate the website, and browse the cities. 

Now you need to determine where to place your ad. Click my account on the left, 
and you’ll notice a drop down menu on the top right on the next page. Simply 
scroll to a popular city and see what your options are. 
You might be wondering what cities and areas get the most traffic. According to 
Alexa.com (a website traffic ranking company), the most visited cities can be 
found here: 

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/craigslist.com

Now that you have chosen a popular posting area, let’s see what the options are. 
From here, determine what category is the most proper for your product. In 
many categories, you are not allowed to post a direct link somewhere. However, 
there isn’t as much stipulation when it comes to posting pictures. Rather than 
write out an entire sales letter promoting your product and posting your link only 
to have it removed within a few hours, try using HTML with the picture, so you 
may insert your affiliate code. Remember, craigslist can’t read what’s on your 
picture, so you can get away with a little more. 

That’s it! Now simply sit back and wait for the money to start flowing in. 
Craigslist is the same as anything else, you need to determine what product will 
work best where, determine your market. Many of the customers on craigslist 
are looking for deals and steals, and sometimes even freebies. The customer 
base isn’t always willing to shell out direct money, so the free Pay Per Lead route 
works very nicely. 

This isn’t to say you can’t directly sell products on craigslist, but information 
products and electronic products can be a little harder to promote. Don’t just 
slap up your product or linked image and expect results, take the time to 
research your customers and determine what they want. 

Every now and then, craigslist will determine that what you have posted is 
considered spam, or improper for the target audience. Often this will happen if 
you post multiple listings that are very similar to each other. Take the time to 

vary your ads up a bit, change the title around, as well as the content. 

Here’s a few little secrets that I like to do keep my ads showing and my profits 
rolling in. Craigslist is always changing, and always adapting to try and prevent 
spam. Here are some things that I’ve learned, and I recommend you try as well. 

Posting on your craigslist account can lead to all of your ads getting deleted. If 
several of your ads get flagged, stop using that account instantly, and either 
make a new one, or post the normal way, without an account. Always make sure 
to actually check your ads to see if they went live, just because you submitted 
them and got that email, doesn’t mean they are always showing. I generally 
make 2 or 3 new accounts per week, although I have made as many as 30 in 
one week, depending on what I am doing. Gmail works wonders for this. 

How you post makes a huge difference as well. Space out your ads if you can, 
and do them one by one. Don’t create all of your ads and then slam them into 
craigslist at once, this is a great way to get all of them flagged. Make sure you 
post in the correct area, or actual viewers will flag you instantly. You’ll get very 
good at quickly saying the same thing in multiple ads without them looking 
anything alike. People also seem to love the word eBay in the title as well as 
numbers. 

If you are using hosted image ads, be wary of what company you use to host 
ads. Photo bucket pictures are becoming more and more likely to get flagged, or 
not show up at all. Take some time and find a few other hosting companies on 
Google, or if you have a site, host it yourself. 

If you start finding all of your ads getting flagged, its time to delete your cookies 
and start anew. There are several free programs on the internet that will auto 
deleted all or specific cookies, so certainly invest in those. I use 
www.nomorecookies.com, as well as several other warriors. 

If you continue having problems, or just want to play it safe (or if you live 
outside of the US), you’ll need to use a proxy service to change your IP. In basic 
terms, your IP is the address YOU are coming from. When you post an ad on 
craigslist, it shows the post as coming from your IP address. Using a proxy, you 
basically use someone elses IP address. Use Google to search for a few free 
proxie services and how to set them up. I recommend using actual services that 
provide proxies, rather than just relying on free ones all the time. 

This is where most guides end. They tell you the basic idea of how to use 
craigslist, and a vague understanding of what they do. I don’t believe in that 
bullcrap. I’ll show you exactly what I do everyday, step by step, and at the end, 
a dirty little secret that I almost don’t want to give away. 

First I log into CPAempire, (any of them will work, I generally use cpaempire and 
azoogle). Look around for a few minutes under the Campaign bar and browse 
the categories for something that seems profitable. 

I prefer ads where all your customer has to do is submit an email address or zip 
code, and are considered First Page submits. How hard is it for someone to enter 
an email address? Not very, and you’ll make at least a dollar a lead, sometimes 
3-5. I will post these daily in the Free section or the General section, and rarely 
the electronic section. 

One thing I do that I’ve noticed many other people don’t do, is that I’ll set up an 
autoresponder through Gmail, using the vacation auto responder. I will make a 
gmail account, set up the auto responder to say something similar to “Hey, if you 
want to look at the Apple Ipod, check out my site: <affiliate link>.” 

The ad you post on craigslist will not contain any type of actual link, and if you 
make it appear as though you actually have something free to give away, or for 
sale, you’ll still receive emails and clicks. This will help you keep your ads going 
longer, and the autoresponder eliminates the need to worry about answer emails 
all day. The added bonus of using a gmail account, is it makes it very easy to see 
who has emailed you twice. Often people will simply respond with “is this real? 
Whats the deal?”. Not only does it show their interest, but you can easily 
respond back personally and make direct sales or signups. 

make it appear as though you actually have something free to give away, or for 
sale, you’ll still receive emails and clicks. This will help you keep your ads going 
longer, and the autoresponder eliminates the need to worry about answer emails 
all day. The added bonus of using a gmail account, is it makes it very easy to see 
who has emailed you twice. Often people will simply respond with “is this real? 
Whats the deal?”. Not only does it show their interest, but you can easily 
respond back personally and make direct sales or signups. 

Pretty easy huh? Other ads I like to use are highly sincere and professional 
looking car insurance quotes or health insurance quote pay per leads. 

Would you look at those payouts!!! The downside with promoting insurance 
programs is that often you won’t get paid unless the customer gets through 
anywhere between 3 and 10 pages of signups. The bonus is that you’ll make 
anywhere from $5-50 per lead! The only trick is to avoid using images, and tell a 
story. You’ll want to post this in the services area. I write the ad as if I am an 
authority in the health insurance field, and that I’ve been actively telling my 
clients to double check rates and etc using that service. People needing health 
insurance or car loans aren’t going to care if it’s 1 page to fill out or 5, as long as 
its free. You won’t care either when you see 50 bucks for 5 minutes of work. You 
can also use the autoresponder method with this. 

programs is that often you won’t get paid unless the customer gets through 
anywhere between 3 and 10 pages of signups. The bonus is that you’ll make 
anywhere from $5-50 per lead! The only trick is to avoid using images, and tell a 
story. You’ll want to post this in the services area. I write the ad as if I am an 
authority in the health insurance field, and that I’ve been actively telling my 
clients to double check rates and etc using that service. People needing health 
insurance or car loans aren’t going to care if it’s 1 page to fill out or 5, as long as 
its free. You won’t care either when you see 50 bucks for 5 minutes of work. You 
can also use the autoresponder method with this. 

You’ll notice on that image above there is another program for Home and Home 
improvement. This is a surprisingly lucrative area, as auto responder posts 
offering help in the services area of craigslist will do wonders, or just straight 
text links. 

You can also sell direct products through craigslist, such as Clickbank and 
Paydotcom products. I find that products regarding Craigslist itself, or eBay work 
very well and convert nicely. Anything else in my opinion is a toss up, and I have 
not personally ventured beyond selling ebay and craigslist products through CL. 

Here’s a Dirty little secret, and one that’s not for everyone: The dating and 
romance niche is one of the biggest markets on the internet. Just make a listing 
in the want ad sections, using a pay per lead program for an adult dating site, or 
a match making service. Using an auto responder, or the vacation responder in 
many emails (gmail), simply respond to any emails you receive with a message 
containing your affiliate link back to the dating website. 

I post an image of an attractive (yet believable) young girl (or guy!) and list of 
personality traits, body traits etc, in the personals area. Make it look like the 
other ads in that given area, blending in is the key. I generally say something 
about how I’m looking for a nice guy to treat me right. (this is a little off topic, 
but the average guy who can’t get a girl is generally FAR too nice, and as such, 
many will hone in on this. Many of the emails sent to my gmail accounts have a 
“IM A NICE GUY PICK ME” attitude.) 

Here is a screenshot of one of my gmail accounts after posting only 3 personal 
ads in major cities, after 2 days of sitting. 

Yes, that says 389 emails. Do you think if 389 people DIRECTLY CONTACTED 
YOU, you could make a few of them signup for a FREE site? Probably ..I do 
this once or twice a week to rake up a few hundred dollars easily, each time. 

My overall strategy is this: I open up excel, and I copy and paste the affiliate 
links or the Images I tend to use. I label them from monday to sunday, and I 
have at least 15 different offers daily (15 total for every week, not 15 new ones 
daily). Every day I take an hour or two (this is where some people have a harder 
time, I consider myself a relatively skilled writer, and I can write quickly and 
across different subjects without losing focus) and post my scheduled ads in 
random cities. This is the only area where I don’t really bother with fine tuning. I 
post them in what I consider major cities (basically, if I’ve heard of them or not) 
in a random fashion, and make the ads short, and believable. I post in what I 
consider to be the most proper category. 

All in all, this is kids stuff. This is the kind of thing I would teach my little brother 
to help him buy his first car, or get a few new video games. When I bought my 

mom a new house last year, she wanted something to do pay her own bills so 
she felt less guilt for accepting my money. I taught her this. she felt less guilt for accepting my money. I taught her this. 

If you want to make the big money, and learn the REALLY dirty secrets, check 
out www.dirtyinternetsecrets.com. You won’t be disappointed.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 24th, 2008 at 10:13 pm and is filed under Work At Home. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.