Generate Buyer Leads With Craigslist.org

Started in San Francisco by, who else, a guy named Craig Newmark, Craigslist.org may not be a household name like Yahoo! or Google, but you can bet your local newspaper publisher not only knows about it – it probably keeps him or her up at night!

Craigslist (westpalmbeach.craigslist.org is the local site for West Palm Beach) is now one of the largest online classified ad sites, and their housing section actually gets results!

I once sold a single family home in Victoria Woods to a buyer who found my posting on Craigslist. One of my few listings that I did not sell through a cooperating agent. If you’re not using Craigslist, you should.

You’ll probably find that many of the people using Craigslist are technically savvy and demographically, have higher than average incomes. Which translates to buyers who are likely to do things in the right order – and get qualified for a loan. Don’t miss out on them!

You can set up an account to manage your postings, and each listing permits 4 photos. Be sure to mention that you’re a licensee (and your company’s name) in your ad, and provide a phone number, and link back to your property page on your personal website. You’ll definitely get calls and traffic to your site.

A quick note for the power users: there’s no need to use fancy HTML, or to re-post your listing every day… I’ve had steady traffic on my listings for weeks after posting. They do expire after several weeks, and then you’ll need to repost.

Craigslist, and other Internet sites, has been cited as one of the factors affecting daily newspaper classified ad revenues. And why not? It’s free!