The site craigslist is one of the most trafficked websites on the planet right up with there with some of the other popular sites like eBay.com, Facebook.com, MySpace.com, and Amazon.com. In 2009, this site received approximately 45 Million to 55 million unique visitors per month. That is a major player online!
Craigslist is the type of company that is an outsider from the rest of the industry especially in the sense that they don’t necessarily try to monetize their users unlike other major sites like Google.com, Yahoo.com, MSN.com, Facebook.com, About.com and many more.
Craigslist is run very differently – although they are a for-profit company, they are run in a non-commercial intent, which gives you a good opportunity to get free traffic.
There are several traffic driving opportunities on craigslist including local classified ads, forums and more. Regarding local classified ads, you can post an ad for a particular city that has a craigslist site or state. A classified ad is absolutely free for most of the craigslist locations, but they do have fee-based ads for certain services like adult or therapeutic services as well as some job listings in certain cities. That being said, it is likely your ad for your online store will be free.
Don’t know what to post? The list is endless for retailers, but here are three simple suggestions.
- You can offer a special coupon code during your slow season.
- You can promote your site by giving away a freebie – like a whitepaper or information about featured product.
- If you run a sweepstakes, let the craigslist community know. You might attract new email signups or new customers.
For more examples, go to craigslist and look at the “for sale” section of a city. For instance, click here to see baby products offered for sale in New York City. Granted, many of these listings are from individuals, but you will notice retailers in the mix too.
People who look for these types of products can be great leads for your business. If you think about people who would see the above example on craigslist, they went to the “for sale” section of New York City and looked at baby products. So, if you sold baby strollers and shipped to NYC, don’t you think you would like to get your ad in front of these people?
Also, search engine results will index these craigslist classified ads, which make your craigslist ad have multiple opportunities on different sites to attract visitors to the ad.
The major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN all index craigslist ads well and sometimes these craigslist results even make it to the first page of search engine results. This is a great way to get an indirect link to your online store and control more real estate with search engine results, which at the most basic level gives you more opportunities to attract new customers.
Here’s to your online success,
David
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