Sorry for the delayed reply! I assume you mean what section should I search in, not post in. Just go to craigslist and search in the search box at the top left.
Hello! We posted a a PAID ad on Craigslist. Somehow, it got posted to jobs, not services! I have emailed CL 3x over 3 days, and I have not received any response. We need it moved from jobs to services, asap, and it is paid for. Please help?
Craigslist support is usually not responsive or helpful. If they haven't responded in three days you may just have to take your loss and submit a new ad. You can also try posting in their help section and maybe you'll get a response from craigslist support or possibly a helpful user just offering suggestions. try these if you haven't already: minneapolis.craigslist.org/contact www.craigslist.org/about/help/ forums.craigslist.org/? forums.craigslist.org/?forumID=9
Lately all of the ads that I try to post get held for review. They end up as flagged for removal. Last time they even put my account on hold even though I could see absolutely nothing at all wrong with my add . They don't respond at all when I try to contact them its like they don't want to be bothered at all. Even though I did get my $5 refunded its very frustrating because I know that I could get a ton of leads if I was able to post on Craigslist but it seems like they don't want me to. 😢
The exact same thing happened to me. I tried to troubleshooting my ad by making it very brief. They blocked that one because they said it was too short and didn't provide enough information! They eventually blocked me completely. And they would not respond to me either. You're right, they act like they don't really care about advertisers. The only saving grace is that every time they blocked me completely I was able to use a different credit card to start again. I was able to get $25 credit cards from my credit card company (Visa/US Bank). Last time I tried, Craigslist did not accept debit cards. Fortunately, I do not need to advertise on Craigslist anymore. I have switched to Facebook.
In a month when I get everything going again, I'm planning to make a youtube video for dummies on everything I thought was overwhelming when starting up my business so it helps others. I think my imagination of what some of these skills and actions needed to run your business were what held me back more than figuring out and researching how to get each action done in the first place. Anyway, thank you for a straightforward video with the thoughts explained behind the action. You're awesome! I personally benefited from this like the missing piece to my personal puzzle on where I went wrong or didn't use the tools available in the first place.
Great video. Very helpful. And in 2024, it seems that craigslist doesn't really care if you list your company website in your ad. I think the main thing is that they don't want to see spammy links (and that's the key: links). To be sure, I just started playing around with craigslist recently so everyone can take this with a grain of salt. But that's what I'm concluding so far. To be continued...
Hi Bob, I have received an inquiry for an ad post on Craigslist and when I try to reply to that email it does not deliver. How do I contact the buyers from the website? Please help
All I know to do would be try to discover if they made a small mistake in their email address and fix it, or try different ways to respond (from a different email provider, or web email provider for instance). Maybe google the email address and see what you can learn. It's also possible that someone is just messing with you. Otherwise I don't know anything else.
HI Bob. Because one of the photos mentioned as being related to a handyman service - two guys working on a doorframe. But problem was one guy was wearing a white tanktop (wife-beater tshirt), which does not highlight a trustworthy handyman. You're right about using pictures related to your service, but pics that don't make a business seem trustworthy hurt the ad.@@BobLoweConsulting
Hey Bob. Thank you for all you do. You are so very helpful, especially to beginners. I had heard that you could only post in your area. Has that changed any for 2023? Also how many times a day can you post? Thank you again for helping us all get started. ❤❤
Thanks for the thanks! Check the Craigslist FAQ here for many answers: www.craigslist.org/about/help/faq Here's what they say about only posting in your area: Q: Can I post my ad on more than one craigslist site? A: Please choose just ONE local craigslist site for which your ad is most relevant-generally the site closest to you. If your ad is equally relevant to all locations, your ad does not belong on craigslist. Please find another service. Posting the same ad to multiple locations on craigslist is prohibited. And about how many times a day: Q: How often can I post? A: 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. Many people get around these rules by making small changes to their ad and re-posting. If there are differences in your ad, it's technically a different ad. So you can kind of skirt the rules a little this way. Re-posting the exact same ad appears to work for some, too. But it may get ghosted or deleted by Craigslist or by other users. Craigslist appears to be very unpredictable in how they allow or disallow ads.
Everything I can tell you about posts being flagged is mentioned in all the comments below. If you read the comments you will have everything I know about flagged posts.
I hoped "all" would gimme uploaded notices, but nope. In my case, "all" means notifications from all posters on thread. SO, ... I switched to "personalized", ... and still no upload notices, but i dont yet know about the every poster on earth notices, because I've been trained by experience to not post in "Shorts". How do we get new upload notices???
None that I know of. Make sure you have good keywords in your ad though. So even though it may not be on the first page when people browse, if they search for certain terms your ad will appear in those search results. The more relevant your keywords are, the closer to the top of the search results you'll be.
Ahhh that makes sense, by keywords im assuming you mean the description portion? Make it very descriptive and have key words and phrases? I didn’t see a keyword specific area.
@@michaelbacile8439 Yes, you got it. You'll see some ads where they have many, and sometimes hundreds of keywords at the bottom of their description. That's called keyword stuffing. I think it's better to write your description with keywords creatively sprinkled within. Some sites penalize you for keyword stuffing. I have heard that craigslist automatically flags or ghosts ads with dramatic keyword stuffing, and I suspect other users flag them as well. Google penalizes websites who use keyword stuffing. Google picks up some craigslist ads and lists them in google search results. I suspect that google ignores ads that use keyword stuffing, but I don't know that for a fact.
This answered my confusion. But am unhappy about it. Many channels I subscribe to I only care about one particular thing that's maybe 10% of what they do. When I was hitting personalized, it says "unspecified". So I was hoping it'd base what I was notified of going off what I "liked" on the channel. The way it actually works sounds useless.
The biggest flaw I see with this feature is that the majority of subscribers subscribe on a video watch page as if it was a "like" button. Most people don't know about these settings, and the subscribers who just discovered a channel will not have seen nor be aware of other videos from the channel. With "Personalized" being the default setting, the algorithm will then not send new video notifications to the new subscribers, since the video they subscribed on was the only video from that channel they ever watched.
Thank you Bob! Nicely done. Do you have tips on how to accept payment when you are selling things? Especially if the items are costing a few thousand dollars.
Thanks! I use Paypal and Stripe. I know there are others out there, but I don't know anything about them. I would suggest googling payment processors and see what comes up.
I wish I knew the answer! The only suggestions I can give you are (1) don't do 'spammy' stuff like posting the same ad 5 times in the same section within minutes or hours of each other. (2) Try writing different types of ads -- for instance, if you write long ads stuffed with keywords, try writing shorter ads that are more 'conventional'. (3) Try placing ads in a different section if that would be appropriate. (4) Almost too obvious to mention, but make extra sure that you're adhering to Craigslist's terms of service and not trying to skirt the rules. Also, you could try showing your ad to the help forums and ask them. I have not found that technique to be very effective because it's just a bunch of ordinary people in those forums who like to give their opinions. They are not Craigslist employees except in very rare cases, and they don't necessarily know what they're talking about. But sometimes they might have an idea or two that you could use.
@@SocialOrbit Usually, once in awhile the site can do it, but craigslist is pretty open with what you put up. Like Bob said, make sure you don't violate the TOU.
"Black Owned" Haha! Since when are Black Handymen any better than any other race? That is the only criteria any homeowner is looking for anyway--merit. They're not interested in 'helping out' any particular race for virtue points. I'm going to put "White owned" and see how that goes. Crazy world we live in.
I actually had not given that any thought. The way I read that ad caption was as a marketing technique to attract a particular customer, not as a statement about the quality of work.
@@BobLoweConsulting Yes. Posting multiple ads across multiple platforms.....say 20-30 websites...and each website has a different format. If it takes more than a 20 minute video to learn to navigate each one of those websites, yes it is a big deal and shouldn't be so cumbersome and time consuming.
Hi Bob. Very good video. One question. I was under the impression I can't place ads in multiple cities even if their paid ads. Is this outdated thinking?
Thank you! Yes, you're supposed to only post the same ad in one local area. From what I can tell, Craigslist is very sporadic in how they enforce that. Here's an FAQ of theirs. You might be able to find more info too, if you search their help files: www.craigslist.org/about/help/faq where they answer the question: Q: Can I post my ad on more than one craigslist site? A: Please choose just ONE local craigslist site for which your ad is most relevant-generally the site closest to you. If your ad is equally relevant to all locations, your ad does not belong on craigslist. Please find another service. Posting the same ad to multiple locations on craigslist is prohibited. That being said, I have seen people skirt that requirement a variety of ways. (I don't know how much of the following applies to paid ads vs free ads.) I know that people post in a few different locations and may or may not have luck doing that. You may get flagged by users or ghosted by Craigslist. Or you can modify an ad and post different versions because they are technically different ads. I don't think you get blocked if you only post in a few different locations. Trying it is the only way to know for sure. If you do it and they don't like it, my experience has been that you'll get warned once, the ad will get deleted, and they will refund your money if it's a paid ad. If you get caught twice they will very likely block your credit card completely. And then there are those who post in dozens if not hundreds of locations and appear to get away with it. Most people have to use a service for this. Those services use software that can fake their identities and true location and post hundreds of duplicate ads in a few minutes. How long the ads stick is unknown to me. I often see the same ad in many different cities in the free sections but I have never monitored them to see how well they stick. I haven't paid attention to the difference between paid vs free categories before today, but I doubt that these automated ads go into paid categories. I don't see how they could pull that off with one credit card.
@@BobLoweConsultingI have a question, I think you no longer can renew your craigslist ad to get it to the top of the list till 48 hrs have passed . Has it always been like this?
@@BobLoweConsulting Hey very good info. So I believe Craigslist blocked my debit card without warning for placing paid wanted by dealer ads in 2 different cities that are only 15 minutes from each other. Do you have any insight on how I can get around this? Are there any cards that you are aware of that work and are accessible. I know some prepaid cards don’t work.
Without knowing more, I would guess that their automated system marked your ad (or post) as possibly against their terms of service and you'll have to wait until a human reviews it. I think all you can do is wait. In my experience that only takes a day or two, but it has always been bad news in my situations. They either tell you the post is against their terms of service (with no explanation about what you did wrong) and blacklist your credit card number so you can't use it on craigslist anymore (if you're talking about a post that you paid for.) Or, if they're in a good mood they might tell you what they don't like, will say don't do it again, delete your post and refund your fee. Sometimes they have told me to fix something, and then they blacklisted my credit card anyway. They sometimes include an email address for support, but I don't think anybody even reads their support emails because I have never gotten a response. The email they give is support@craigslist.org or help@craigslist.org. I can't remember which. I had an ad rejected by them once with no explanation of what was wrong with the ad. I first got an email saying my ad was under review. Then a day later they just said something about it being against their terms of service. So I made it way shorter in hopes of not saying anything that offended them. Again, I got an email saying it was under review. This time they rejected it and said it was too short and it did not contain enough detail. And then they blacklisted my credit card. [Insert cussword here!] So I believe that the bottom line is that craigslist is so fat with profits they just don't care anymore and cancel accounts and/or credit cards with no customer service at all, and no chance for you to work out a solution. Hopefully you'll be luckier than I have been!
