February 9, 2008, Mark Booth of Living Easy Software, LLC. (http://www.livingeasysoftware.com) Are you a regular poster on Craigslist? If so you may have noticed the newest phenomenon on Craigslist known as “Ghosting”. Ghosting is when you go through the entire process of posting your ad, they appear to go live, but yet your ads never go live!
Craigslist, according to Alexa.com, is the 10th most frequently visited website in the United States. So it’s pretty obvious why Internet Marketers want to take full advantage of Craigslist’s traffic. However, many marketers are having a really tough time making their ads go live. In fact, many marketers have just given up with posting on Craigslist all together because it has become so frustrating.
Craigslist is trying their best to avoid marketers spamming their website, and with due reason. It was becoming overrun with an abundance of inappropriate ads. However, in implementing their spam filter they also have inadvertently blocked some users from using tools to make legitimate postings!
Living Easy Software understand this frustration, and has released these tips to help you keep your ads from being ghosted.
1. Avoid using URL’s in the ad. If you post the same URL in multiple ads, Craigslist will identify it as spam and ghost your ads. Alternatively, you can use an embed text in hidden string functionality, such as that built-in to Ad Master. This technique requires that the user types in the website address manually, but helps ensure that each URL string is 100% unique.
2. Ad Copy lacking keywords. If you’re posting in the job section, make sure you’re posting a job description. If Craigslist doesn’t see a job description, they are much more likely to ghost your ad. If your job description is hosted on another site, and you just want visitors to go their to see it, it’s recommended that you still embed a job description, and just use HTML tags to hide the description in your ad. This can easily be done by just using the custom tags with Ad Master.
3. IP Address. An IP address is your unique identifier on the web. If Craigslist sees that your IP address is posting too many ads, they will ghost all of your ads (including past ads that were already live!). To prevent this from happening you need to post no more then 4-5 ads per an IP Address. This can easily be achieved by using the built-in dialer that supports a wide variety of internet connection types built-in to Ad Master.
4. Email or Account. If you’re posting a large number of ads from the same e-mail address or Craigslist Account, you will end up getting yourself ghosted. You will need to create a number of e-mail addresses and/or Craigslist accounts, and cycle through them as you’re posting. A task easily achieved with any formidable posting software.
5. Ad Title and Body. There are keywords that Craigslist keys off of to make sure that your ad is unique, and appropriate. For example posting a title of: “Post like a king on Craigslist” will get ghosted, however a title like “Promote your Business” will not. The key here is testing, and rotating your titles to keep them unique. Lots of marketers will use an automatic string appending technique, whereby the software ads a random string to each headline, to make them unique. It’s also key to rotate the contents of the ad body as well.
How do I know if my ad is ghosted? There’s two easy ways to tell rather or not your ad is ghosted. One is to view your ad’s source code, and look for a Craigslist’s image table. If you don’t see this table in the source code, your ad is ghosted. Another way is to browse Craigslist for your ad.
The easiest way to keep your ad from becoming ghosted is to keep your ads unique, and avoid words that will block your ads! If you’re still having problems, you really need to think outside the box. You need a professional who focuses on this area and knows the ins and outs of the technology, and you need the best posting tool you can get your hands on.
Chances are, if you’ve thought of it, so has Craigslist. If you decide to purchase a posting tool you should focus on one that has frequent updates, is easy to use, and is agile. Basically a tool that adapts to Craigslist, because certainly Craigslist isn’t going to go out of their way to adapt to your posting technique.
