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Lots more questions…….And a lot less time to answer them.  Here is a quick question from James - and a long, hopefully not too rambling response that I think covers SOME of thinking I try to incorporate into my CL campaigns, and broader strategy in my own business…I re-read some of this a few minutes ago and I think I even confused myself, so if it doesn't make sense to you, be sure to let me know.  But hey - it is the other side of 2 AM once again, and I'm getting less sleep than Amy Winehouse these days, so…Part two to follow!

 

Hi Ian! Thanks for the great Craigslist tips! I've tried to promote a lot of different things though and still can't make money. I'm not sure but I think my ip is being blocked. I'm not a good copywriter and was hoping you could show some examples of some of your ads if you don't mind. Is affiliate sales the only thing you sell on Craigslist? If I can't make any conversions there, is there another way? What did you start when you were a newb? Thank you. James.

Hey there James –

Thanks for the note..:-)

A few things regarding your questions. One – unless you are REALLY overposting, and using an automated solution, I doubt your IP is being blocked. Most likely, you are making any number of the mistakes with your ads that I have made, others have made, and are covered here at greater length in different posts addressing ghosting and other problematic posting processes. As I have done myself, and recommended to others – I would simply tear it all down, clear your head and start again. Fresh email addresses and fresh CL accounts – and in your case, if you aren't converting, maybe fresh affiliate programs too..;-)

Very simply, CL is a successful, but supplemental strategy for me. I know that I am getting a good amount of organic traffic on Craigslist posting problems, and as a consequence, lots of the questions are being asked about CL ( like yours) which makes it APPEAR like this is a huge part of my process. It isn't. It is a meaningful channel for free traffic, and affiliate sales, but due to it's ephemeral quality ( shelf life is fleeting and requires constant upkeep) even though it is reasonably easy money to make – I know that it is not a long term strategy for me personally, and I only have limited hours in the day – so I keep it under control.

(note – You can easily make a few hundred bucks a day if you are dillegent and sequential and STRATEGIC – some probably make far more ( higher end services with big dollar leads are ideal on CL – mortgage money, personal injury, etc – one conversion a week/4 a month could be a simple, six figure revenue stream even for a complete beginner)

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Actually – before I even lose that thought – here's an idea. If you are someone who is getting your ads through but not converting on the affiliate revenue side, especially if have an autoposter, simply sell leads – create a simple squeeze page for a free report on " the Seven Mistakes First Time Home Buyers Make When Applying for a Mortgage" – collect the name ( you can probably get the guide for free online – re-write an existing one, or even get promotional materials from a lender you approach to work with – Then sell these names to a financial company for a pre-determined dollar per lead – the PPC value of these ads on the adwords side is very high – you could probably get anywhere from 10-50 bucks a pop, ( or a straight fee on a processed application) depending on how qualified they are - especially if you establish the value of the leads up front – ie – "I'll give you 25 names for free, no cost….Contact these 25 on me, and we'll talk after you've had a chance to verify my process. This could be as simple as opening a phone book and cold calling 20 small brokers in your area – they work on commission, are typically young kids who are aggressive, just out of school and a closed loan could mean a few grand in their pocket.
Remember, just because there are tons of spammy ads on CL for finance related offers and such, the VAST majority of business people have NO idea that you can actually use it for anything more than getting a full body loofah massage on a Friday night from a girl named MaryBeth who has soft, supple hands and a very sad life story. Not that I've ever done that of course. But I'm sure other people have.

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Here are the ways that I indentified early on, in a "note to self", directly from my own chicken scratched, dog eared yellow legal pad many moons back with the little asterisk notes I made while writing it up in the parentheses section.

(note I don't use all of these now – and some were sort of rendundant once I put them into action so I 86'd them, and others, while VERY PROFITABLE..made me feel dirty in the morning. Hopefully this will give you a few ideas to add to your own list)

1) Use CL to sell other peoples stuff

2) Use CL to sell your own stuff

3) Use CL to build a list (aweber/need to opt in for more/gmail/gateway magic page)

4) Use CL for SEO

5) Use CL for Adsense

6) Use CL for automatic auto reply (set up ebook ads, on autoreply, set it+forget it)

7) Use CL for community sites/niche sites (combination of SEO and brandbuilding – look into other areas of CL to build communities, etc – drive to membership model sites, free info, etc)

Use CL to promote Adult dating sites ( use images, url redirects, post text ads and use an autoreply)

And a few of the techniques that I played with early on that were effective ( and most are still today)

**Use image ads – centered – text in header – same as text in headline listing – rotate 10 headlines – 10 sub heads -one hosted sales letter image underneath – looks like one long letter, each one unique


**Market segmentation – use aweber or other to segment the market – ie – NYC ad – creditnyc@aweber.com opt in – free offer/content/video etc for name – back end sales funnel of related products geared to demographic and niche interest creditdc@aweber.com, creditmiami@aweber.com, etc.

Sequencing – post 10 ads 12 pm sharp on Mon – rotate accounts and email address- 10 new ads on Tues – same market, different cities. Login 12 PM sharpWed – DELETE original 10 ads, immediately re-post (48 hour threshold has passed). Repeat Thurs for Tuesdays ads – etc - net effect – each niche 10 ads – 10 cities every day.

Now – with the benefit of hindsight, I can tell you that the most effective approach for me has been selling other peoples stuff, and then selling my own stuff ( primarily my own consulting services)

I sell other people stuff, as I've covered on here ad nauseum, by either:

1)driving the traffic to a squeeze page on my domain, collecting the name and then, immediately forwarding the visitor to the vendors landing page visa vi the autoresponders destination page URL on opt in.

2)Simply using any variety of straight text/image and cloaked redirects from the CL ad itself.

I sell my own services by –

1) Sending the traffic to an opt in form with the promise of a series of business building follow ups

2) Simply sending them right to the home page of my site and trusting that there is enough good information on the pages to stir their imagination, and interest.

I never really had the time to fully explore the hardcore list building strategies ( although I have certainly collected a good amount across 5 or 6 separate niches not including my own services) nor did I ever really delve into the market segmentation approach, but I do believe that for an ambitious marketer with a little bit of free time, this could be a veritable untapped goldmine.

For example – if you have a few days to get this set up properly – this would absolutely kill, the copy, in combination with a properly segmented list and a collection of back end offers, this would work well for both short term cash flow ( straight up sales) as well as longer term business building ( a segmented list that you could follow up with solid relevant offers.

 

 

Each city is targeted by name. This will have ( and has for me the VERY little that I've played with it, but personalization works plain and simple) a dramtic positive effect on your open rates. ( finance – in my example is especially difficult as there is so much spam – I'd recommend picking a different niche as my ads here are performing lower today than even a month ago due to the sheer quantity of competing people, postings, autoposters, and advanced strategies being employed by many more people – there are still very many EASY areas to dominate)

Use an autoresponder to collect the name – ( the email they must respond to to redeem your "FREE" offer )- they get the free doohickey from you in their welcome email ( they will most likely need to double confirm to conform to your list servers regulations) you redirect them to the sales page of the product…And you now have a name that you know is on your New York Credit list. The same thing happens in Boston, DC, Miami, and everywhere else that you have this set up. So while you have one FREE ebook to offer, and one primary affiliate program you are promoting ( of course you could even rotate affiliate programs by embedding multiple destinations in the URL) you have COMPLETELY segmented demographic markets. Why would this matter? Well, you might be able to:

1) Offer similar products and services to each list that are only redeemable in their area – bringing your conversion rates through the roof and providing better value to your subscribers. ( ie – a secured credit card that only extends credit to NY residents does 95% of your list no good – but if you've identified that you have a list of 900 New Yorkers with shitty credit - for that 5% - segmented properly, you might convert at 25% or better. Scale this out in each area – more work but well worth it!)

2) As long as your "fine print" acknowledges this, simply sell these names to local marketplace vendors that can serve them well. High risk lenders, credit repair companies, etc. just make sure you disclose this somewhere linked to where they originally signed up.

Forget about writing good ads completely. We aren't interested in clicks from WITHIN Craigslist, ( although it will be a nice bonus) rather, we are going to target the natural SERP results where we know these exact, yet awkward phrases are being typed in as is. Get a list of 25 keyword phrases related to your niche – the very same ones you would be advertising on if you were running an article marketing or longer tail PPC campaign.

Simply use these VERY phrases, exactly as is – ( use a tool like Nichebot to get the exact embedded phrase with low competition and decent volume) – Write One article – " The 4 astonishing lies they DON'T want YOU to know about your credit". This is your landing page. Optimize this page for the HIGHEST paying keyword phrases for credit repair ( or whatever market you working in). ( I use Keyword Country for this - as I've covered in another post) This is the old "adsense arbitrage" approach – yet, you aren't paying for the traffic on the front end…it's free! So you have 25 keyword rich titles, 25 CL ads with those titles in the engines on low competition phrases with decent daily search volume – you ARE going to get traffic to your ad – you are going to send traffic to your article – and you are going to monetize that article simply by virtue of the normal clicks that occur on these content pages without worrying about an affiliate conversion occurring for you to get paid.   I know a few people who send ALL of this traffic to a simple page with an optimized headline, a few sentences, optimized for the HIGHEST paying phrases in the niche - and simply a few 336X280 adsense boxes.  Nothing else on the page other than this and they convert VERY well on CTR. ( watch out for Google Gods though)   This has worked beautifully well for article marketing for years ( ie – the bum marketing method approach) and works equally as well for CL if you need quick cash. I use this in concert with article submissions, press releases, and social networks to dominate keywords in some very highly competitive markets – often holding on to half of the top page listings for my chosen keywords simply by aggressively attacking the market from many angles. CL is an important part of this strategy as illustrated below by the second result in the google results for "credit repair myself" which was the keyword phrase I wanted to hit here - as you'll see covered in both the top listing ( an ezine articles submission by me, and the 5th result ( I erroneously marked the #3 as mine - it is NOT the 5th is though - a US free ads article with same title -that simply redirects through yet another credit repair URL I have to a popular E Book.   Plus I also had another first page result yesterday ( now gone from first 3 pages completely..:-as well which is one of my credit repair websites - with again, you guessed it - some derivation of these three kewords in my title, and a slightly different article than the rest).  Was "credit repair myself" a particularly tough phrase to rank for? No, not at all.  Does it drive tons of traffic to these offers.  No, it doesn't.  But it certainly sends some. Like just about everything else I do - it is a function of simple scale, the aggregate effect of lots of small footholds in a larger landscape. 

Part two of this is coming within a few days…:-)  Stay posted as we'll cover some other ways to use free resources ( and some inexpensive tools if you have a few bucks to spend) to make some money in time for the weekend.:-)