Testing is really the life blood of any kind of advertising.

Posting to Craigslist can be a powerful way to drive traffic to your website. There’s a lot of competition for attention on that site. You need to have a powerful headline in order to get the attention of your prospect.

It seems so many people take an ad I design for them and throw it up on craigslist and hope for the best.

I guess they feel that is all they have to do. Wrong Wrong, Wrong.

Your title headline on your post is so important I can’t even begin to tell you. When you invest in an eye popping ad and never really test the headline you are losing out

There are no analytics on craigslist, just ads, and they will strip out java script. So how do you test? It’s actually very simple. Each ad I design for you will have an embedded non java script hit counter in it. Keep some notes in an spreadsheet. List your headlines in a column and another column to record your hits and another column for your ad posting link, so you can go to it directly to check your hits. Simply record the hits you see on your hit counter way at the bottom of the ad, it will be faint and discrete. Most people will not even scroll down that far so don’t worry about anyone seeing it.

I even have a quick sample below of what it would look like. When you order an ad just ask and I will send it to you along with your craigslist ad design. then you can customize it yourself. Copy it and place into google docs so you can easily adust it without eating up more space on your hard drive.

As a good example  a recent client posted his new ad several times. Each with a new title headline and each ad had a separate hit counter in it  (I provide that when you order a new craigslist ad design).

The result was amazing. He found that some headlines got more hits than others because of the embeded hit counter he knew which headines were working and which one fell short. Then he was able to post some more ads working around the best headline changing each one slightly and really honed in on what was working. So what was the result?

A $5,000 sale and a reduction of his newspaper budget from $1,000 a month to $300 a month. The results were seen in about 3 days.

Now that is how it is done. Test Test Test. It doesn’t matter what you call it A/B testing or multivariate testing just get out there and test them.

Below is a sample spreadsheet you can model. Create it in google docs for ease of use.

It’s free no up-sells nothing just the spreadsheet.

Click Here.

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Your Craigslist Ad Deserves The Best

An Effective Image Ad Will Increase Your Responses By 70% or more.

What is an IMAGE AD?
an image ad  is a customized graphic created to help you get your message out to potential customers. It is branded for you with your existing logo if you have one, company colors and sharp graphics containing your promotional message with contact info, all presented in a professional way.

Just a few samples can be viewed in the video on the right side of this page. ===>

Easy Steps To Craigslist Ad Design Success.

1. Make your secure payment thru paypal
2. Include any photos, graphics, text or design elements you require.
3. Review your design sent  to your email box.
4. Send your feedback and I’ll quickly make any needed modifications.
5. I promise to work with you until you are satisfied.

You Can Place Your Order Below for Only $79

Click Here To Get Started.

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Quite often I am asked: now that I have my craigslist image ad how do I post my ad.

This is a bare bones no fluff approach to posting images on CL. If you can copy and paste you can do this.

Once you have your ad saved in a folder that is easily reached, like On your desktop, up load it to imageshack.us

Here is how you do that. Go to

http://www.imageshack.us/

you will see on the right a cancel annd browse button hit browse and find your image. Tip: if you are loading several images that are the same then Give them each a different name. I give random letters and numbers.

Once uploaded onto imageshack yoou will see something similar to The image below. Highlite and copy the direct link.

Now open any html editor, there are several free. I use NVU it is open source= free.
Hit the image icon in the tool bar. A separate window will pop up. Insert your
Link from imageshack. Image below.

Hit the ok button.If you want to make it clickable hit the link tab on the right Insert your site domain name like below.

Hit the ok button.

Now find the source button at the bottom and what will show is an image Like below.

Make sure you save the document. Then copy from <html> to </html>

Go To craigslist.org

1. Click “post to classifieds” near thee top left.
2. As an example, select “for sale”".
3. Click “computers & tech”.
4. Click your region if several are offered.
5. Click your town if several are offered. The input form should now be on screen.
6. Insert the posting title, and your price.
7. Place the cursor in Craigslist’s Product Description window and press CTRL-V to paste the code. One thing you must do when posting this way is to take out the title. This is the name you saved your Document as.

<title>easy central</title> it will look like this when you do that. <title> </title> If you don’t the words will show up on the top of your image ad.

8. Enter your e-mail address in thee window. Make sure it’s correct.
9. Click continue and follow on-screen instructions to finish your ad. You should see a preview containing your very large image add and it will be clickable (WOW)
10. Type in the security code, click “Continue” and you are done. Craigslist will send you an e-mail with a link to your ad. Be sure to check it for errors. Now it’s time to wait for buyers.

If you want to check it first to make sure your ad is as it should be.
Open the saved html doc in any browser. This way you are making sure the link not only showing up
but, you can check to make sure thee ad is clickable.

This should do it and you are good to go.

When wanting to post several ads of the same image each one should have a different name to confuse the bots on cl. They will look like this. You can load up several at a time and then copy ea link separately

SDFH90MCXZW3.jpg

Ghktyuiwert.jpg

XCBGNQW4TR56.jpg

ZFT789HJQW4ER.jpg

And that is all there is to it. I may look difficult at first but after the first time you will have it down and can post in just a couple of minutes.

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Craigslist Account Setup Process
One thing here is that you need as many Gmail and Craigslist accounts as you need to accomplish your lead goal. Start small and then build as you go.
What I would do is setup 3 Gmail accounts and Craigslist accounts today or tomorrow. By the way, here are a few alternate sources for setting up email addresses other than Gmail.com (I would actually setup one account in each of the 3 below to start with so you get a feel for how they all work):

http://live.com

http://yahoo.com (I like the ymail version that you can choose)

http://gmx.com http://hotmail.com
Here is a step-by-step process:
Step 1: Clear cookies (and cache – see Mozilla information at bottom of this page) – just in case you had logged into Craigslist – logout if so and then clear cookies and cache (make sure you don’t have additional browser windows open)
Step 2: Change your IP (also just in case you had logged into CL and after you have setup a Craigslist Account)
>>Important<<
Every time you change your IP you should check/confirm that the IP was changed by going to http://whatismyipaddress.com
If you make a mistake and post with the same IP in 2 different Craigslist Accounts then Craigslist will link the 2 accounts together.
Step 3: Setup 1 Email Account (just use your current IP address from Step 2) – Here are free email services you can use:

http://gmail.com

http://live.com

http://yahoo.com (I like the ymail version that you can choose)

http://gmx.com http://hotmail.com
Step 4: Go To Craigslist.org to setup a new account.
Step 5: **Clear Cookies & Cache Before You Activate The Craigslist Account From Your Email Account***
Step 6: This is fairly new but I also now recommend that you go ahead and post 1 ad in that new Craigslist Account within the next 12 hours

NOTE: If required to setup a Phone Verified Account (PVA) then just use phone numbers at your disposal (cell phones, office phones, grandma’s phone, etc)
IMPORTANT: Treat PVAs as gold! Do not over-post in those accounts and make sure you clear cookies and change IPs.

Step 7: Logout of Craigslist & Gmail
Step 8: Start Back At Step 1 (make sure you do clear cookies AND rotate IP)
Gmail will stop you from setting up too many accounts in one day so 5 is a good number to start with. Also, don’t ever put a secondary email when setting up Gmail accounts.
Make note of all your Email and all your Craigslist Accounts with Username and PW in a Spreadsheet or in Roboform if you use it. I would call these 5 accounts something like “Email Address – Group 1 – A” and “Craigslist – Group 1 – A” then the next is Email – Group 1 – B, etc. Or you could name them like this “Email – MWF – A”, Email – TThSat – A, etc.
The reason for this is because if you have 10 total accounts, you could fairly easily post in 5 accounts on Monday and then post in the other 5 accounts on Tues and then go back to the original 5 accounts on Wed (If you post 3 ads per account then you would be able to post 15 ads per day). You would probably need another 5 accounts for Sunday if you post on Sundays. The nomenclature would allow you to keep up with which accounts you would be posting from each day. I actually really like the day of the week nomenclature. The “A, B, C” part is just to keep up with the accounts for that day.
If you wanted to get really conservative, you could create 5 accounts for each day for a total of 35 accounts. Then, you would only use the same account once per week.
Daily Craigslist Posting Strategy
The daily posting strategy is as follows:
Step 1: Clear Cookies/Cache/Browser History
*Make certain you are removing Cookies/Cache (and even “History”) – not just cookies.
Firefox is pretty good at clearing cookies/cache and history but you can also try a program like this: http://www.ccleaner.com/
Step 2: Rotate IP Address
Step 3: Login to Craigslist Account A (for that day)
Step 4: Post an ad with unique title and description in Apts/Housing For Rent, For Sale By Broker or For Sale By Owner (1 Ad per account per day to keep Craigslist from blocking you)- keep titles unique and change up the descriptions either totally or by making sure you put the unique title for that ad at the bottom of the description.
Try This: After you copy and paste the html code from the ad wizard, add some additional keystrokes…maybe hit enter a couple of times after the code and then actually type in the title you used in your Ad. Craigslist may be able to detect the lack of manual keystrokes when you copy and paste the ads and green ghost or auto-flag them. We have not confirmed this yet in our testing but it doesn’t hurt to be conservative with the posting strategy.

Try This: After you copy and paste the html code from the ad wizard, add some additional keystrokes…maybe hit enter a couple of times after the code and then actually type in the title you used in your Ad. Craigslist may be able to detect the lack of manual keystrokes when you copy and paste the ads and green ghost or auto-flag them. We have not confirmed this yet in our testing but it doesn’t hurt to be conservative with the posting strategy.

Step 5: Logout of Account
Step 6: Clear Cookies/Cache/History
Step 7: Rotate IP Address
Step 8: Login to Craigslist Account B
Step 9: Follow directions at Step 4 and repeat process until you reach the last Craigslist Account.
Mozilla Settings:
One thing to keep in mind when you are clearing cookies is to make sure the browser is setup to also clear your cache. I hope you are using Mozilla Firefox because it seems to do a good job of removing any remnant objects.
Firefox 3.0 Setup
First, go to Tools > Options > Privacy > Settings – make sure that Cookies and Cache are both selected. I select everything but you can leave the passwords unchecked if you use that feature to save passwords within Firefox.
Here is a screenshot of my Privacy Settings (yours should match this if you are on Firefox 3.0):

http://www.screencast.com/t/VH3a7hoIj

When you clear cookies, select Tools > Clear Private Data in Firefox 3.0 versions
Firefox 3.5 Setup
The process is a little different for Firefox 3.5 but similar.
The process in Version 3.5 for setting up so the cookies and cache are cleared is to go to Tools > Options > Privacy > Settings – see here: http://screencast.com/t/UgWfEE98

Make sure that Cache & Cookies are selected. If you use Firefox for saving passwords (I recommend using http://roboform.com instead) then you can uncheck the Active Site Logins option.

Then when you go to remove cookies and cache each time, go to Tools > Clear Recent History – select “Everything” – you can also change the settings from above by clicking the “Details” button on that view.

Just so you know, this will log you out of any sites you have open with that browser since most sites use cookies to keep you logged in.
Download Mozilla Here if you don’t have it.

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/

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