Friday, June 13, 2008

The art of Maximum Craigslist Traffic

Craigslist, we all know it provides us huge amount of traffic, but how do you optimize it? How do you know you are getting the most traffic out of it? And how do you avoid being flagged down every time? This is where I started my journey on searching for traffic. I set up my website with Google Analytic so I can see where the traffic is coming from and where I need to work on.

1. You have to treat every visitor as customers, and the oldest form of sales is going through demographic, this way you'll have clear idea of which state is not generating traffic for you and specifically target that state's traffic with craigslist. I've gotten 242 hits from Alaska and over 1843 hits from California alone.



2. Go after the most populated Cities, I've basically did a wikipedia search on America's most populated city , and I’ve posted my ads from New York City all the way down to Witchta Kansas, this way I have a clear idea I am hitting the hardest part of the U.S population. New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Phoenix are a must. There are several cities in Ohio that have huge population and they are not on front page of craigslist, making separate posts on those cities will grant you a lot of traffic. And after you are done with U.S, go hit up Canada's top populated city such as Toronto.



3. Third, target the craigslist population user. States like Vermont, Rhode Island doesn't have a concentrated population in a city, but their internet users are huge, targeting those states itself will get you a lot of traffic. On the other hand, there are states like West Virginia which wouldn't generate traffic at all simply because of lack of population and lack of internet users, which I won’t bother to post. Going through cities of craigslist, if there are not posts that means there is no demand, don’t bother with it.

As you can see, this is how I got over 10,000 hits from craigslist within 2 weeks. My next post will talk about how to make craigslist posts effective and how to prevent getting flagged down. If you think this post is helpful please leave a comment.


I am giving out the information to you guys without doing regular ebook form, so please consider making a donation on the right if you think this is blog is helpful.

15 comments:

Tyler said...

Very helpful post, Thanks ! But do you need to be selling something on your website or it's just your one page content with ads ? I mean on craigslist, what kind of ads are you running ?

Also, Analytics is great to learn from traffic, and I suggest you also look at http://trends.google.com so you can see quickly which states and country to target first, and when you usually get traffic.

Anyway great post.

Unknown said...

I usually post in areas on whatever my site is promoting, and its usually in real estate or business section. The dating section will flag you down even if you don't have a link. I'll post the details on how I create craigslist's post on my next post.

A said...

Very interesting blog I'm looking forward for the next post. :) Going to try that Graiglist posting too after Your guides. ;) Cheers. A.

Anonymous said...

nice thanks just visted all your ppc as well post on ghostin ?/

Unknown said...

ghosting is next post, i am still writing it =P

Jarrod said...

Nice to know that Craigslist traffic works for visits, but does it convert for sales ?

Anonymous said...

This is short term, not for like everyday ;)

Anonymous said...

I've been doing this for 2 days now and I've only earned $0.07 and a little over 1000 page impressions. I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

Unknown said...

Probably content, if your content is not related to the topic people will bounce. they do need to see "some" content that helps them

Mithu said...

It is very kind step of yours, and really appreciateable. You done a great job here... Thank you so much

Suggest me something for my blog Real Estate Facts - Real Estate Book

Anonymous said...

Great topic man, We all need to get more and more traffic for our sites/blogs and the blogging just meant to have good traffic as i m willing to make a new blog related to Travel Guide Book and i wish deeply to have much traffic on it.
Thanks for such useful topic

Sime said...

Its very good efort becas i have too makes this types blog.in these days only one site check it and tell me about this.skin care tip

Anonymous said...

Hi
You have great work in you blog.
specially your latest post.
keep it up.

Healthy Jesi said...

Congrats man, you have done a great job here... No words for thanking you on your kind act to share the way to get traffic. God bless you.

Cool Jesi

Sears Jobs said...

I do a lot of CL advertising and pretty much follow the same idea... post in the big cities but I have also found that there are some smaller cities that use CL like crazy and have gotten tremendous responses from some of those.