- Hey there, what's up?
This is Seth, and in this video,
I'm going to show you a technique that I have used for years
to build my buyers list using Craigslist.
The great thing about Craigslist is that
it's a huge, huge marketplace.
It's really, it's where I've sold
almost all of my properties,
in my investing career, it's been like my
number one place to go,
and it's free, which is another amazing perk about it.
Now, Craigslist has actually changed a lot
since I first started investing in real estate.
You can't really embed links anymore,
you can't use any pretty HTML, or,
in a lot of ways, they've kind of
restricted the creativity that you can use,
which I get where they're coming from,
they really did it because a lot of people
were just sort of spamming the site,
and it really kind of was a necessary change.
As a result, it makes it a little bit harder
for us to get traffic, but,
it's still definitely worth doing this,
because there's a lot of eyeballs that hit Craigslist,
and if you can, you know,
put together a compelling advertisement
with a good headline, some good images,
and refer people back to your site,
it can absolutely be worthwhile,
and you can get a lot of nice traffic from it.
Just to give you an idea of what you can do,
if I was trying to get some traffic
from Craigslist to my landing page,
to sign up for my buyers list,
I would go about it by creating an ad like this,
and again, this is just my market,
you can do this in whatever market you're working in.
You go to the real estate for sale section,
and then you'll see something like this,
and again, Craigslist has changed a lot,
so depending on what point in time you're watching this,
it may look a little bit different,
but really, once you've really created a Craigslist account,
which I have and I'm currently logged in,
so if you haven't done that yet,
you'll want to first create an account.
Once you've done that, you just go up here
to this button that says post,
and this is how we actually get started with a new posting.
The purpose of trying to sell a piece of real estate,
we would go here and hit housing offered,
and then real estate by owner,
and then right here,
we're just going to start putting in the information.
I've actually got a premade description
that I'm going to put in here.
I'm just going to paste it like that.
Chances are, if you're watching this video on the blog,
you can actually copy and paste
this exact wording if you want.
Of course, you'll probably want to change it
just a little bit, based on what your business is,
and what you're trying to do.
As you can see, this is the kind of wording
that I would put in there.
The headline is very important, the headline and the image,
so I'm going to go ahead and just say,
just doctor this up a little bit.
As you can see, this headline is a little obnoxious,
and that's kind of what I'm going for,
just because I really want people to notice it.
If you're not sticking out,
a lot of times people won't notice it.
Then, down here, for housing type, in this case,
you know, I'm a land investor,
that's usually what I'm trying to do,
so I'm going to pick that, but if, you know,
obviously, you would pick whatever type of properties
you are trying to sell, or build your buyers list for.
Just to coincide with the description,
I'm going to put that in there.
Generally speaking, I would suggest that,
when you are doing this, you actually have
what you're talking about,
like in other words, don't just lie.
Just, I guess it's kind of a principal thing,
but also, I kind of think it's sort of just like a,
it can be kind of a gimmicky thing,
and it's easy to do if you're just trying to,
you know, build a list right now,
but a lot of times, people are going to catch on to that.
If you tell people to go to your website,
and you don't actually have what you're saying you have,
I mean, they're not dumb,
they're going to figure that out,
so don't set yourself up for a bad reputation,
or being kind of sleazy,
make sure that you can actually do
what you're saying you're going to do,
and if you can't do this yet, then maybe
the first step is to actually start looking for some
deals before you start doing this,
or actually getting something under contract,
so you have what you're talking about.
Anyway, that's just a little sidebar.
So, when you've got that stuff filled in,
you are then going to scroll to the bottom,
and just hit continue.
I'll do that, it's all good and fine.
I'm not putting a specific address in there for this,
but if you wanted to, you could.
Now, add images, I would say the more images
you can add the better.
I mean, images are just a very good, helpful thing.
At the very least, you want to have at least one.
I wouldn't even bother doing this
unless you have some kind of image,
because the images are very powerful,
and go a really long way.
So there's my image, and that, done with images.
Pretty much it, you can kind of see the entire ad here.
One of the unfortunate things about Craigslist these days
is that you can't embed
clickable links in your listings anymore.
Back in the day, people could just sort of
click on this and go to my website.
That's a little bit of a bummer, but it's still worth doing,
because if somebody was coming across this ad,
and if you are really conveying the value
that you can bring to the table and what you can do,
and if people are interested,
they will go through the motions of, you know,
highlighting this, and copying and pasting it,
or actually typing it into their address bar,
if it actually motivates them to do so.
Just kind of keep that in mind when
you're putting your own description together,
use your own creativity,
and try to think of a way to actually motivate people
to go through the motions of typing that URL
into their browser, and visiting your website,
because that's really all it takes,
and once they get there, a lot of times
if they've gone that far, just a matter of them signing up.
Once that's all finished, you would just hit publish.
Just like that, your ad is on the way to going live.
This is what the ad looks like.
Again, it's usually going to take a little bit of time
to actually get up and running on Craigslist,
but that's all you've got to do,
just put together a description, include your website URL,
be sure to add a picture, really good headline,
and for that matter, if you've got properties
that would appeal to multiple markets,
I mean, don't feel like you just have to stick with the
market that you are in, or that your property is in.
As you can see back here,
there are a lot of different markets here on Craigslist,
and this is just in Michigan.
In my case, here in Grand Rapids,
we've got the Muskegon market, which is right next to it,
we've got Lansing, we've got Kalamazoo,
there's several markets here who would probably have lots of
people who would still be interested in the same properties.
When you're dealing with Craigslist,
you can't necessarily copy your ads verbatim
and just post them all over the pace,
because the system is probably going to recognize that
as spam, and start flagging and deleting your ads,
so I wouldn't do that,
but try to continue to be creative.
You know, use different pictures,
use different descriptions,
get your ads out in front of his many people as possible,
because really, all it takes is time.
This is free advertising as long as you're willing
to go through the motions and do it.
If you're on a tight budget,
and you can't take the direct mail approach,
Craigslist is another great option.
I've used it for a long time, and it works.
Hopefully that'll makes sense,
and I wish you all the best
as you are getting into it with Craigslist.
Good luck.