How to: Craigslist

I love Craigslist. For those of you unfamiliar with it, it is an international community of online classifieds organized by location, allowing you to search for specific products or services in your area. I personally have both bought and sold multiple things on Craigslist, and I thought I would share a bit of my experience to help people that are new to the game.

How to Write an Effective Craigslist Posting:

1. If you spend some time browsing Craigslist, the first thing you will notice is how poorly written many of the postings are. Spend some time considering the wording of your posting; it need not be verbose or decidedly articulate, but it should be succinct and provide as much information as possible. DO NOT USE ALL CAPS and spend the extra 30 seconds to double check your spelling and grammar. People will be much more inclined to meet up with somebody that seems moderately intelligent than some crazy mofo with a sticky caps lock key.
2. Take nice pictures of your junk (if you are posting in a category where pictures are appropriate). The pictures should be crisp, uncluttered, and showcase your junk nicely. If there is any cosmetic or functional damage to the item, be sure to clearly photograph these shortcomings as well; your potential buyers will appreciate your disclosure.
3. DO NOT use the Craigslist photo uploader! In the interest of bandwith costs and load times, Craig made this super duper photo uploader that will crunch your images down to fugly, bit-crushed vestiges of their former selves. Instead, upload your images to an independent server and embed them into the posting with HTML. Some websites that will allow you to upload images and link them off-site include: www.imageshack.us, www.tinypic.com, or www.flickr.com and www.photobucket.com if you have/want to create a user account. For those of you unfamiliar with HTML, here is the code you will need to embed these uploaded images into your posting:<img src="theurlofyouruploadedimage" />This will allow you to post larger, more beautiful images while also taking strain off of the Craigslist servers. The site will search your posting for this code and attach an orange “img” to your posting title to let browsers know you have included images of your item.
4. Price setting is obviously up to you, but I would recommend being open to trades and offers. Part of the beauty of Craigslist is that you can get ridiculous offers on stuff. Who knows, maybe someone will want to give you thousands of pounds of uncooked macaroni for your stained couch from the 70′s. Be open minded people.
5. If you are wondering how much your object is worth and where you should set your price, there are a few ways you can check around the interwubz to find out. My personal favorite way is using search engines to look for your item selling in any city/location on Craigslist. Simply search “(your item) SITE:craigslist.org” on Google. This will return every instance of your search term on the entire domain www.craigslist.org and you can see where other people set the price for that item.
6. Remember: Craigslist is a buyers market, the way it is set up disadvantages the seller and you will likely get a lot of spam/scams/flakes in response to your posting. Be patient and respond honestly to all inquires about your posting.

How to Buy Something on Craigslist:

1. Shop around for the best prices and do research on what you are looking for. Read information from the original manufacturer and other people on the internet on sites other than Craigslist.
2. Never commit to purchasing an item before seeing it. Set meetings to “take a look” or “check it out”, but not necessarily to buy. This will allow you to negotiate price and back out easily if the product is not exactly what you are looking for.
3. Use the same search method mentioned in number five above to compare prices on products you are interested in. You can use other postings for similar products in other cities to talk your seller down to a reasonable price.
4. Never meet anyone anywhere that you are not comfortable with. I would suggest taking a friend with you whenever you meet up with someone from the internet. Also, my advice would be to try and avoid meeting someone at your or their house, try suggesting a nearby park or other such meeting place, anywhere public is best.

Remember, make the most of the opportunities Craigslist presents to you, be safe and buy lots of cool junk!