Craigslist Ghosting - What Is It And What Does It Mean For You?

Craigslist Ghosting is simply the term coined for the system Craigslist uses to weed out internet marketers. Craigslist does not like internet marketers clogging up their listings and bogging down their servers, so they have come up with a system that very effectively limits the ability of internet marketers to utilize Craigslist as a viable source of marketing.

What Does Ghosting Do?
The system that Craigslist uses is intended to keep people from over posting. Generally you can post an average of three unique adds every forty-eight hours or so. If you try to break the rules, that is when the ghosting system kicks in.

When you try to post an ad that is identical or too similar to one that has already been posted within approximately a three to four day period, your ad will either be rejected or ghosted. If it is rejected then you get a notice right away telling you that you are trying to post a similar ad and that you cannot. If it is ghosted however, it will look like the ad is posted but in fact it will never show up on the site. Even if you look for it by following the confirmation links sent to you by the company it will look like it is up. But if you log on to Craigslist and look for it the way a prospective buyer would, it simply won't be there.

The ghosting system also kicks in if you try to post too many ads. Even if the ads are unique, the ghosting system tracks your computer's IP address and knows that it is you trying posting more than you are supposed to. This means that even if you try to fool Craigslist by setting up multiple accounts thinking that you can just post the limit with each account and get tons of ads out there, Craigslist will still know it is you if you are using the same computer.

What Does This Mean For You?
Well basically it means that you need to follow the rules and that Craigslist should be a part of your marketing strategy, but not the main part. There are techie ways of trying to beat the system like software that rotates your IP address, etc. I have never tried these methods out myself and so I cannot vouch for their validity.

My advice however is to just stick to the rules. Adhere to the posting limits, make your ads unique (title and body) and just work on writing that perfect ad that gets people's attention. Even at three ads a day, Craigslist is still by far the most effective free classifieds site to market with because it gets so much traffic. More often than not three ads on Craigslist will yield you more results that twenty on competing sites. Just remember to always go back and check your ads about twenty minutes after posting to make sure they are actually showing up and not being ghosted by the system.

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A keen sense of humor helps us overlook the unbecoming, understand the unconventional, tolerate the unpleasant, overcome the unexpected and outlast the unbearable.
- Billy Graham

Article Marketing - Testing Your Title

The absolute most important part about writing article titles for article marketing purposes is to test your title. Many people overlook this simple step but it really can be the difference between several readers and several thousand.

Just Because It's Done Doesn't Mean It's Done
Many people will finish writing a title that they are satisfied with and quit there. They see that it is clever, drives home the point they are wanting to emphasize, makes excellent use of key words and is written with search engines in mind. Sounds like a pretty good title, right? Well, maybe it is; but there is really no substitute for testing it out and making sure.

Come Up With Alternatives
Do not throw out your previous title ideas just because you think that you have found a better one. They will all be useful when it comes time to do the testing. Come up with several different titles and test them all because you never know which ones will pull up the best results.

Get Creative
Even a small, seemingly insignificant change can be the difference between ten thousand search results and ten million. Experiment and come up with many different variations of the same title. A change as small as changing "if" to "when" or "build" to "building" can make a huge difference.

Test Your Title
Now that you have a few options to work with it's time to test them out. Take each one and plug them into the Google search bar one at a time. You are looking for three things:

a. Organic Results: First, look at the organic results (the main body of search results, excluding paid results). You want to make sure that the results you are viewing are associated with the subject matter you were expecting. Do this one first every time and it will save you time. If the pages Google pulls up when you type in your prospective title have nothing to do with the article you are writing then there is no need to do any further investigating; throw that title away.

b. Paid Results: Second, take a look at the paid results (the highlighted search results that show up first and the ads on the right side of the browser). The more the better.

c. Number of Competing Pages: This is the number that shows up in the top right hand corner of your browser. You want this number to be as high as possible. If it is in the hundreds of thousands that is great, millions even better.

Please do not overlook this critical step when going about titling your articles. The article itself takes the most work to produce but the title is actually the most important factor in determining the success of that article. Don't let your hard work go to waste by forgetting to test your titles.

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Fresh Prince Wisdom

This is an interesting look at Will Smith, who he is, and how he lives his life.

"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do."
-- Eleanor Roosevelt

"It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed." Theodore Roosevelt

Just For Fun

This is a video I came across while researching a paper.  Highlights the amazing camouflaging ability of the octopus.



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