Let me disclaim that we own a company that provides Craigslist posting services exclusively for the automotive industry (car dealers):
autoclassifiedsolutions
I don't post this because of the hundred dollars you may pay us to use our software... but I have been playing with Craigslist since the early 2000's and still feel pretty strong about it because of its disruption on the automotive 3rd party classified websites. Craigslist changed the way a lot of people looked at using alternative online classified sources to the, until then, very well entrenched classified solutions available.
I'll try to make my post useful by "de-mystifying" some of the things that people are writing.
1) There is no proprietary
API , or better API, or for that part any software better than the other. Craigslist has the same API for everyone. Everyone can send and receive the same data to Craigslist (and it is pretty limited).
2) "Their ads look really good", "They have great templates", etc. No, they don't. Craigslist allows, pretty much, just text. No images, no colors, no logos, no links, no code. You can add a few text icons (like alt+characters) to bring a little bit of color in some computers. So whatever "template" you think you like, can be copied in .1 seconds.
3) "They figured out Craigslist "
algorithm". The answer is no, but there are some tricks. Craigslist will default its SERP to "relevant" and it seems to do that by a few things like the completeness of the add (amount of text), the key words, the number of times a word appears (prius prius prius prius), and by making some of those words in
bold. So that is why most good templates have a bunch of key words stuffed at the bottom.
4) Craigslist works depending on: Your market (do a lot of people use Craigslist). Thats pretty much it. If you go to Craigslist in your market and there are a lot of people in other/any areas of the site posting ads, it will work. If there are no people using it, it will not work. If you are far from the posting area, usually it doesn't work unless your cars are ridiculously priced lower or you have very unique cars (like 80 lifted trucks, or 70 redone Jeeps, or 40 BMW M3s of every color, etc).
5) What cars work on Craigslist? Years ago, when we were able to measure things on Craigslist (before the change!), we loaded a pixel at the end of the ads so we knew how many times the ad got loaded all the way. Out of 500+ accounts that we had at that time the Porsche dealers got the most traffic. That doesn't mean they sold the most cars, people could be "just looking" at Porsches because they look good. Obviously even nowadays dealers with "cheaper" cars get more calls, things kinda work like that. Some of the dealers that got the most traffic back then were also Cadillac dealers.
6) About some claims that Craigslist works better than autotrader, Cars.com, etc. For every 1000 dealers at a round table there are 1000 stories with 1000 deviations each. My take is that you be careful before you delete an advertising source, and that nowadays since customers call/email less but visit more at the end of the buying process, be very careful when measuring a new one. Craigslist is cheap; a dealer with 100 cars is all in for less than $800/month.
7) For posting frequency, how often I post my cars, let me say that I thought that the days when dealers spent lost of resources by posting the entire inventory every day would be over since the new rules. But surprisingly to me I have seen in some markets dealers with aggressive posting budgets doing very well. So in some very competitive markets, spending the money to control the posting frequency has allowed some people to corner an area. I'll disclaim that we don't make more or less money by how much you spend, we sell you a software that you use, so no intent to sell you here on spending more money.
So what should I look for to do well ion Craigslist?
Look at the areas available for you to post.
Start posting once a month, its cheap there is no contract.
Use a tool with flexibility of postings:
a) Prioritize my cheaper cars
b) Prioritize postings in certain days
c) Prioritize certain areas
That is the key for the tool, how flexible are you to post means that you can play with and when the market responds to your postings.
Good Luck!
