Craigslist.org is an advertising website reaching more than 450 different communities. You can post almost all type of ads on Craigslist free of charge. So, there is no reason not to post your goods or services for sale on Craigslist.
What are the benefits of using Craigslist to make money?
Free, Simple and Easy
Anyone can register for an ad posting account on Cragslist with an email address. The process of ad posting is simple. All you need to do is add a picture and write an effective ad copy. Anything that is legal for sale can be advertised on Cragslist (From services and items for sale, to real estate and automobiles). You can post an ad or promote a business offer at anytime you want. Internet auction sites and local newspaper will charge a fee for an ad posting, but in Craiglist it wouldn’t cost you a single cent unless you are doing job ad postings.
Earn Extra Bucks with Minimum Effort
Craiglist is a great place for earning extra income as it lets you sell off your old stuff and things that you no long want for profit. There is not much work involved. You only need to post your items for sale and wait for the interested buyers come to you. There are groups of people actually running their business using craigslist.org. Are you creative? Can you fix cars or motorcycles? The idea is to buy automobiles, fix them up, and then sell them for a profit. Creative people are selling goods made by themselves like quilts, crafts, and etc. Marketing and selling on Craiglist is free and can be fun sometimes.
Craigslist is Better than Yard Sale
If you run a yard sale, you have to be there all day to operate your yard sale. Bad weather could affect yard sale operation. By posting ads on craigslist.org, you can ask your potential customers to contact you via email. You decide who you want to deal with. Your personal email address will be hidden and there is an option to have all questions go through a craigslist.org email address that gets forwarded to you. It is important to protect your privacy and selling your stuff with Craigslist is more private than running a yard sale.
However, Craigslist isn’t perfect for business. If you are really using it to market your business, products or services, you will have to face with several drawbacks of Craigslist.
Limited Reach
Although, Craigslist is a popular ad website that has millions of visitors browsing it’s pages. But, all of those visitors are distributed among 450 locations. This is a disadvantage of Craigslist. You can’t advertise your business or products in more than one location at a time. If you are selling toys, and definitely you would prefer to market your toy products to people anywhere on the world. But craigslist.org is limiting you on this aspect.
No Seller Protection
Craigslist doesn’t offer protection of any sort to sellers. Unlike auction websites where they usually have a set of procedures to protect both the buyer and seller from dishonest individuals. When doing business in Craigslist, you make contact with your potential buyers and wish that they will not cheat or scam you. You will have not idea whether they are honest person who really want to do business with you or they are just a criminal that is dangerous to you. You will have to meet your buyers to deliver the product to them. You can ask them to come to your home or arrange to meet at a location. It is fine to meet someone if the item is small. But if you are delivering a big and heavy item, then it will be hard for your to bring the item to the meeting location.
You will Bear the Loss in Fraudulent Transaction
Craigslist.org does help seller to keep away from fraudulent transactions by posting notice explaining how to prevent these situations. Since Craigslist.org is free, they only manage to give advice to the sellers; they don’t take extra responsibility to help protect the sellers. Unlike the auction sites that charge listing fees, as you are paying for the listing fees, the auction sites provide an extra level of safety and security. On an auction website there is recourse if someone sends you a bad check or if someone sends your payment through PayPal and then reverses the payment. But in Cragislist.org, you only find the recourse through law enforcement for a bad payment like returned check or PayPal reverse. Your chances of getting back the product you sent out is not good. You probably suffer a loss for these fraudulent activities.
Conclusion
Now that you know both the pros and cons of using Craigslist.org to make money, you can decide whether it is worth using Craigslist. When reading the advantages, you will find that Craigslist is a great website that can you help you make money and want to give it a try. But when you review the drawbacks, you may have changed your mind. So, to decide whether you should use Craigslist for your business, you need to weight the pros again cons to see whether it is right for you to make money online.
