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by Christina Ethridge 13 Comments

Strike while the iron is hot – why Craigslist is NOW the place to be for real estate agents

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      • Do you realize that the best time to be doing something is when everyone else is doing the opposite?
  • Right now, today, is the perfect moment to capture high quality real estate leads from Craigslist.
    • So. Should you give up on Craigslist?
  • Want to know exactly how we do it?
  • I’ll teach you.  Free.  No obligation.

Do you realize that the best time to be doing something is when everyone else is doing the opposite?

LNL Blog Post Strike while the iron is hot – why Craigslist is NOW the place to be for real estate agents

Right now, today, is the perfect moment to capture high quality real estate leads from Craigslist.

Why?

Because everyone is freaking out.

Because every other real estate agent has stopped posting.

Because the ones who are still posting, don’t have a clue how to make it easy for Craigslist prospects to get to you.

Why?

Because the “experts” are saying “go somewhere else”.

The “experts” are saying “they saw it coming”.

Well, honestly, just about everyone saw it coming.

With the “experts” teaching real estate agents to blatantly violate Craigslist’s terms of use by . . .

  • creating multiple fake accounts
  • buying pre-paid phones so you can phone verify multiple fake accounts
  • posting an obscene amount of posts every day
  • manipulating multiple accounts via multiple IP & MAC addresses

In other words, let’s agree to use Craigslist by their terms (you agree when you sign up for an account) and then let’s lie to them, cheat the system, and create havoc for everyone (which is exactly what is happening now).

Guess what this lying and cheating resulted in?

Thousands of ads each day of spam. Spam from real estate agents throwing up anything and everything on Craigslist. Craigslist users not being able to use any of the Craigslist search functions. Functions like price sort, photo sort, mapping, keyword search, etc.

It’s resulted in Craigslist shutting down the ability to put in any links in the for sale ads. Making it impossible for legit posts that want to have an active link that points to video tours, neighborhood tours, etc.

So. Should you give up on Craigslist?

The “experts” say you should.

I say – ignore the “experts”. I always have.

Here’s the deal . . .

First of all, you should already BE somewhere else.

Your online lead generation strategy should always be at least a three legged stool. If you put all of your eggs in the Craigslist basket, you are definitely paying for it now.

With that said, here’s why I have always ignored the “experts” when it’s come to Craigslist . . .

It never sat right with me to have multiple accounts. It just didn’t. It is explicitly against Craigslist’s terms of use, and I didn’t want my personal account shut down.

And, the short time frame that I did utilize multiple accounts, and did what the “experts” teach, I noticed something.  Something significant.

My ad to lead ratio (the number of ads I needed to run to capture one lead) actually went down.  I captured fewer leads per ad doing it the “experts” way.

So, while everyone else was running multiple accounts and an insane amount of ads, while still others insisted they were getting junk leads from Craigslist . . .

  • I was running all of our ads through our single Craigslist account.
  • I ran no more than ten ads per day, sometimes I’d go as high as twenty, but that was a true rarity (my lead ratios always increased when I did this, but I was also exposing my account to ghosting and flagging, which I didn’t want).
  • I was bringing in anywhere from 34-55 leads each month into our database from our Craigslist prospecting.

Yes, I could have brought in more, if I had wanted to ignore the recipe that was working for us, bringing in higher quality leads.

I got our ad to lead capture rate down to 3.6 to 1.  For every 3.6 ads I ran, I captured one lead.

Our first year conversion rate (closing) for our Craigslist ads was 34:1. For every 34 leads we brought in, we closed one.

Our Craigslist buyer leads who closed on a property with us ended up being a couple of things:

  • 33% of them were all cash
  • 78% of them bought at 53% or more over our area average price
  • 23% of them made a second purchase within a twelve month time frame

In other words, we had some excellent leads from our Craigslist ads, and we ignored what the “experts” were doing and teaching others to do.

  • We didn’t run “fancy” ads.
  • We didn’t do the “video” trick on our ads.
  • We didn’t run multiple clickable links.
  • We didn’t run multiple photos.
  • We didn’t use fancy symbols in our headlines.
  • We never advertised foreclosure lists.

So. Should you give up on Craigslist because things have changed? Because the “experts” say you should?

That’s your choice.

As far as my choice, I’m staying on Craigslist. The pickings are RIPE right now. Excellent.

I’m especially looking forward to paying to run my ads.  I’m betting that my lead capture ratios will go through the roof at that point.

Want to know exactly how we do it?

I’ll teach you.  Free.  No obligation.

When you sign up to receive Get RE-Freshed! Our weekly online real estate marketing to do list and confirm your subscription, I will email you a free pdf copy of my 18 page ebook:  How To Sneak In And Dominate Craigslist While Every Other Real Estate Agent Is Freaking Out About The Changes

Christina Ethridge is the founder of LeadsAndLeverage.com, helping real estate agents capture, convert and close Facebook leads.

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Comments

  1. Steve Crowley says

    December 19, 2013 at 8:53 am

    Hi Christina,
    I discovered you this morning on Hunter Walk’s LinkedIn blog, and scrolled to your Facebook “No such thing as dead-end leads” article.
    I am a new Realtor here in San Clemente, Ca. as of Dec 12, 2012 full time, and part time during 2012. After 30 years as a district sales manager for a bakery that serves grocery stores with bread and pastry routes, I was gladly given my layoff notice with a severance on Dec 12, 2013. I had just closed my first transaction on my own (had two previous with help from another agent) the day before, which was a nice confirmation that I was going to be ok changing careers after 30 years.
    I have since closed 3 more, have one in escrow, and a new listing as of two weeks ago. My strengths are in customer satisfaction, as that was what I specialized in with my previous career.
    This is what I love most about this business – helping people with the most expensive, emotional purchase or sale of their lives. And doing it well!
    My weakness is lead generation, which is completely foreign to me, and I have yet to find someone doing it effectively, without spending a ton of money.
    Your articles and expertise are very impressive to me, and I hope to glean from your knowledge.
    Thank you very much for offering this to me and am looking forward to learning and growing in my business.
    Sincerely,
    Steve Crowley

    Reply
    • Christina Ethridge says

      December 19, 2013 at 8:59 am

      Thank you Steve! Welcome to real estate, it’ll be a fun and wild ride for you. Don’t forget to ask questions, I want to answer what I can! ~Christina

      Reply
  2. Thomas Cook says

    March 22, 2014 at 6:47 am

    Thanks for all the great advice.

    I have a problem though… I’ve signed up for two things… the 18-page ebook “How to sneak in and dominate Craigslist’ AND the “76 Online lead generation techniques that really work”

    Each time I get sent to your ‘welcome’ page but NO books.

    Please help and send to Thomas@TorontoRealEstate.ca

    Reply
    • Christina Ethridge says

      March 22, 2014 at 9:32 am

      The link to download the books is in the final Welcome email you receive after confirming your subscription.

      Reply
  3. Thomas Cook says

    March 22, 2014 at 6:49 am

    OK, just got the link for the Craigslist book :). Thanks !!

    How about the other one?

    Reply
    • Christina Ethridge says

      March 22, 2014 at 9:33 am

      Same as the CL book, the link is in the final welcome email you receive 🙂

      Reply
  4. Willem Young says

    September 8, 2016 at 6:49 am

    Interested in using some systems to automate lead gen through craigslist and other options.

    Reply
    • Christina Ethridge says

      September 12, 2016 at 12:36 pm

      Welcome Willem – what questions do you have, specifically?

      Reply
  5. James Gonzalez says

    October 3, 2016 at 10:01 pm

    Hi Christina,

    I received your Craigslist ebook and got some great information. Thank you very much for your efforts. I was wondering if you had any specific ad examples. I didn’t see any in the ebook. Thanks.

    Reply
    • Christina Ethridge says

      November 1, 2016 at 10:41 am

      Hi James – I don’t have any recent examples. The key is to create ads that both give value and drive traffic into your email database at the same time. Not as easy anymore on Craiglist, but still doable. Always be thinking about the logical next step for the consumer… as agents we tend to think that step is call and see it, but in reality, it’s not. It’s usually still an online and anonymous step.

      Reply
  6. Hershey Crawford says

    December 31, 2016 at 11:35 am

    Hello, l have been a realtor for 14 years and 2016 has been the worst year fore me. I want to learn new ways of creating new leads. I have never used Craigslist for my real estate lead generation but I would like to learn how. I have heard horror stories and I want to avoid these mistakes because I didn’t follow the rules.

    Reply
    • Christina Ethridge says

      January 5, 2017 at 8:50 am

      What kind of horror stories have you heard? With Craiglist it’s really simple: you have to be promoting a specific property (that you are legally allowed to promote).

      Reply

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