Advertising Insurance On Craigslist

[SingingSabre]

I advertise a lot of things on Craigslist (last thing was a wallet my wife and I found that we wanted to get back to its owner).

I use not only a separate gmail account, but different modifications on the same one. Gmail will send mail to [email protected], this.is.a.test, this-IS.a_tEst, etc. all to [email protected]. They ignore hyphens, underscores, periods, and capital letters, but they will show the exact address used in your header.

It's an easy way to track responses from separate ads in one account.

 

[BlockO]

Understand that I posted this info almost 3 years ago.

Everything I said before still applies. But CL has become clever since then, and started "ghosting" ads. You can't place ads as aggressively as you could before or you'll get ghosted.

I used to get 1-2 sales a week from CL. Now I only get about 1-2 sales a month. Ghosting ads changed the rules of the game.

 

[xrac]

Understand that I posted this info almost 3 years ago.

Everything I said before still applies. But CL has become clever since then, and started "ghosting" ads. You can't place ads as aggressively as you could before or you'll get ghosted.

I used to get 1-2 sales a week from CL. Now I only get about 1-2 sales a month. Ghosting ads changed the rules of the game.

Dan, what is ghosting?

 

[BlockO]

ghosting is craigslist's version of a "google slap", where they lay the hammer down on you if you're breaking rules or spamming.

you will post ads, and the ads show up on your account like everything is working normally, and the ads appear to be posted like always. but in reality, no one else sees your ads. The only way to see if you've been ghosted or not is to manually go in and look for each ad, because your account info will lie to you, telling you it's there.

once that happens, they put you in timeout for a while (about a month I think).

Fortunately, I've been lucky with my insurance ads, simply because I only bend the rules slightly like the next guy does. I cheat just enough to fly under the radar, but not bad enough to get ghosted.

but I had another website for a while that sold guitar tuners. I was slinging these ads all across the country, and they busted me on it. Went a couple days with drops in sales before I figured out what they were doing.

 

[SingingSabre]

Out of curiosity, which part of Craigslist do you guys advertise your insurance on? What do your ads look like? How effective are they? Could I see one?

Thanks!

 

[BlockO]

auto insurance in automotive services.

motorcycle/snowmobile ins. in cycle services.

boat ins. in marine services.

that's really about the only 3 insurance products that fit nicely into categories. I wouldn't fool with CL if I were a life/health agent.