Using Craigslist to Market your Lessons

As an author of MindBites lessons, I realize how important it is to reach out to the community to let people know that my lessons exist. One way that I have found to be extremely effective is Craigslist, which is a free online classified service. I have noticed that other successful authors have used Craigslist to market their MindBites, and they are definitely getting some traffic to their lessons.

Mark Peterson, a great MindBites author who is an exercise equipment repair specialist, uses Craigslist to promote his services locally as well as his MindBites lessons. Here is an example of his posting:

Do you know if you’re buying good exercise equipment ? - $90

Reply to: sale-558281354@craigslist.org
Date: 2008-01-31, 10:01AM CST
Know your machine before you buy.
Don’t get taken on over used and unmaintained exercise equipment.
Do you know how to tell if you’re buying a good treadmill?

E-mail today for a professional inspection.
23-Year veteran service tech Mark Peterson can show you the details.

Craigslist has some interesting rules that apply to posting ads. The product that you are offering has to be tangible, and sometimes ads for digital videos are flagged and removed from the community, if the wording is not phrased right.

Here are the rules that relate to posting MindBites lessons on Craigslist:

1. If you post non-local or otherwise irrelevant content, repeatedly post the same or similar content, or impose a disproportionately large load on the infrastructure, your posting will be removed.

2. If you post the same item or service in more than one classified category or forum or in more than one metropolitan area, it will be flagged for removal.

3. You can post the same or similar content in the same city every 48 hours, but you must remove the old posting before putting up a new one.

MindBites authors have figured out the best way to word their postings and I would follow these simple tips:

1. If you offer a service in your local city, post under services offered and include a description of the service that you offer and include a link to your MindBites lesson.

2. If you are an instructor, teacher, or local expert, post under services offered, lessons, and tutoring with a description of what you teach with a simple link to your lesson.

3. If you would like to post your lesson in more than one city, it is best to use different titles, slightly different descriptions and possibly a different email address as Craigslist prohibits multiple postings on the same topic and in more than one city.

To learn how to submit a posting on Craiglist, the simple instructions can be found here.

To take your Craigslist postings to the next level, I would recommend using an online service called VFlyer. Their tag line is “The Marketing Platform for Online Sellers”. This service allows people to create virtual flyers that are very slick. Here is an example of the flyer that I recently made through this service as a way to attract new MindBites authors.

VFlyer is extremely easy to use and has step-by-step instructions on how to create these virtual masterpieces. Once you have created the flyer, it is a simple copy and paste to get it on Craigslist. In fact, the basic service is free to use and allows you to have 5 flyers in their system. The part that I like best is that for a small monthly fee, you can embed videos in these flyers, which is what I plan to do next.

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