As RV Dealers start to see their sales winding down for the season, they look for more “free” places to list their inventory. One of those websites is Craigslist.com, which is one of the top 10 most visited websites in the US, with 50 million visitors per month. The typical questions I get are:
Should they list their inventory on Craigslist?
Are other dealers listing their inventory on Craigslist?
How do they go about listing their inventory on Craigslist?
What kind of results should they expect from listing their inventory on Craigslist?
Can RVUSA.com send their inventory to Craigslist?
All good questions that I wanted answers to as well. I personally have been on Craigslist twice. One time with my daughter looking for a car to buy and another time I posted a bird for sale that belonged to my neice. The cars we found on there were all fixer-uppers and none that I really felt safe with her driving. With the bird for sale ad, we had one lady interested but she really couldn’t afford it and I think she was looking for us to just give it to her – mind you this is a $1,200-$1,500 bird.
Since my experience with Craigslist is so limited, I emailed a few of my friends in the RV Industry to get their opinion on this topic.
“It’s too variable and a lot of work. Certain west coast cities, there are “flaggers” that are always after dealers and the listings disappear.”
Steve Love, La Mesa RV
www.lamesarv.com
“I know some dealers who do post to Craigslist.com – the results are mixed.”
Connie Mekkelsen, Mekkelsen RV
www.vtrv.com
“About 1/3 of my online sales are from Craigslist.com.”
Anonymous RV Dealer
Q: What is a Flagger?
A: Other Craigslist users may flag postings they believe to be in violation of craigslist guidelines. Each listing has links at the top to flag a post for: miscategorized, prohibited and spam/overpost. Flagged posts are automatically removed, in fact, they remove millions of ads each month through their community flagging process.
Q: How do I advertise my services on Craigslist?
A: They accept commercial posts under “services offered”. They are free and remain online for 30 days. You login, select a city to post your ad under, choose a category, authenticate your account and get verification code and enter that code to place the ad. You will need to repost your ad every 30 days if you want to continue to be listed.
Q: How many visitors does Craigslist.com get each month?
A: According to Compete.com, the Craigslist.com website gets 6 – 8 million unique visitors per month.
Q: How many ads are posted on Craigslist.com?
A: About 10 million new ads are posted on Craigslist.com per month.
Q: Can I post my inventory listings to Craigslist.com automatically?
A: There are a couple websites that have automated feeds to Craigslist.com, but use of their services does not guarantee that your ads will not be flagged and removed. Pricing was not readily available for these services.
Q: Is RVUSA.com going to post inventory to Craigslist.com?
A: We are talking about it. I’d like to hear from more RV Dealers to gauge how many are using that website to list RVs and what kind of results are you getting from it – post your comments here or send me an email: [email protected].
If Craigslist.com truely does help you, the RV Dealers sell more units, then I’m all for it. If the majority of dealers who use that website end up getting their units flagged and then removed, it just seems like it would be a waste of time no matter how big the website is or how many visitors are on it each month.
Cindy 🙂
Hello, Cindy,
you´re talking here about Craigslist.COM while their main url is Craigslist.ORG. Running compete on the .ORG domain you´ll find that it has 10 times as much visitors. 50-60 millions every month – that´s an army of prospects. In my opinion no RV dealer can afford not to go to Craigslist, even if it only results in 1 car sold every now and then…
I have created numerous ways to profit from the insane amount of traffic that Craigslist receives on a daily basis. And now I have compiled them all into an easy to follow manual for you to take FULL advantage of.
I have used craigslist several times, not one to give up after one attempt, just never had any luck there.
Bert
We used it pretty regularly for several of months and made at least a couple of sales that can be directly attributed to our ads on CL. Flagging can certainly be a problem; several times I had all of my ads deleted when there was nothing wrong with them – they were all within guidelines. The flagging problem seemed to occur most often when I added a large block of listings over a short time period – If I did two or three ads at a time and then waited a while before adding another few (maybe 30-45 minutes between) they didn’t get flagged near as often. It’s kind of a hassle to trickle them up throughout the day but it does seem to help a lot with flagging.
All in all it’s not at all my favorite way to advertise, but it probably does do a little good and it’s free. Because of the large amount of traffic it receives, I believe it also raises our overall business profile in the area. Several customers did notice that we were advertising on CL, even if they weren’t necessarily responding directly to an ad.
Yes – I think you should put everyone’s inventory on CL.
how can i stop jerks from flagging me, point i place add looking for place to deer hunt, i get flag by the local people or outfitters who don’t like out of state hunter coming there with out using them. but when i try to re post it shows i have add there and i don’t HELP
Craigslist Traffic Bot is what I use to Auto Post.It’s 20 times faster than CL BOT PRO
somtimes i also sell stuffs on craigslists because there are many users in it *.’