Saturday, July 24, 2010

Drive Serious Traffic With This Simple Craigslist Method

One often overlooked feature of craigslist is the FORUMS.

Yes craigslist has forums. Here's the link http://ny.craigslist.org/forums/

Switch out the NY with whatever city you choose, it doesn't matter which city as I will discuss later on.

First you must create a craigslist account, you do not have to verify a phone number for this method.

Find the most related discussion forums section related to your niche.

What you're going to do, is post a new thread with a catchy title, something that will attract clicks.

In your thread you're going to insert a simple link to your website with anchor text or just the website is fine. Of coarse accompanied by some quick useful information.

If you notice, at the top of the forum discussion you can see that you have the option to view forum postings in your city, or in ALL cities.

The default setting for this is ALL, which means when someone goes into a discussion forum, in ANY CITY, your thread will be visible. Pick a time of day with the most visibility/least forum postings and post your thread.

Here's a quick snapshot of what kind of traffic I get OVERNIGHT with one simple thread, one simple link. Notice I can't fit every city of craigslist bringing me traffic as there are hundreds!! Bringing hundreds of visitors daily when I use this tactic!

Each SPIKE in traffic, is when I implemented this method.


Now here's a snapshot of a forum where you may post a thread with a link to your website, which is visible to EVERY CITY ON CRAIGSLIST, ONE SIMPLE THREAD POSTING, ONE SIMPLE LINK, HUNDREDS OF UNIQUE VISITORS. Notice the ALL/cityname on top of image. Bicycling is just an example, there are dozens of discussion forums to choose from.


Keep in mind that after you create your required forum handle to post threads, you must wait 7 days until you can post a link in a thread or post.

HOWEVER, here's a sneaky little way of getting around that to get yourself some instant gratification....God I really hope the craigslist forums don't get totally spammed because of this thread...

Well anyways to get around this 7 day waiting period, simple enter your website link in the thread WITHOUT http://www. enter only yourdomain.com

Craigslist automatically parses link text with http://www. prefix, however without this they don't realize this is a link and forum visitors may still copy and paste your link.

Also...craigslist forum postings CAN BE FLAGGED AS SPAM so don't enter affiliate links unless its a cloaked redirect within your own domain.