After much consideration I have decided to create a Craigslist Secrets Posting Video Tutorial. After having my website up for many years I have received countless emails asking for many different things. The large array of questions and requests I get are rather difficult to deal with in the scope of a simple website.
I have seen other people create video tutorials for everything from using Photoshop to creating websites, so I thought this might be a fun thing to do. It would be a bit more interactive than just a simple web page. So I have created a series of video tutorials and I have them available to view at my website at www.beatcraigslist.com. (Go to the Tutorial Page).
Take a look at the Craigslist Video tutorial series that I have created and I certainly hope they help you with your posting methods and avoiding Ghosting or Flagging. I will ad more videos as the questions and comments roll in. Be sure to let me know what you think and how to improve them. I enjoy the comments from me readers very much. With these videos I hope to give the viewer much more detailed information than what I can do on a web page. It will be more like speaking to a person directly instead of a written document. I will be telling you many posting and ant-flagging details that other folks charge for in their tutorials. I will give it to you for free. So watch them, enjoy them and send me your comments on my website. I look forward to it.
Craigslist's Dirty Little Secrets Revealed 
Hello,
I’m facing some problem related to classified post. Actually I have posted classifieds on (US & UK) Craigslist website. After 1-2 successful posts, now my all post are automatically going flagged or deleted by website. Don’t know why, even I using every time unique Title, description, & pics with different-2 city, categories & IP’s. But still they deleting my post. Even I have created another account but results are same.
“Need your valuable suggestion.”
Thanks
I would suggest visiting our website to get a lot of free ideas that may help you.
I received this text regarding an item I am selling on craigslist:
I’m okay with the price and the condition of the item. i will like to pay you with certified Cashier’s check, i will arrange for a local pick up as soon as you get the check clears, because that is the only convenient means for me and due to my work frame kindly get back to me with the following info that so you can receive the check, Full name, address:City:State:Country:Zip code hope to read from you – Reply ASAP
Sounded fishy, even tho they wouldn’t pick up until the check cleared….. ? I replied cash only.
The reason that they can do that is that most banks will put the funds in your account without question. Specially if you are a good customer. It can take several days or weeks to truly clear if it is an out of state bank. By this point they are long gone with your merchandise. Its really idiotic to say that they want to use a certified check because they have to deposit the money to get the check right? So why not just bring you the money directly? Its a scam.
We have a family handyman business, and for the last five years, 80% of our customers were coming from Craigslist. For the last several weeks, most of our ads (the same ones we have always posted) have been flagged/deleted, and this is starting to hurt our income. What do I do?
Unfortunately since this is a blog the answers can be rather limited, so I created a forum to help answer questions like this. Go to our website http://www.beatcraigslist.com/forum and post your questions there. That way it can be addressed by various people and get more answers to help you.
Hello…
I have an unusual question. I discovered that another advertizer on Craigslist has incorporated my complete ad along with other posters ads into their own ad. They have done something tricky to make my ad and the others ads extremely small and unreadable and they are located way down below the body of their ad own ad. I have never seen this happen before on Craigslist and I’m wondering why they have copied my complete ad including phone number and have done the same to others? And they have maybe about a dozen ads all for the same service but in different Craigslist city areas. But my ad has been incorporated in all those ads even though nobody can read it. I discovered this because I was doing a search on my phone number and all these other ads showed up in the search and so of course I was curious about why my phone number would be in someones ad even though it’s hidden along with others ads. But my main concern is will this effect my own ads on Craigslist? Will the Craigslist computers see my ad in this other persons ad and start to ban or ghost my own ads or perhaps cause flagging to occur? This is a strange situation and I think this is an abuse of my ad in either case because I was never asked for permission and never contacted by this other advertizer.
What are your thoughts on this? Your help and ideas are appreciated. Thank you.
I think you are correct in your assumption. By incorporating your ad and many others into the body of his text, he is trying to come up as the main ad and make your ads that come up afterwards as spam ads. So your ads will then get flagged or ghosted because your ad already exists. Or your ads will be ghosted for over posting. Any number of strategies like that could be in play. He is definitely trying to hurt you and the other posters by over posting on your behalf (without your permission obviously). The ads are purposely unreadable so that only a computer will spot it and not a human. That’s like an old trick that was used for SEO many years ago where hidden text was incorporated into web pages as either the same color as the background or way too small so people would not see it but search engines would. Eventually Google caught on to this trick and now its a bad SEO trick. Gets you lower rankings if you get caught doing it.
Thanks very much for the response. I will try to take legal action on this, perhaps a cease and desist order. But I am still wondering why they are using my ad and the ads of others that have nothing to do with what they are advertising. I am not their competitor at all nor are they mine. There should be no reason to try and hurt me although that might be the real effect. Are they perhaps using our various ads to make each of their own ads appear to be different to the Craigslist computers because they obviously don’t have enough of an imagination to create their own miscellaneous information to make each of their own ads different so instead they just copy other peoples ads and place it within their own ad? This is the only reason I can come up with since I am not a competitor nor are any of the other ads I have seen incorporated. I have used similar tactics myself but I don’t use other peoples ads, I have used parts of old stories that are in the public domain and are no longer copyrighted or I’ll just type a bunch of keywords and hide them as best as I know how to make my ads appear different to the Craigslist computers. I understand about the Craigslist TOS and that they don’t want the same ad in multiple locations and/or categories but some services like mine serve more than just one area and for that matter more than one category on Craigslist. I’m not posting the same ad a few times a day in the same section and city. I renew my ads once about every two days and that’s all. Nobody can find my ads duplicated in the same section and city because that to me would be annoying and although that would give me more exposure I would consider it abusive and unfair to other readers and advertisers. And lately I’m having ghosting problems again… Geeeezzz!!! It gets old I’m telling ya. Maybe someday Craigslist will wake up and understand that some businesses need more coverage than others because of the type of business it is. But that would mean Craigslist would have to evolve in a positive direction and get up to speed with the needs of it’s users. Any thoughts are appreciated and thanks again.
Good luck trying to get this guy to stop doing what he’s doing. On the last part of your post, you may get your wish very soon. Craigslist is experimenting with charging for ads in certain regions and sections of their site. Right now for example they are charging car dealers for the right to post car ads on their site. The unintended consequence has been that some car dealers are so CHEAP that they still list them as “By Owner” because they want the free ad space and they are flagging real owners out of Craigslist. Their logic is “I own the car so it’s by owner”. That’s BS and we all know that. So in the future Craigslist may become more a charging market than what it is now.