This is an Older but great post from The Closet Entrepreneur..I highly recommend that you sign up to receive these blog posts. http://theclosetentrepreneur.com
I just made a Vfler, you can do 2 for free at a time and I love it..what a difference for Craiglist and ActiveRain! Love This!
How To Pimp Your Craigslist Post May 30, 2007
If there's one thing aspiring entrepreneurs we all love, it's free access to great resources like Craigslist. Although Craigslist initially started as an e-mail distribution for social events, it has quickly become a jack of all trades for everything from personal ads to cheap viral marketing for startups (hint hint). Yet aside from uploading four images and writing a witty post description, there's not much you can do to make your post stand out from the rest of the plain text crowd - until now.
How to add some "bling" to your Craigslist posting...
Craigslist allows HTML to format your post layout and text, which is all fine and dandy if you're versed in HTML coding or handy with an HTML editor like Microsoft FrontPage or Adobe Dreamweaver. The only inconvenience is that custom images require separate hosting and a custom layout requires manual coding. Instead, you can simplify the process by using vFlyer to take care of all the formatting and coding for you. Here's a summary of the process:
- Step 1: Sign up for the free vFlyer Personal plan.
- Step 2: Create your flyer, there are a number of types to choose from.
- Step 3: Edit and publish your flyer.
- Step 4: Copy and paste the HTML code to your Craigslist post.
- What you're left with is a nice, eye catching post:
So what's the benefit?
The first thing to note is that you are no longer restricted to the Craigslist default of four pictures since vFlyer allows up to 15 photos to be uploaded, the only caveat is that users are redirected to an external vFlyer page to view the slide show. There are also 14 templates for you to choose from with the option to create a custom theme if your heart desires. Also, the vFlyer code can be used on other sites such as eBay and MySpace, and last but not least you can email and print these flyers for distribution.
In conclusion...
Standing out from the crowd is a great idea (unless you're a zebra), and free tools like vFlyer can easily provide some much needed eye candy to help you sell and promote your products, services, blog, company, et cetera in front of millions of Craigslist users without the need to learn or code HTML. Yet if you're one of those adventurous types who wants to try a custom solution, you can pretty much do anything with HTML in your Craigslist post as long as it meets the HTML and photo requirements.
Sincerely,
The Closet Entrepreneur
Post Scriptum: There are vFlyer alternatives such as postlets and ClassifiedFlyerAds just in case you want to try something different. If you've tried either of these services or know of a service I may have missed, please feel free to leave a comment and tell us about it.
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