Are you trying to find the best way for advertising homes for sale on Craigslist? In this short article, we will discuss a great way to increase the exposure of a property that you are trying to wholesale and, if you decide to do it the way that we recommend, will continue to build your buyers list. We’re talking about advertising your property for sale on Craigslist.

If you have a property under contract to buy and you need an investor buyer so that you can wholesale it for a quick assignment fee, then after sending the deal out to your buyers list this is arguably your next best strategy (especially if you factor in that it is free). While the quality of contacts made by mailing a postcard to absentee owners is much better, CraigsList gives you a great free method of getting your deal out in front of both retail and investor buyers.

Recommend practices:

First, use two-step marketing… it’s not recommend to list every possible detail about the property, photos, video tours and everything else in the CraigsList ad itself. Instead, we recommend using your CraigsList ad like you might a classified ad: give just enough info to get them interested in clicking through to your website.

Once they are on your website you have two choices: use a squeeze page or give away the info. We usually prefer to use a squeeze page. What’s a squeeze page? It’s a page that requires someone to give you their name and e-mail address, which adds them to your deal notification list, in order to get access to the details about your real estate deals.

A squeeze page tells people that they will be requesting info about great real estate deals and requires that they give their name and e-mail. If they submit their name and e-mail AND confirm that they want to receive info on special deals, then send them, via e-mail, info on these deals and they’ll continue to receive notices on future deals until they opt out.

Of course, you could just show the property information instead of using a squeeze page, but it’s suggested to try and get someone on your deal notification list first.

It’s recommended usually to put ads in the Real Estate For Sale section of CraigsList and re-list as frequently as possible while still being in compliance with CraigsList rules. It is NOT enough to post it once and forget about it. To be effective with CraigsList you need to post your property and then remove it and repost it several days later to bump it back to the top to be noticed. The top postings get a lot more attention than ones that have dropped off the first page of results.

Also, you may want to test title variations and ad body variations to see what gets you the best response. We’re constantly trying new ones and find the difference between response rates can be huge.

Best wishes as you hone your marketing techniques for selling deals and building your buyers list through Craigslist!

The most important thing to remember when looking for things on Craigslist is that you must be both patient and impulsive. This may seem like a paradox, but it’s true. First, you must know what it is you want. And then you must be patient, waiting for that thing to be listed. When you finally see the item available, send e-mail immediately or you may lose your chance. (An e-mail expressing interest is not a commitment to buy, but it puts you at the head of the line in most sellers’ minds.) (more…)