So after posting on Craigslist for a few days, here’s what I’ve learned so far:
1.) The Rants & Raves have been getting deleted almost immediately, but the Free section posts are (mostly) still going strong. I would’ve expected it to be the other way around, so that is a surprise.
2.) You will receive some people e-mailing you encouragement and some people e-mailing you obscenities. Some people pretend to be encouraging so you will open the message, and then when you read down further, they are cussing at you. You will need to have a thick skin. Don’t get discouraged!!! Pray before you post each one, that the Lord will bring it before the eyes that HE wants to see it. I’ve turned it into a game: Each time I get a nasty gram, I post to a new city in a different part of the country.
REMEMBER: If you respond to any messages, your e-mail service provider will show them your name, even if Craigslist has anonymized your e-mail address. So you will want to either use a dummy e-mail account with a service provider that does NOT have your name, or just don’t respond to any messages at all.
3.) Ads posted in smaller towns seem to stay up for a long time. Ads posted in big cities will get flagged and removed by angry people almost immediately. A couple thoughts on how to have the most impact:
-You might want to post in the small towns first and maybe post in the larger city a week or two later. That way, your post has a chance to be seen by more people. If you post to the big city first, you can expect it to be deleted almost immediately, and then the angry person(s) will go hunting for your ad in the surrounding smaller areas. Beat them to the punch by covering the small towns first. (Yes, I got angry e-mails from the same person from two different post locations.)
-As I mentioned, the big city posts get removed almost instantly. If you want more people to see it, consider posting on a Friday evening. That’s when a lot of serious deal-seekers are searching for neat stuff to pick up over the weekend. If you post on a Friday or even on a weekend, it will likely get more eyes before being deleted.
-Your experience with big cities might be different from mine. I posted in a pretty hostile part of the country. So maybe unbelievers in other geographic locations might be less angry?
4.) I was able to post to 20-something cities, spread out across 3 different states under the “Free” section without the system thinking it is spam. So you might be able to get the word out faster than I originally thought. But . . . these were not major metropolitan areas (except for 2 of them, which were removed quickly). So if you went after several major metro cities all at once, I’m not sure if the system would flag it as spam. If you’ve tried this, let us know!
Hope this helps. Happy posting!