According to Alexa, Craigslist.org is one of the 100 most visited internet sites in the world. In fact, if you look at just internet traffic in the United States, Craigslist is usually within the top 10 most visited U.S. websites. It is so large that it gets 0.2% of all traffic on the internet. That means that on any given day, one in 500 people worldwide will visit Craigslist. The percentage of U.S. visitors is much higher as over 80% of its visitors are from the United Staes.
This kind of traffic puts Craigslist on par with places like eBay and Amazon for number of visitors per day. And unlike these other sites, you can use Craigslist to help your business grow with no cost to you. Your only investment is a small bit of time to get your message out to your audience.
So what is Craigslist and how can it help you as a real estate investor?
You may be thinking – great another place besides my local newspaper where I can spend my advertising dollars. Well, if you are thinking that, you are in for a pleasant shock. Craigslist ads can be posted at absolutely no cost. There is no up front listing fee and no fee for results. (There are a few small exceptions to this rule but it holds true for 99.9% of all Craigslist users.)
Now that you know what Craigslist is and how many visitors it gets on a daily basis, how can you use this to benefit your real estate investing business? Lets take a look at a few ways savvy investors are using Craigslist today to make even more money buying and selling homes.
1) Find Workers - Lets say that you purchased a house and need to find a worker to help you with landscaping or general handyman tasks. You can go to Criagslist and look under the services section where they have categories like “skilled trade” and “labor” where you can find people willing and able to help you out. And here is the exciting part. You can post an ad spelling out exactly what skills you need and people will contact you.
2) Troll for leads – There are sections of Criagslist where you can look for leads for your next property acquisition or even find investors willing to offer funds to buy your next property. A good category is Services/Real Estate.
3) Find renters – You can put an ad in the housing section called apts/housing and find all the tenants you need. I even have a friend who is a licensed realtor specializing in rentals and he uses Craigslist exclusively to generate all his leads for his landlord clients.
4) Selling a House – Use the Real Estate for Sale section under Housing and you will have your phone ringing off the hook with prospects. Or use it to build a buyer’s list or to determine needs by advertising different houses and when they are sold/rented, keep the ad up and build a list of more people looking for specific types of properties. And then go find those properties and contact those leads again.
5) Sell Stuff – If you just bought a house and are cleaning it out, you can use Craigslist to offer any valuable items for sale – or even to just give away to save on the cost of hauling them to the local landfill. You can sell just about anything on Craigslist and it is a great way to get rid of old kitchen cabinets, appliances, etc.
6) Find an Employee – If your business needs a part-time or a full time employee, why pay the exorbitant fees that your local newspaper charges. Just place your ad in the employment section of Craigslist and find that person without spending a penny on your help wanted ad.
These are just a few of the ways Craigslist can be used to grow your investing business. Take some time to study the ads that people place in various categories and you will be able to find many other innovative ways to use it to your benefit.
Post a Comment