Craiglist woes

General Real Estate Investing
1

Hi,

I have a problem with my ad being ‘flagged off’ my local Craiglist. No matter how I word it it gets flagged off in an hour or less.

“Funny” thing is when I tested the same ad in a different state it ran fine.

I am fairly certain due to a terrible housing market here and the MLS consisting of about 7 REOs out of every 10 listings, the the local vermin, sorry, starving realtors, are doing it because of the local competition. I am trying to provide a place for wholesalers and people in need of selling their house quick to list for free.

Any idea how to keep the wolves at bay?

2

I sometimes post ads that cross the lines and I can see why they get flagged, such as posting for motivated sellers in the for sale section even though I am not supposed to post wanted ads in that section. But sometimes I get them flagged for no apparent reason. Just yesterday I had one up that was a property for sale in the for sale section and it got flagged. Sure it was a property in another geographical area but not sure why it was flagged. I think a seller wanted to limit his competition.

3

I don’t know why craigslist would kick you ad out of their listings,
unless you’re wording is improper or you’re placing it in wrong section…

However, you might be placing too many ads in the same location
or too many looking the same way.

Remember, you have to erase your previous ads in order to have new
ones accepted. I think the limit is 4. So, erase old ads and repost!

Hope it helps, :beer

Thomas

4

Are you posting the same ad in more than one area? This can get you flagged too. More than likely though Rich is right. It is probably a competitor with no morals and nothing better to do.

5

It only takes a click to flag a post on craigslist so a competitor doesn’t have to take much time out of their day to get rid of you.

The best way to get around it is not to post ads. Instead email the ads that are on there with your interest in buying their property.

6

I wish it was more like one of the spam reporting services I’ve used where it takes 2-3 reports that an address sent spam before the address is flagged. It would make it easier to weed out abuse.

7

I thought Craigslist instituted the same thing (i.e., more than one one click to get flagged), but I guess not judging by the responses here.

8

It is definitely only one click. I tested it once by flagging my own, I got an instant email that it was flagged down.

9

Even if they changed it to require several reports it wouldn’t help much. All a realtor has to do is send out an email to a few friends saying: “Let’s get this guy!” Click-click-click. You’re outta there.

10

Craiglist frustrates me so much. All my listings always get flagged off. I even hired freelancers to do the task for me. Still no luck. I checked the wordings and I don’t see anything wrong with my ad.

If anyone can give me advice, I’d be really thankful.

11

My ad got flagged off last night. If it stays up for a few hours its better than nothing but still annoying.

12

A couple of hours is good Rich_in_CT!

I think my ad lasts for an hour or two. I believe it’s getting flagged by competitors. Or maybe I’m just paranoid.

13

Maybe you should hire a programmer to write a little script that checks if your ads are still up every 15 minutes or so and reposts them when they get flagged.

14

It’s the nature of the beast with Craigslist. I often have 30-40 ads running at any given time. Change your headline and tweak the copy and see what happens. Over time you learn the “tricks” of posting.

If you want to post or email the ad to me, I would be happy to make suggestions.

15

Won’t work. The purpose of the little picture with the numbers and letters in it when you post ads is to stop scripts from autoposting.

16

Rich, there’s no such thing as a security measure that can’t be defeated. Whether or not ads on craigslist is worth the trouble though is up to you.

For me it’s not. I once posted an ad on craigslist that attracted thousands of buyers to my site in just a few hours. Not one of them bought anything.

As for sellers, well, there’s no need to advertise for sellers when they’re already doing it for you!