Introducing The craigslist Classified Ad Builder
Given a primary goal of listingnumber is to allow agents to easily track traffic generated by their ads, it was a natural for us to focus on cutting steps out of the process.
In that vein, we created this simple tool to allow you to create an ad for use on craigslist. The tracking URL is automatically embedded in the ad.
We took special care in creating the template to respect the craigslist community. Key features are:
- Community-friendly: Many templates are too rich in design and not only distract from the property, but fail to respect the spirit that drives a community site like craigslist. Respect the community by focusing on the property, not personal marketing (do that on your site).
- Photos: Buyers want photos. Including a crystal clear call to action gives them easy access to what they want and increases the number of visits to your listing.
- Crisp Typography and Clean Layout: A well-crafted ad with crisp typography and a clean layout is not only easy on the eyes, it’s more likely to generate visitors.
- Visitor Tracking: And of course, automatic visitor tracking tied to your listingnumber property profile with reports that let you share results with your clients.
To give it a spin, login to listingnumber and click the classified ad button in the main menu.
Enjoy!
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I have been trying to build a craigslist ad for an hour and am having a great deal of difficulty. Is there a tutorial or a more user-friendly set of directions?
First, getting the main photo included using the “copy image location” does not exist that I can find.
Second, after I input all of the field info and hit create ad preview, if there is something wrong or missing and I go back, all of my info is gone.
Third, when I attempt to publish it to CL I am lost.
I think I am missing something and if you could please point me in the right direction and get me on track, I would greatly appreciate it. This looks like a great service and the ad preview looked great minus the photo that I could not figure out and my being stalled at publishing it.
Thank you for this service, I will definitely get a great benefit from it once I get past my blind spots.
Thanks for the help,
Jeff
Jeff –
Unfortunately, we don’t yet have a more extensive tutorial available.
That said, I think I know for sure what the trouble is a least on the picture address.
When I built the instructions for the page, I tested them against Firefox and Safari web browsers and made the mistaken assumption that IE also let one “right-click” to copy an image location to the clipboard. Well, either it changed in IE7 or my memory has severely failed me, ‘cuase I thought for sure "you could do that in IE".
Rest assured, there is a solution…
Getting the picture address to your clipboard
You still want to right-click on the image of the house, then click "properties". You should see this dialog:
Double-click on the Address (URL). It doesn’t look like you can select it but you can. Either right-click and click "copy" or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-C to copy the address to your clipboard.
From there you should be able to pick up where you left off on the form. Word of warning: since the dialog box doesn’t have room to show the whole address, you might have to try this a couple times to ensure you are getting the whole thing to your clipboard. One trick might be to right-click on the address and choose "Select All", then right-click again and "Copy".
Hope that all made sense.. Now, your second issue:
The form resetting…
Are you using the button we provide to go back in the process or your browsers back button? We tried to design it in a way that would allow the forms to be preserved, so I’d like to figure out what’s going on here.
And finally,
Submitting to craigslist.
This one is a little tougher without knowing exactly where you are getting stuck. Craiglist does a pretty good job of making sure there are at least 5 or 6 clicks between where you start (post.craigslist.org) and the final entry form.
They key to getting to the right form is carefully following the screens to ensure you are in the right place. The key to getting your ad is on your clipboard. It is possible that when you click the "copy to clipboard" button:
something just isn’t working right (we’ll do an additional round of testing on our end).
Update. This does in fact appear to be the case. A recent change in Internet Explorer (IE), now prevents the “copy to clipboard” script from working properly. We’ll look into this. In the meantime, you can switch to Firefox or follow the rest of this tip…
If this is the case, you can copy|paste the old fashioned way. Right-click in the "craigslist ad contents" box (where all the code is), and click "Select All", then right-click again and "Copy". This will put the code on your clipboard for when you make it to the right form on craiglist where you can then paste.
I hope that helps and works. Let us know. And thanks.
[...] this is something we should have included when the craigslist Ad Builder was fist launched, but hey, better late than [...]
Leave a Comment