Paul Duxbury

Earning a Living with Craigslist

Believe it or not, it is entirely possible for savvy individuals to earn their living through Craigslist. More and more individuals with an entrepreneurial spirit are realizing there are a host of opportunities for those who are willing to work hard to earn a living through hard work, learning about online communities such as Craigslist and effectively marketing themselves and their skills or products to those who might be in the market to invest in services or products the individual has to offer. Unlike conventional jobs where there is a set salary for services rendered and an unofficial cap on the earning potential those who offer their services online as an independent contractor have no such cap on their earning potential. However, there are also no guarantees on the amount which will be earned.

In general there are two ways to make a living with Craigslist. This may include offering services as an independent contractor on a contract basis or offering products or services as a small business owner. Alternately, individuals can utilize Craigslist to secure a permanent full time job through the job posting section on Craigslist. However, for the purposes of this article we will discuss the possibilities open to independent contractors and small business owners on Craigslist.

Craigslist for Independent Contractors

Those who offer their services as independent contractors on a contract basis are finding Craigslist to be an excellent location to offer their services or respond to advertisements from those seeking services. An increase in the amount of work being outsourced by both small businesses and large corporations has prompted many savvy individuals to realize there is a market for them to take advantage of these outsourcing opportunities. They can use Craigslist in their effort to do this by placing advertisements for services offered as well as by responding to advertisements seeking contract employees.

There is a section on Craigslist specifically for services offered. Under the topic of services offered there are a number of different categories. The contractor can place a posting under the most appropriate category to reach their target audience. There is also a category for small business advertisements which may be used if there are no appropriate categories for the type of services offered. However, it might be more difficult to reach a target audience by placing an advertisement in such a general category.

Independent contractors can also gain business opportunities by responding to advertisements seeking contract employees. In searching for a job on Craigslist individuals can begin with a location and then browse through different types of job by category. The easiest way to find a contract position is to use the search feature and check the contract box to include this term as a part of the search criteria. This will ensure the search results returned include only contract positions.

Craigslist for Small Business Owners

Small business owners can utilize Craigslist to reach a larger audience and grow their business. Those who have a small business have a couple of opportunities to use Craigslist to their advantage. The most obvious way to promote a business on Craigslist is by posting an advertisement in the appropriate category under the for sale or services sections of the community. This can be very effective because Craigslist receives more than four billion page views per month meaning there is a large potential audience using Craigslist.

Small business owners can also use the discussion forums portion of the Craigslist community to generate greater profit for their business. However, small business owners should use a great deal of caution to ensure their promotional postings are not viewed as spam. There is a distinct difference between posting information related to your business in a way that is informative to the reader and spamming the boards with useless posts intended solely to promote your business. Spamming is not only likely to be overlooked by readers but also runs the risk that the Craigslist moderators will delete your posts or take more severe actions against you.

Add comment October 13th, 2006

Two New Traffic Generation Strategies You May Have Never Thought Of Before

Mention traffic generation and chances are, people will suggest the usual approached. Article marketing, forum posting, reciprocal linking, search engine optimization (SEO), and even traffic buying… these are just some of the choices you always read about in many resource centers in the World Wide Web.

And since information about them is everywhere, you could bet your bottom dollar that your competitors are doing the exact same tactics.

You need something better. You need something new. You need something effective that people have yet to exploit.

And boy, are you in luck!

In this article, we’re going to discuss two powerful traffic generating strategies that you have never heard of before, and chances are, your competitors won’t have a clue about them either. These are tactics that are “hot off the press,” so to speak. They have just been discovered, and they are bound to give you unbridled traffic the likes of which you may not have experienced before.

The Secrets Of MySpace

There are reports circulating that www.myspace.com is generating 2 ½ times the amount of traffic that Google is acquiring. This is mistaken report that grew out of proportions. The real fact is that www.myspace.com is using 2 ½ times the bandwidth of Google, given the many exciting, but bandwidth-hungry, features of this website.

Nonetheless, there is no denying the fact that MySpace is one of the MOST visited websites today.

MySpace is a community/dating website that allows people to create their own profiles and connect the same to other people to build their own virtual network. It’s quite easy to build your network in this community. People claim that they are able to gain 1,500 contacts within two weeks.

Now, how could these statistics help you generate massive traffic for your own website?

Simple.

Create a MySpace profile and build your network. It doesn’t require much effort. There are already quite a number of services out there that could even do the job for you.

Include your main website’s link in your profile page. This would give you a back link on a page that has a very high Page Rank (PR), which is excellent to boost your website’s own PR. For the uninitiated, a high PR would mean a higher placement in search engine results, hence a greater volume of traffic for your website.

But this isn’t enough.

MySpace also has a community billboard feature. If you’d post there, your message would appear in the profiles of all your contacts. Simply include your link in your message. Imagine if you have 20,000 contacts. You could potentially garner 20,000 visitors with just one message. Additionally, you’d have 20,000 back links pointing to your main website! This is a wonderful opportunity to increase your link popularity!

This MySpace route is something that has yet to be exploited. In fact, most of the internet marketing superstars have yet to discover this approach.

Yes indeed.

You’ll be one of the first!

Connecting With CraigsList

The website www.craigslist.com is an online classified ads center dedicated to employment opportunities. However, it accepts all manners of advertisements.

For free, at that!

What does this mean?

Well, Craigslist is a PR7 website. Simply choose the category most appropriate for the subject of your website and place an advertisement that would invite readers to visit your web pages.

They don’t have to click on the link. They don’t have to visit your website.

Having your link in a PR7 website is enough to spike up your own website’s Page Rank! Again, this means a higher position in search engine results pages, and more organic traffic for your online business.

Amazing strategies, aren’t they?

And what’s best is that you’re one of the first people to know about them. So use them well and get the head start on your competition!

Add comment July 11th, 2006