Do you realize that the best time to be doing something is when everyone else is doing the opposite?

Right now, today, is the perfect moment to capture high quality real estate leads from Craigslist.

Why?

Because everyone is freaking out.

Because every other real estate agent has stopped posting.

Because the ones who are still posting, don’t have a clue how to make it easy for Craigslist prospects to get to you.

Why?

Because the “experts” are saying “go somewhere else”.

The “experts” are saying “they saw it coming”.

Well, honestly, just about everyone saw it coming.

With the “experts” teaching real estate agents to blatantly violate Craigslist’s terms of use by . . .

• creating multiple fake accounts
• buying pre-paid phones so you can phone verify multiple fake accounts
• posting an obscene amount of posts every day
• manipulating multiple accounts via multiple IP & MAC addresses

In other words, let’s agree to use Craigslist by their terms (you agree when you sign up for an account) and then let’s lie to them, cheat the system, and create havoc for everyone (which is exactly what is happening now).

Guess what this lying and cheating resulted in?

Thousands of ads each day of spam. Spam from real estate agents throwing up anything and everything on Craigslist. Craigslist users not being able to use any of the Craigslist search functions. Functions like price sort, photo sort, mapping, keyword search, etc.

It’s resulted in Craigslist shutting down the ability to put in any links in the for sale ads. Making it impossible for legit posts that want to have an active link that points to video tours, neighborhood tours, etc.

So. Should you give up on Craigslist?

The “experts” say you should.

I say – ignore the “experts”. I always have.

Here’s the deal . . .

First of all, you should already BE somewhere else.

Your online lead generation strategy should always be at least a three legged stool. If you put all of your eggs in the Craigslist basket, you are definitely paying for it now.

With that said, here’s why I have always ignored the “experts” when it’s come to Craigslist . . .

It never sat right with me to have multiple accounts. It just didn’t. It is explicitly against Craigslist’s terms of use, and I didn’t want my personal account shut down.

And, the short time frame that I did utilize multiple accounts, and did what the “experts” teach, I noticed something.  Something significant.

My ad to lead ratio (the number of ads I needed to run to capture one lead) actually went down.  I captured fewer leads per ad doing it the “experts” way.

So, while everyone else was running multiple accounts and an insane amount of ads, while still others insisted they were getting junk leads from Craigslist . . .

• I was running all of our ads through our single Craigslist account.
• I ran no more than ten ads per day, sometimes I’d go as high as twenty, but that was a true rarity (my lead ratios always increased when I did this, but I was also exposing my account to ghosting and flagging, which I didn’t want).
• I was bringing in anywhere from 34-55 leads each month into our database from our Craigslist prospecting.

Yes, I could have brought in more, if I had wanted to ignore the recipe that was working for us, bringing in higher quality leads.

I got our ad to lead capture rate down to 3.6 to 1.  For every 3.6 ads I ran, I captured one lead.

Our first year conversion rate (closing) for our Craigslist ads was 34:1. For every 34 leads we brought in, we closed one.

Our Craigslist buyer leads who closed on a property with us ended up being a couple of things:

• 33% of them were all cash
• 78% of them bought at 53% or more over our area average price
• 23% of them made a second purchase within a twelve month time frame

In other words, we had some excellent leads from our Craigslist ads, and we ignored what the “experts” were doing and teaching others to do.

• We didn’t run “fancy” ads.
• We didn’t do the “video” trick on our ads.
• We didn’t run multiple clickable links.
• We didn’t run multiple photos.
• We didn’t use fancy symbols in our headlines.
• We never advertised foreclosure lists.

So. Should you give up on Craigslist because things have changed? Because the “experts” say you should?

That’s your choice.

As far as my choice, I’m staying on Craigslist. The pickings are RIPE right now. Excellent.

I’m especially looking forward to paying to run my ads.  I’m betting that my lead capture ratios will go through the roof at that point.