From Craigslist

[private].[/private]Viral marketing watch out. Craigslist is here! Craigslist is a FREE online classified service and it is one of the many ways to get traffic to your site that is not time-consuming (and did I mention FREE).

Craigslist is one of the most viewed websites in the world and ranks high on Alexa. Your ads are posted for 45 days and are read by millions of people.

However, Craigslist has some limitations and I am going to walk you through how to turn these limitations to your best advantage.

The first limitation is that, although Craigslist has nearly 300 market cities, you cannot post on one Craigslist market city, town, or region and send that post to all of them at the same time. Because it is designed to be a local resource, they are not linked and you have to post on each one individually.

I would advise against using automated-posting software as they generally violate Craigslist’s terms-of-use. Also, the people who are searching Craigslist are able to spot spam quickly and you will lose out.

So where is the advantage? You can study the demographics of each of the market cities to ensure that you are reaching the people that you want to reach. You can determine the sex, race/ethnicity, age ranges, and many other criteria of the people who are using Craigslist in each area and then you only need to post to the ones that you want to target.

You will also find that you can target your marketing by taking advantage of the categories that Craigslist offers. After all, it is better to market to a specific group than it is to market to the masses.

One of the most amazing benefits of Craigslist, besides millions of people seeing your ad, is that Google indexes Craigslist posts quickly and regularly. This means that every post that is made is quickly picked up by the Google search engine and you will improve your position in the search engine. Google has spiders and crawlers on Craigslist daily!

This quick indexing means that people searching for your niche will find your post easily and your post contains a link back to your site. Voila! Traffic!

You can also use Google Analytics to track your Craigslist posts to see which ones are the most effective in driving traffic to your site.

Having said all of this, Craigslist has some pretty strict posting rules that you need to be aware of and following these tips will help prevent your post from being deleted:

** Do not post too many ads too quickly and do not post more than once in the same category

** Avoid posting in the wrong category

** If you post in multiple cities, ensure different ads in each one; i.e. change the title and the body of the ad

** Make sure you are posting in the proper category for what you are offering

** Use different email addresses for each ad

** Post a few ads one day and then wait a few days before you post more

Here is one last and very important advantage to Craigslist. The discussion forums. You can participate in the discussion forums and promote your website in that manner.

Again, you want to make sure your forum posts do not look like spam. Just give genuine information and answer questions honestly and accurately. Most importantly, make sure your link is in your signature.

Craigslist is yet another FREE resource for the internet marketer. The key is to stay within the guidelines of Craigslist so that you can take advantage of it.

With millions of people searching Craigslist every day, you cannot afford to miss this opportunity!