How To Create Great Looking Craigslist Ads

I've been asked may times "how do people create those great looking Craigslist ads"? You know, the ones with the cool pictures that appear in the services categories. Just search Craigslist and you will see what I mean. These ads stand out among the plain old tires text ads. They also get more responses as well.

Adding pictures to your ad will create credibility to your both your ad and, your product. This works great for the services categories. You can include a screen capture of your own website, or maybe some before and after pictures of your services or products. Remember...you only have a few seconds to dazzle your audience before they move onto the next ad. Ever here of the saying' a picture is worth a thousand words'?

Unfortunately, CraigsList will only allow you to add pictures to the Lost and Found, Housing, and For Sale categories. But what about the services and other sections? How did they get those pictures in there? Well I'm about to tell you.

Initially, you need to find a picture or graphic you like (preferable in the JPG format), one that shows what your business is all about. Try to keep the image around 750 X 500 pixels. Next you need to upload this image somewhere on the web. If you already have a website, and can access your website host, you can put this in your root, or the image folder on the server. If not, just search the web for "free image hosting", and you will find a number of websites that will let you host your image for free. Please take note of the complete URL of your picture as you will need this information later.

You will need to log into your Craigslist account. Create your title and type some flattering text about your company in the description box. Relying only on the picture itself is a bad idea. Typing something into the box that is relevant to your ad will eventually get you placed higher in the search engines . After typing in your text, insert the code snippet, which you can find for free at the end of this article.

Be sure to preview your Craigslist ad to make sure the length of your sentences are as long as the length of the image you have used. It just looks better this way.

Guess what, finalize your post...and you are done! That's it.

By following the steps above, you will have your good looking picture ad up on Craigs List in no time.

You can find the free code snippet here.