I’ve posted before about Craigslist flagging problems, ghosting (ads not showing up) and programs to help with your Craigslist marketing efforts but something that I didn’t think to mention at the time – and thought might be an interesting tidbit for those of you who don’t know this, is that Craigslist literally has a flagging forum and an army of flaggers – I like to refer to these people as the ‘Big Brother of Craigslist’. They watch all!
These flaggers are in addition to your competition who will flag your ad to keep theirs at the top and try to dominate the business; or just PITA people who are just plain annoying.
The ‘Big Brother’ clan of Craigslist apparently watches ads that are posted and if they feel that any rule has been broken whatsoever they flag it- this includes multiple ads, ads they feel are miscategorized or feel are misleading, ads posted in caps, and a million other reasons – some maybe legit but many petty.
These watch dogs ban together and help each other flag. They will share the ad that they feel needs to be flagged and everyone joins in and flags it. It appears they literally have people that do this all day and all day – as if it’s their life. They take it way too seriously.
So what does this mean for you as a Craigslist marketer? It means that you have an army of people firing the flag button for any reason at all and often even for no good reason. It means that not only do you have a forum of people ready to take your ads down but you also have other marketers (your competition) having your ads removed using flagging software. And you even have some people who just have nothing better to do and find it to be fun.
Unfortunately, with all of these odds stacked against you, the only thing you can really do is fight back.
You can use a Craigslist Auto Ad Poster and Flagging Software that will automatically post your ads for you (and more) and you can use flagging software for your own needs.
Another handy tool I’ve blogged about under the Craigslist Marketing section is the Craigslist Auto Account Creator which is also an Email Account creator. You can click the links to read more about these pieces of software but basically this one creates as many Craigslist accounts as you want and also creates the corresponding emails to match the accounts.
— You highlight the account you want to use and click “login” to either login to the Craigslist account or the email account. You can also use this tool to create just email accounts if you want. (hint – you can forward all of the emails accounts (or some) to one or more main email accounts so you don’t have to check them all). I really love this thing and use it faithfully. Having different accounts allows me to post as many times as I want really because I can just use different accounts – or you can use certain accounts for different campaigns.
I use both of those tools to successfully manage many Craigslist campaigns and stay ahead of the wolf pack!
Craigslist will probably never take care of the flagging abuse and problems so all you can do is arm yourself with the proper tools.
