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This blog has been permently moved to ClassifiedAnswers.com

New stuff! – A  backpage poster, a craigslist symbols tool and MORE!

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ClassifiedAnswers.com

Basic HTML for Posters

HTML for the Ad Poster

I’ll make it nice and easy to copy to Notepad to use as a reference.

<b>Bold Text</b>
<i>Italic Text</i>
<U>Underlined Text</u>

<font color=”green”>Colored Text</font>

<font size=”+2″>Big Text</font>

<font size=”+3″>Bigger Text</font>

<font size=”+4″>Really Big Text</font>

<center>In the Middle</center>

Link

<a href=”http://www.yoursite.com/”>Text Link</a>

Show an Image

<img src=”yourimage.jpg”>

Link an Image

<a href=”http://www.yoursite.com/thepageyouwanttolinkto.html”><img src=”yourimage.jpg” border=”0″></a>

How to Set Up Your Desktop for Fast Posting

This is how I setup my desktop, everything I need is right there, and I can move quickly from window to window.

List of Font Popularity

From Annabella’s Html Help

FONT POPULARITY RESULTS

A conducted survey of the most popular fonts people have on their computers. I typically use the font Arial in my posts, so I was glad to see that roughly 99% of users had this font installed.

Now you can check the estimated amout of customers that have the font you’re thinking about using.

According to this chart, you wouldnt want to use (also one of my favorites) Juice ITC for your ads as only roughly 23% of folks could see it.

To get around this, you can always type in Adobe or another paint program and use an image instead.

Thanks Annabella

Symbols for Your Craigslist Listings

Free tool to quickly put symbols in your Craigslist ad. Learn all about craigslist symbols. Visit http://www.classifiedanswers.com

60+ Free pictures to use in your ads.

How and when to improve ad performance.

Free BackPage Posting tool – Manually posting has NEVER been easier!

The BP List – save hours on your posting efforts!

And MORE!

More Clickys

Just wanted to shout to the world — I’m a Proud Aunt! Chasity Raianne was born November 10th, weighing in at 7lbs and 10oz. She’s a beautiful little girl…Congrats to Josh and Kelly!

To the clickys-

I recently joined EyeEarn, which is supported by the popular Six Figure Income program. I’ll be posting full time again, so to celebrate here are some Click Here images done in a nice web 2.0 style.

Changing your images is a quick and easy way to differ your posts, so take ‘em all!

(EyeEarn is pretty interesting, paying people to wear their T-shirts, so clicking on the images will take you there—Hey, I just wanna make a dollar!)

Timing and Tracking

When do you get the most clicks?

I post in the morning because I assume everyone else is like me. Since I market to the people who are posting on the site, those who obviously already have a home business or affiliate program they are trying to sell, I look at the ads I’m competing with before I post.

In the morning there are generally only a couple ads, and I actually READ them, not scan them. If you’re marketing to people who don’t advertise on BP I would still advise the morning. It’s easier to compete with 10 ads then 50. Yes, eventually your ad will be lost at the bottom, but all my clicks all come in the morning anyway.

One way to find out the best time of day (or night) to post is to track your ads. I use Statcounter.com, the best free service for tracking I’ve found. I post the same amount of ads every day in the morning. I watch my stats throughout the day. I receive the most clicks early Tuesday morning, every week. If your hits are low, switch to every afternoon, night, etc. I recommend going at least a week at a time to really get a feel for your audience’s tendencies.
I have my own domain name, and can change my affiliate page at will so it’s easy for me to install a code. Good affiliate programs will already give you tracking for your gateways. If you only have an affiliate gateway/page, and no way to track it, then get some URL direction for it. Create seven different short addresses and use one each day. Compare stats.

Free URL redirection services that offer tracking:

FireMe.to
HOTShortURL.com
SimURL.com

Google “URL Redirect tracking” to find more.

Since we’re on the topic of tracking, the above strategy works just as well for using different ads and directions. First find out the best time to post, then post away during that hour using the same ad for a week. Pitch the ads that don’t deliver. Run only the ones that provide the best results and ALWAYS keep improving. Your ad isn’t perfect for everyone, it never will be! Nothing is perfect for everyone of the thousands who browse the classified.
Play around, you don’t have to strictly follow the guidelines. You’ll find some ads give good results in the AM, others only late at night. Just follow the clicks…they will take you where you need to go—to the sale!

The Land of Emails

Gmail. Gmail. Gmail.
If Google owns it, believe me, it will never get banned. A site cannot afford to block a brand like that, no matter how much spam appears on their classified ads from it’s users. Gmail email accounts are so popular they are being sold on freelancer websites.
Gmail is also popular because it has forwarding so you never have to actually log in to get mail. All your emails from posting can be forwarded to one address, making it easy as pie to active backpage ads.
I only have 10 gmail accounts, then they forbid me from making anymore. If you can get them, and in large quantity, go for it. There are tricks and even generators to get accounts, and as said, you can buy them. But until GMX is banned, that is where you will find me.
GMX.com let me create 5 separate accounts. I had a question to my blog before to explain the emails, and all I could think of was to branch it like this.
I have 5 accounts with GMX.com, and 10 emails under each account.
Each one is labeled in an easy to remember format and all have the same password -arosen100, arosen101, arosen102 and so on. So it kind of goes down like this
Login Email : Arosen100@gmx.com
– mailto:arosen100@gmx.com
– mailto:arosen100@gmx.com
– mailto:arosen100@gmx.com
– mailto:arosen100@gmx.com
– mailto:arosen100@gmx.com
– mailto:arosen100@gmx.com
– mailto:arosen100@gmx.com
– mailto:arosen100@gmx.com
– arosen109@gmx.com
Login Email : Arosen110@gmx.com
– mailto:arosen100@gmx.com
– mailto:arosen100@gmx.com
– mailto:arosen100@gmx.com
And so on…
All of the underneath emails I can use, and they all go to the same inbox (login email). Like 10 different names for one email account, but backpage will think I am 10 different people.
I have kind of sworn off Gmail GMX is ever banned I’ll be back.
I use all emails twice a day, meaning that I post 100 ads, because there 50 emails. I only have to log into FIVE to activate all my ads. This technique can be used over and over, so far GMX hasn’t banned me.

Writing the Best Ads

Craigslist, Backpage, and USAads are spammed with ridiculous promises each and every day. You can write ads quickly and deal with a few hits a day, and if that’s fine with you-then you don’t belong in this blog.
Or you can really think this out, really get a feel, and the really get some traffic!
You need to make your own ads stand out, and the in the mist of all these scattered letters and dollar signs, get a reaction from your potential customer.

 

 

Consider…

Who are you selling to?

Age, Gender, Profession? You can’t write the same ad for aging women as you would for professional athletes. Who are these people, what are they’re problems-and how are you going to solve them? At least one of them. Make your ad their long awaited solution, that they may or may not have known they were looking for. Remember young men and women may be roped in with fantastic promises (keep them, be true) while an older group might need proof, or a guarantee.

Okay you have an average person in your group, they see your ad title, click on it, then what do you want them to do?

Join the mailing list, make a phone call, buy a product, download free materials? Identify the step and write your ad around it, to your targeted audience. Be clear, direct, and confidant.

Click Here to Witness the Amazing Benefits of XXXX!
An Easy Call Will Lower Your XXXX Bill Forever!
Mailing List Subscribers Receive Massive Discounts – Register Now!
Click Now to See Real Proof That XXXX Does Whatever!

Obviously, make sure there is always something for your potential customer. Joining your mailing just because you want them to won’t work. People are naturally thinking “What’s in it for me?” Above we are offering proof, discounts, and an opportunity to save money. That’s always a big hit-saving money.

Use a Call to Action Phrase

These are words that entice the buyer to do just want you want them to, they add a sense of urgency, and work on some unconscious level too.
Some Phrases (I avoid Click Here and Buy Now but to each their own)
Free XXXX (Make sure you let them in on exactly what they’re getting free)

Click Here
Call Now
Register Now
Buy Now
Contact Now
Free Trial
Sign Up Now
Limited Time Only

Once you have your good ad copy, make it look great.

Get your hands dirty, learn some HTML it by heart. You don’t want to waist time searching for tags all the time. Or open notepad and keep a copy of your favorites.

You don’t have to get too deeply involved, but it’s best to learn changing color, size, position, italic, bold, underline and font. This part is all up to you. Don’t overdo it, or your ads will look flashy and spammy. Utilize white space as well.

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I use green because that’s the color my site is in, and denotes money to me. I have a great love of centering everything. I am a firm believer that an ad should be in one spot on the page, not written across the length of it.

Test Everything

 

Even tips in this article—test it all.
I found I received more subscribers to my mailing list immediately after the layout was changed from red to green. Why? Do other people think of money too, or do I simply look more trustworthy now? A little research on color theory tells me that the color blue is the most common and is associated trust and reliability. Maybe I’ll change my theme to blue this winter and see how I fair.

 

Test your ads over and over again. Keep changing, make a list of your best conversion ads. This is an ever on-going process as the seasons and times change. If you are receiving an enormous amount of clicks and no sales, maybe look at your sales copy.

No one is an expert at anything overnight.

15 Tips for Posting On Backpage (condensed)

 

I’m not by any means an expert, but you may find my own methods of interest.

 

I post over 100 ads a day, by hand, they don’t get ghosted, and I don’t use a proxy or change my IP address.

 

1. 1. The key is time (for me) is time. I post 20-30 ads at a time, wait an hour or so, then post again.

2. 2. I use many different email addresses. I am promoting two things, an affiliate program and my website. I have 50 emails. Each address posts two ads, then I log out, and log back in. (Bonus : GMX.com will let you have 10 emails that all forward to one. So I only log into 5 accounts and can see all my posts.)

3. I use white text. I place an html command to make any text after it white (or the color snow). I personally hide “Ad# 9393” and so on. I just hit random keys for my ad number. Don’t forget to close the font tag () This causes ghosting because it tries to make the rest of the page white. While I do this, I have about 10-20 different ads I run also.

4. Sometimes sites will notice this. It happens. It doesn’t work on Craigslist. Other colors you can use are #FFFFCC, #FFFFDD, #FFFFEE and yellow. Yellow will definately be seen, but it still looks alright because it’s an ad number.

5. I registered. This never caused me a problem. I have 50 backpage accounts, I post two ads in each. This eliminates the need to check my email at all, as the ads go up quickly without confirmation.

6. I have different titles. Don’t use the same title and just add @,$,%,^ and so on. It will get caught sooner or later. Be creative!!

7. Use a picture. This is as easy as taking a snapshot of a couple words. Backpage can’t SEE pictures for what they are―so if you post the same one multiple times, under different names, how do they know? Upload one picture 10-20 times to photobucket, they will call it picture1, picture2, and so on. There you go.

8. Wait. Recently it takes up to 20 minutes for my ads to show. At first I thought they were ghosted- but they always showed up eventually.

9. Don’t appear like a spammer. Please, people, quit posting “Make $10,000 Every 5 Minutes!!” It’s unreal and misleading. Be true to your ads, that will bring more sales and less disappointed people.

10. Change your url. I’ve used short url and tiny url with success. If the server catches your domain to many times it will delete your ads.

11. Pay attention. If they same ads keep getting flagged–use a new one. If you have a good product it shouldn’t be hard to write plenty of good things about it.

12. Post in relevant categories only. This lower the chances of flagging highly. For most of you, this mean in the biz opps category. Don’t post work at home or affiliate pages under jobs.

13. Know your audience, if you are consistently getting hits from New York and none from Akron, stop posting in Akron. It’s a waste of time.

14. Learn some HTML. Improve and vary your adds with color and size. Centering ads looks better than off to the side. Smaller ads that don’t use the whole width of the screen are easier to read.

15. This is the most important — Be SMART. Follow the guidelines here, if something doesn’t work CHANGE IT. Make your ads different. Trick the sever in to believing that you are not spamming, and then….DON’T spam.

 Be SMARTER than the backpage bot