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Move that stuff! Pump Craigslist Ads with Big Pictures
Outsell others to crank up business or ease your personal recession
Terrific photos inserted in your Craigslist ads do most of the talking. My easy tools and procedures guide the way. Get that stuff sold now! And learn how to rotate your photos.
 |
| At 300 pixels wide, Craigslist photos often fail to tell the story |
Photos First!
Selling on the web is taking on new meaning. In March 2009, on-line classified advertising powerhouse Craigslist trumpeted a 100% jump in listings in the barter category since the start of the year. Dentists are offering crowns and fillings in exchange for house painting. Hair stylists are swapping cuts for car repair. Want a free week at a Molokai condo? Just help install some landscaping. Shades of the Great Depression, Web 2.0 style!
Swelling streams of used furniture, autos, electronics, cameras, tools, boats, sporting goods, chotchkies and anything imaginable have turned the Internet into a 24/7/365 flea market. It's running like Fargo's Red River in rainy season. Unstoppable Craigslist is the energizer bunny of the web. The generally free service (Craigslist has yet to charge for ads you post, but the account management system includes a suspicious box that opens the possibility going forward) happily signaled 1, 000, 000, 000 (one billion!) ads on the day that a Senator from Illinois became President Obama.
Do you sell on Craigslist or wish to try?. Here's proven help that will boost your success. Take a look at the photos above and below. Which size and clarity works best in an ad? Craigslist's own content management tool allows up to four photos like the one above, each sized 300 x 225 pixels. These four always appear at the bottom of the ad. Together, the four pictures are smaller than the photo at left. Use the tools described in this article, and you'll insert big optimized photos like this one, typically 400 - 800 pixels wide anywhere in your ad. For comparison, this photo is about 600 pixels wide. Importantly, all of the features of the product can be discerned by observant customers. The photo does more than merely grab attention. Its detail cuts down pesky buyer questions ("does it have mute and hold buttons?"). I've seen Craigslist ads for tricked-out cars with 20 full screen photos, each rich in detail and color. And I've sold products based on a single photo and phone number. No ad copy! The following steps teach how to include photos like this in your ads. You'll learn how to... - Snap 'em
- Improve 'em using free software
- Host 'em with a free Internet service
- Plan and write your ad with minimum copy
- Insert hosted photos in your ad
- Top post to keep the ad fresh
- Enable a very cool Craigslist photo-surfing add-in
Like many endeavors, take time to learn the basics and results will shine. You'll master the following steps quickly, but not instantly. Is the time investment worth it? I put Craigslist ad skills on par with skills in the kitchen, home repair, gardening, driving, CPR and human communication. Most of us want to earn an "A" in these. Unlike most of them, Craigslist skills can actually pay you back in cash for the time invested. And it costs nothing out of pocket if you already own a good digital camera. Let's get snapping in Step 1.
Step 1 Snap those Photos
New to Craigslist? You'll be happy with its simplicity, dismayed by the generally poor ads and surprised (in a good way) when a well-done ad fills your browser window with a great image like the one above, an image that makes words secondary. Great visual ads happen less than 3% of the time on Craigslist. Doing them is a key opportunity to be different, to set your ads apart, to get them noticed (as ad guys like to say, to gain mindshare). Great visual ads give your stuff a fighting chance in that sea of advertising mediocrity. Some might say your ads have an unfair advantage. Tell 'em to read this article. Pictures are far more important than words for most ads.
Because the steps in this article fall within the Terms and Conditions of Craigslist, it's fair to claim that founder Craig Newmark and CEO Jim Buckmaster encourage great ads and want advertisers to succeed in this very dynamic environment.
Craigslist classified ads appear in a stack. You understand the push down stack idea (even if you don't like it): as new ads are placed on top of the stack, your ad is pushed down the page. In some categories (like furniture), this happens fast (especially in some large cities) because folks are clearing out the garage following layoff notices. Your ads need a fighting chance, and big photos deliver like no other tactic.
What is it?
Actual 300 x 225 pixel
photo from a Craigslist ad.
Rotate... It's a goth bed...
Assuming that you have a free Craigslist account set up, Step 1 is photography. You must snap decent digital photos of your stuff. Google Knols on this subject help with basic and advanced functions (like macro mode for shooting small objects or key product details close up). If you are not already an accomplished amateur with your digicam, the owner's manual is the first place to learn basics. But there's good material to read right here at Knol:
- Photography Composition - An Introduction
- Digital Photography: Point, Click and Print Quickly and Easily
- How to Take Better Pictures with a Camera Phone
- Buying a Digital Camera - Made Simple
There's also top-drawer digital photo content at Dummies.com, some free, some for sale:
- Highly recommended: Digital Photography for Dummies
-
Selling on the web is taking on new meaning. In March 2009, on-line classified advertising powerhouse Craigslist trumpeted a 100% jump in listings in the barter category since the start of the year. Dentists are offering crowns and fillings in exchange for house painting. Hair stylists are swapping cuts for car repair. Want a free week at a Molokai condo? Just help install some landscaping. Shades of the Great Depression, Web 2.0 style!
Like many endeavors, take time to learn the basics and results will shine. You'll master the following steps quickly, but not instantly. Is the time investment worth it? I put Craigslist ad skills on par with skills in the kitchen, home repair, gardening, driving, CPR and human communication. Most of us want to earn an "A" in these. Unlike most of them, Craigslist skills can actually pay you back in cash for the time invested. And it costs nothing out of pocket if you already own a good digital camera. Let's get snapping in Step 1.
New to Craigslist? You'll be happy with its simplicity, dismayed by the generally poor ads and surprised (in a good way) when a well-done ad fills your browser window with a great image like the one above, an image that makes words secondary. Great visual ads happen less than 3% of the time on Craigslist. Doing them is a key opportunity to be different, to set your ads apart, to get them noticed (as ad guys like to say, to gain mindshare). Great visual ads give your stuff a fighting chance in that sea of advertising mediocrity. Some might say your ads have an unfair advantage. Tell 'em to read this article. Pictures are far more important than words for most ads.
Because the steps in this article fall within the Terms and Conditions of Craigslist, it's fair to claim that founder Craig Newmark and CEO Jim Buckmaster encourage great ads and want advertisers to succeed in this very dynamic environment.
Craigslist classified ads appear in a stack. You understand the push down stack idea (even if you don't like it): as new ads are placed on top of the stack, your ad is pushed down the page. In some categories (like furniture), this happens fast (especially in some large cities) because folks are clearing out the garage following layoff notices. Your ads need a fighting chance, and big photos deliver like no other tactic.
|
| What is it? Actual 300 x 225 pixel photo from a Craigslist ad. Rotate... It's a goth bed... |
Assuming that you have a free Craigslist account set up, Step 1 is photography. You must snap decent digital photos of your stuff. Google Knols on this subject help with basic and advanced functions (like macro mode for shooting small objects or key product details close up). If you are not already an accomplished amateur with your digicam, the owner's manual is the first place to learn basics. But there's good material to read right here at Knol:
- Photography Composition - An Introduction
- Digital Photography: Point, Click and Print Quickly and Easily
- How to Take Better Pictures with a Camera Phone
- Buying a Digital Camera - Made Simple
There's also top-drawer digital photo content at Dummies.com, some free, some for sale:
- Highly recommended: Digital Photography for Dummies
TIP: Trained salespersons at stores like Wolf and Ritz Camera, Shutterbug and others are eager to become your tutor. Explain why you need the camera and you'll gain direct insight into a model's best features for the job. If you fall in love with a particular camera, expect the salesperson to get very close to the best price you'll find on the Internet. The sales staff may even perform the search for you after you've picked a model. These stores often have excellent quality used cameras (store demonstrators and trade-ins) for sale, and have been known to advertise them... on Craigslist.
For example, Knol's sponsor Google provides one-stop shopping with it's free Picasa desktop / laptop software. Download Picasa for the PC, Picasa for the Mac or Picasa for Linux to get the desktop / laptop package, install and use it to establish a free online account with PicasaWeb. This is where you'll store and manage your Craigslist photos after improving them on the desktop. If you're like me, Picasa will manage all of your digital photos and even your digital camcorder videos. With Picasa, transferring photos is automated from the moment you connect your camera to the USB port (as instructed in the camera's quick start guide).
An important step in all photo improvement software is photo size. After you've used the automatic or manual tools to achieve the best brightness and contrast, and cropped the photo to remove extraneous content, you'll benefit by resizing. If you crop first, then resize ahead of these steps, they take less time. In any case, you'll speed uploads to Craigslist or your photo hosting service by setting maximum picture size well below the 2 to 14 megapixels (or more) produced by your camera. My habit is to crop first, then resize every photo destined for Craigslist to 800 pixels wide. Then I use the automatic and manual tools to optimize each photo. Typically, with Picasa I spend a minute or less per photo. My photos nearly fill a 1024 x 768 screen but have white space around them, improving ad readability.
 |
| Even a 300 x 225 pixel image looks nice with good lighting and enhancement. This is an actual Craigslist image of a 31" vase (improved with Picasa) |
Recently, I set my 7.2 megapixel camera to take smaller photos. It seems counter-intuitive to use fewer pixels than the camera's top capability. However, I got great photos that didn't need to be resized in software. My download time to get the images into the computer was reduced more than 75%. Twin bonuses just from reading the camera manual! And there's a third bonus: instead of storing about 150 images, my camera's memory card holds many times more. Of course, I have to remember to reset to the higher pixel count before shooting someone's portrait or a long distance shot that I'll probably want to crop. But both my Sony Cybershot and Olympus C-3040 make this easy after a few minutes with the manual.
A word about camera phones. If your cell phone camera offers at least 1 megapixel, you can take successful big product photos for use on Craigslist. Here are three key points that will enable you to achieve successful snaps with a cell phone camera:
- Light up the subject to eliminate harsh shadows
- Compose the picture so it does not need cropping. Move in so that the object you are snapping nearly fills the screen
- Hold the camera extremely steady to avoid blur (cell phone cameras don't have anti-shake features, and their slow lenses don't help). Leaning against a wall really helps
- Read and print it at HowToDoThings.com (slow at times)
- Download and print from my Box.net account. Click here.
have one of them installed on your hard drive. Newer Wintel desktops and laptops might include products like Corel's Photo Album and/or PaintShop or Adobe's Photoshop Elements, among others. Windows Vista includes Photo Gallery. Each offers a similar range of functions for photo improvement. I'm fond of Photo Album's one-click Quick Fix. Take the time to explore these programs and you might fall in love with the feature set after a little climbing of the learning curve.
Apple's OS X-based products have the excellent iPhoto software, Linux aficionados have long enjoyed venerable feature-rich Gimp, which I highly recommend. It's also available for Windows.
A new and very exciting photo improvement website, picnik, lives up to its slogan, Photo editing made fun. Free photo improvement is performed entirely online with this "software as a service" or SaaS offering. A highly intuitive interface coaches you through the process: you'll upload a photo, improve it with instantly visible results that you save or reject, then download back to your computer. Using picnik's improvement algorithm, a one-touch Auto-fix button gets the job done instantly. Or you can manually rotate, crop, resize, adjust exposure and colors, even sharpen. The resizer is perfect for big Craigslist photos.
Unlike Picasa, however, picnik doesn't provide photo hosting. Hosting is needed to place big photos in Craigslist ads. But picnik does automate the connection to your Picasa photo hosting library, yielding highly efficient collaboration. This is fun to do. SaaS products like Picasa and picnik are the future of software in this writer's opinion.
Once your photos have been optimized, you'll upload them for hosting. Perhaps you already use ImageShack, a popular hosting service that was among the first. ImageShack has years of experience and many loyal fans. While Picasa provides one-stop shopping for download from camera to PC, improvement and hosting, ImageShack is all about hosting. Let's learn about hosting in Step 3.
Step 3 Host those Photos
Hosting is to photos as banking is to money. Unless you leave your computer turned on 24/7/365 and enjoy static IP service (e.g., a fixed web address that turns your computer into an Internet server), you'll need to arrange free hosting. This enables your photos to appear in your ad. Just as your money resides in a vault, your photos, once uploaded, sit in a digital vault. The vault is insurance against loss. Each photo gets a unique address that allows Craigslist to find them instantly on demand. Surfers see an ad composed of text (ad copy) that is stored in one place and photos that are stored in another place, perhaps thousands of miles away.
If you use Craigslist's content management tools to upload those four permitted photos from your hard drive, Craigslist hosts both text and pictures. With over one billion ads to date, it's easy to understand why the service limits the size of those four images. Even if you upload large images, Craigslist reduces them on the fly. You might upload a photo containing 8, 000, 000 pixels. Craigslist warns you about upload time (photo below), and routinely reduces the image to 67, 500 pixels or less, about 6, 700 bytes. 
Nevertheless, users persist by endlessly uploading large photos straight out of their digital camera, and Craigslist routinely reduces the size of each one as the user complains about upload speed. Collectively, four photos total about 27, 000 bytes (in other words, not much).
I imagine that a recurring worry at Craigslist is the need to purchase fast servers with humongous storage as popularity grows beyond all expectations (to the detriment of newspaper publishers). Started in 1993, Craigslist took 16 years to hit the 1 billion ad mark. How long will it take to hit 2 billion ads?
If you use a free photo hosting service like PicasaWeb, Photobucket, ImageShack, Flickr or another choice (I've named four of the best, and there are lots more), the storage burden falls on someone else (do you suppose that Craigslist might be grateful?). Each hosting service has limits on the amount of free storage, and most offer reasonably-priced upgrades for added storage. But the hoi polloi advertisers like you and I usually won't reach the limit unless we (wisely) use these services for the sharing convenience and insurance they offer for our growing digital photo collections.
Hosting with PicasaWeb 
In Step 2, I offered links to my procedural article about Google's Picasa. Because Picasa and PicasaWeb work seamlessly, that article discusses all the steps for inserting big photos into your ads, including:
- Photo improvement
- Hosting
- Insertion of the "code" that tells Craigslist where to find the photo and how large it should appear.
Let's not be redundant. If you plan to use the one-stop Picasa solution (most casual users should try it to see if love blooms), read it here.
Hosting with ImageShack
ImageShack was an early entrant in photo hosting and has acquired a huge fan base. It's a very good service that I continue to use. Individual free photo uploads are restricted to 1.5 Mbytes but you can purchase a low cost upgrade subscription for 3 Mbyte-per-photo service. Not to worry, though. Most of the photos you'll be hosting in support of Craigslist will fall in the range of half a megabyte.
ImageShack also offers a bulk uploader. Got 20 photos? Resize and then upload 'em in one session, speeding things along.
Another reason to use ImageShack is photo size. ImageShack offers a wide range of target sizes up to 1600 x 1200 (the resolution of a 21" monitor and some of the higher end wide screen laptops). While this size actually works in a Craigslist ad, most users would need to scroll horizontally to see the balance of a picture on the typical 1024 x 768 display. For many, horizontal scrolling is annoying. However, there are occasional advertising situations that benefit from wide photos, such as a long model train or a large panoramic art display spanning many individual frames. It's nice to know that the size is available. The best of the two separate worlds of improvement and hosting can be arranged with a neat marriage: you'll tap bride Picasa for photo improvement and groom ImageShack for seamless hosting (instead of PicasaWeb), This marriage is made possible by the Picasa ImageShack Uploader. It puts an ImageShack frog icon into Picasa's application window. Once you've tweaked your photos, select them and click the frog for automated upload.
A procedural article about ImageShack hosting -- again written by me -- is available. Read and print it at HowToDoThings.com. Be patient as this website occasionally runs slow.
Now it's time to plan and write your ad in Step 4.
Step 4 Plan and Write your Ad
For Craigslist, there's little reason to anguish if writing is not your thing. Great photos reduce the need for words. Using the photo we began with as an example, you can pen a successful ad in a few sentences to describe the chief selling features or benefits. Here's the completed Craigslist ad (sized to fit this Knol). It resulted in a same-day sale.
__________________________________________________________________________ This ad is 95% pictures. Note the second photo. I snapped it right out of the phone's manual (using the macro feature of my camera, but you can also zoom a photo like this if the camera is held steady). Those simple line drawings and captions clearly show what the buyer gets. The copy's been written for you! However, there's one part of your ad where you absolutely must have great copy: the headline. This ad's headline packs in the chief sales features and gives the model number because that'll bring the search engines to the ad. When someone in New Orleans types ia5879 into a search engine, your ad could be in the top 10 hits. I purposely included a little mistake in the headline. Did you spot it? Even when words are few, though, you'll want to spell check. And if you think it's cute to avoid punctuation and capitalization, or to put everything in ALL CAPS... don't. Think about the reader and his or her expectations. Keep it simple, junior high level, and spell correctly. Note the phrase specs at vtech.com. Craigslist doesn't like ads with links to other websites. Links will cause users to jump away from Craigslist with a single click. Ads with links can disappear without notice as Craigslist software scans them for violations. You'll receive an e-mail from Craigslist with no explanation. So avoid linking any part of your text. Readers are smart. They'll copy and paste to reach a link in a new browser window, or search on a keyword. There will be occasions when you'll want to do some copywriting. Perhaps you want to sell an antique that requires adequate backgrounding to be appreciated: This steamer trunk was left on the dock as the Titantic departed on its fateful journey... . 
Left on dock as Titanic departed...
My simple advice to word-challenged advertisers is to always let the product or object speak for itself. You can figure out the chief virtues of an object either by direct observation, by checking it out via Google or Yahoo search, or by having a friend comment on it as you quaff a nice wine and take notes. The key is the notes. Jot down chief sales features. Keep your use of descriptive adjectives in check (again, let the photo do the talking). If the steamer trunk has prominent leather strapping visible in the photo, simply say leather strapping adds strength or say nothing. Keep in mind that you are going to need to defend the words at the time of sale. If you make a misleading claim or fail to disclose something, expect a buyer to balk: "The leather straps in the ad don't show the worn spots on the bottom of the trunk, probably from dragging. Sorry I didn't mention that in the ad." For more help on the subject of artful copywriting, check out these resources:
- Writing Copy for Dummies
- Copywriting Basics
- Finding Copywriting Inspiration
- 28 Amazing Copywriting Tips
Here's my own favorite tip: Learning to write copy has a lot in common with learning to swim. If you just stand on the pool deck or the sand, never getting wet, you'll never learn. Just do it is the best way. If you can say it, you can write it (one of my friends overcame writer's block by recording herself, then transcribing what she said). One of the neat things about Craigslist is that you can edit your ads anytime. I've rewritten headlines several times. The only mistake is doing nothing. So, shoot and improve a photo, Fire up Craigslist in a browser, write the headline and copy based on chief sales features, then cut and paste the code for the photo into the ad as detailed in Step 5.
Step 5 Insert your Photo Code
We've reached a moment of truth, the point where we actually create our ad, generate copy and paste in the hypertext markup language (HTML) code that tells Craigslist where to find and how to size each photo. However, this moment has already been offered. it's part of the HowToDoThings.com Picasa article from Step 2, as well as the ImageShack article from Step 3. No need to repeat ourselves, right? When you review those articles, here's what you'll learn about photo code: - How to use PicasaWeb and ImageShack to host and view your photos in a browser window
- How to select the right size
- How to select and copy the code to embed in your Craigslist ad
- How to paste the code into your ad, and this is also detailed a little more in my Top Posting Step 6, next.
Step 6 Learn to Top Post
The push down stack of Craigslist is not your friend because soon after posting, new ads pile on top. A few hours or days later depending on your sales category and city, shoppers won't see your ad on the landing page. This is where newspapers have a distinct advantage. However, you can ease the problem by top posting. You won't be violating Craigslist's Terms and Conditions, either. If you try to top post before a set time, usually 72 hours or three days, Craigslist content management software advises you that the reposted ad will appear in its original position, not at the top of the stack. So, it's self regulating. 
Top post by accessing your account (click my account). - Once you've logged in and have your listings summary page in front of you, note that active ads are shaded green. Click the green title to bring up the ad
- You'll be offered a choice: Delete or Edit the posting. Choose delete, then choose return to my account page
- Your ad is now shaded blue, denoting your removal as an active ad. Once again, click the title to bring up the ad
- If the reposting time has passed, you'll be able to click Repost this Posting. Doing so sends you back through the category selections (no way around this) and even requires your entry of the Captcha code to prove that you are human. However, it only takes a few seconds to select category, area and location.
If you use Craigslist's content management tools to upload those four permitted photos from your hard drive, Craigslist hosts both text and pictures. With over one billion ads to date, it's easy to understand why the service limits the size of those four images. Even if you upload large images, Craigslist reduces them on the fly. You might upload a photo containing 8, 000, 000 pixels. Craigslist warns you about upload time (photo below), and routinely reduces the image to 67, 500 pixels or less, about 6, 700 bytes.
I imagine that a recurring worry at Craigslist is the need to purchase fast servers with humongous storage as popularity grows beyond all expectations (to the detriment of newspaper publishers). Started in 1993, Craigslist took 16 years to hit the 1 billion ad mark. How long will it take to hit 2 billion ads?
If you use a free photo hosting service like PicasaWeb, Photobucket, ImageShack, Flickr or another choice (I've named four of the best, and there are lots more), the storage burden falls on someone else (do you suppose that Craigslist might be grateful?). Each hosting service has limits on the amount of free storage, and most offer reasonably-priced upgrades for added storage. But the hoi polloi advertisers like you and I usually won't reach the limit unless we (wisely) use these services for the sharing convenience and insurance they offer for our growing digital photo collections.
Hosting with PicasaWeb In Step 2, I offered links to my procedural article about Google's Picasa. Because Picasa and PicasaWeb work seamlessly, that article discusses all the steps for inserting big photos into your ads, including:
- Photo improvement
- Hosting
- Insertion of the "code" that tells Craigslist where to find the photo and how large it should appear.
Hosting with ImageShack
For Craigslist, there's little reason to anguish if writing is not your thing. Great photos reduce the need for words. Using the photo we began with as an example, you can pen a successful ad in a few sentences to describe the chief selling features or benefits. Here's the completed Craigslist ad (sized to fit this Knol). It resulted in a same-day sale.
|
| Left on dock as Titanic departed... |
- Writing Copy for Dummies
- Copywriting Basics
- Finding Copywriting Inspiration
- 28 Amazing Copywriting Tips
Step 5 Insert your Photo Code
We've reached a moment of truth, the point where we actually create our ad, generate copy and paste in the hypertext markup language (HTML) code that tells Craigslist where to find and how to size each photo. However, this moment has already been offered. it's part of the HowToDoThings.com Picasa article from Step 2, as well as the ImageShack article from Step 3. No need to repeat ourselves, right? When you review those articles, here's what you'll learn about photo code: - How to use PicasaWeb and ImageShack to host and view your photos in a browser window
- How to select the right size
- How to select and copy the code to embed in your Craigslist ad
- How to paste the code into your ad, and this is also detailed a little more in my Top Posting Step 6, next.
Step 6 Learn to Top Post
The push down stack of Craigslist is not your friend because soon after posting, new ads pile on top. A few hours or days later depending on your sales category and city, shoppers won't see your ad on the landing page. This is where newspapers have a distinct advantage. However, you can ease the problem by top posting. You won't be violating Craigslist's Terms and Conditions, either. If you try to top post before a set time, usually 72 hours or three days, Craigslist content management software advises you that the reposted ad will appear in its original position, not at the top of the stack. So, it's self regulating. Top post by accessing your account (click my account). - Once you've logged in and have your listings summary page in front of you, note that active ads are shaded green. Click the green title to bring up the ad
- You'll be offered a choice: Delete or Edit the posting. Choose delete, then choose return to my account page
- Your ad is now shaded blue, denoting your removal as an active ad. Once again, click the title to bring up the ad
- If the reposting time has passed, you'll be able to click Repost this Posting. Doing so sends you back through the category selections (no way around this) and even requires your entry of the Captcha code to prove that you are human. However, it only takes a few seconds to select category, area and location.
We've reached a moment of truth, the point where we actually create our ad, generate copy and paste in the hypertext markup language (HTML) code that tells Craigslist where to find and how to size each photo. However, this moment has already been offered. it's part of the HowToDoThings.com Picasa article from Step 2, as well as the ImageShack article from Step 3. No need to repeat ourselves, right? When you review those articles, here's what you'll learn about photo code:
The push down stack of Craigslist is not your friend because soon after posting, new ads pile on top. A few hours or days later depending on your sales category and city, shoppers won't see your ad on the landing page. This is where newspapers have a distinct advantage. However, you can ease the problem by top posting.
- Once you've logged in and have your listings summary page in front of you, note that active ads are shaded green. Click the green title to bring up the ad
- You'll be offered a choice: Delete or Edit the posting. Choose delete, then choose return to my account page
- Your ad is now shaded blue, denoting your removal as an active ad. Once again, click the title to bring up the ad
- If the reposting time has passed, you'll be able to click Repost this Posting. Doing so sends you back through the category selections (no way around this) and even requires your entry of the Captcha code to prove that you are human. However, it only takes a few seconds to select category, area and location.
Now you'll see the original ad posting form. You can change your headline, price and copy. You'll also see photo code. Here's a typical code segment for a 600 pixel width photo:
At this point, you could add another photo by pasting in its code segment before or after an existing segment. Or you could remove a photo by completely deleting its full code segment. When you are satisfied, click Continue
- Now your full ad appears for a final check. At the bottom, select Edit to make another change or select Continue
- Continue brings up the Captcha code screen. Enter the code you think you see and click Continue. If correct, Craigslist says Thanks for posting with us, we really appreciate it, and reminds you that it takes about 15 minutes for your posting to become live on the site. If you got the code wrong, you'll be offered another code try.
Step 7 Enable Photo Surfing Previewer Update 18 September 2009: This step may no longer work. Craigslist seems to be disabling our ability to use third-party products like this one.
Yes, a very cool tool. And it's free. However, the website offering this tool is very slow. Either it's extremely busy or just plain slow. Craigs Toolbox is the place. Download and install Image Preview Extension for either Firefox or Internet Explorer (or both) and your Craigslist surfing will automatically display thumbnail images if the advertiser included them.
And that's why you want to include at least one thumbnail even when your great big photos are going to do most of the talking. If you don't, your ads will look like the BEFORE page on the left. The Image Preview Extension can only harvest the thumbnails for presentation as shown on the right. Mouse over any thumbnail, and this neat tool delivers a 300-pixel wide blowup. Shoppers love this add-in (which might explain why the website is running slow). Going forward, don't be surprised if Craigslist builds-in a similar tool as part of the user interface.
UPDATE: I've discovered another cool thumbnail photo previewer for which you don't need to download and install a browser extension. Better yet, it's the subject of a Knol entitled Ladelolist :: All Craigslist on One Page.
Further Reading
- Digital Photography for Dummies
-
- Photography Composition - An Introduction
- Digital Photography: Point, Click and Print Quickly and Easily
- How to Take Better Pictures with a Camera Phone
- Buying a Digital Camera - Made Simple
- Picasa Photo Hosting article
- ImageShack Photo Hosting article
- Enhance and Resize Photos article
- Writing Copy for Dummies
- Copywriting Basics
- Finding Copywriting Inspiration
- 28 Amazing Copywriting Tips
Attributions All photographs in this article are either (1) owned by the author; (2) used by permission or (3) are Fair Use non-commercial examples.
About the Author
Murry Shohat
Deeply experienced, widely published. Reporter, editor, strategic and tactical PR, outbound and inbound marketing, articles, research, positioning, press releases, white papers, case studies, SEO, newsletters, desktop publishing design templates. My work spans conceptual, analytical, interpretive, journalistic, and persuasive projects. Experience in high technology, real estate, dentistry and health care, aerospace, law, general business, B-B and B-C. Located in California's vino-licious wine country, my education includes a degree in Journalism and post-grad work in Business.
This author supports the fight against plagiarism on Knol. Report HERE
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- Picasa Photo Hosting article
- ImageShack Photo Hosting article
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- Writing Copy for Dummies
- Copywriting Basics
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Attributions All photographs in this article are either (1) owned by the author; (2) used by permission or (3) are Fair Use non-commercial examples.
About the Author
Murry Shohat
Deeply experienced, widely published. Reporter, editor, strategic and tactical PR, outbound and inbound marketing, articles, research, positioning, press releases, white papers, case studies, SEO, newsletters, desktop publishing design templates. My work spans conceptual, analytical, interpretive, journalistic, and persuasive projects. Experience in high technology, real estate, dentistry and health care, aerospace, law, general business, B-B and B-C. Located in California's vino-licious wine country, my education includes a degree in Journalism and post-grad work in Business.
This author supports the fight against plagiarism on Knol. Report HERE
About the Author
Deeply experienced, widely published. Reporter, editor, strategic and tactical PR, outbound and inbound marketing, articles, research, positioning, press releases, white papers, case studies, SEO, newsletters, desktop publishing design templates. My work spans conceptual, analytical, interpretive, journalistic, and persuasive projects. Experience in high technology, real estate, dentistry and health care, aerospace, law, general business, B-B and B-C. Located in California's vino-licious wine country, my education includes a degree in Journalism and post-grad work in Business.
| This author supports the fight against plagiarism on Knol. Report HERE |
