When I first started working from home, 99% of my business came from word of mouth – a design here, a few blog posts there. I start each workday by spending hours writing cold emails to friends of friends and pitching freelance gigs I find on various sites and Facebook groups. Job hunting was as much a part of my work-at-home job as doing the actual work.
Eventually, though, when you find you’ve been in the work-at-home world long enough, there will come a time when you decide to grow your business, get out of your current line of work, or increase your income. And can easily find new clients and customers to fill this void and take your side hustle full time?
This is how I made $3,500 on Craigslist in 30 days, using the least amount of marketing anyone can do.
Make money on Craigslist
Now, I’m going to warn you in advance that I made money Craigslist In two very different ways: one, completely average, and second, a little unusual.
When I decided to expand my photography portfolio from corporate work to family and portraits, I knew I had to branch out from my current client list. Outside of family and friends, I was at a loss for where to turn. I mean, how do you advertise services you still want to perform?
It all starts with a $5 ad
I posted a classified ad on Craigslist during spring cleaning. A $5 ad, and a month later, I landed $2,700 in photography work – with no website, business cards, networking or marketing.
You heard it right!
Due to the high volume of spam and scams on Craigslist, the site now requires you to pay for advertising services—a $5 fee. I can confidently say that my $5 ad ROI was worth it.
Deciding What to Sell on Craigslist
The following is $800 I earned through an unusual hobby—but before I tell you about it, I want to tell you how I decided to monetize it. After reading The Work at Home Woman’s posts about generating income by finding your niche, I spent a good amount of time thinking about these things:
- What hobbies do I enjoy?
- What do I specialize in?
- Are there any tasks that I can spend hours on?
- What topics could I spend hours talking about?
After that, the answer was simple – aquascaping! Aquascaping is the art and design of living, planted aquariums; You can learn more about it here here.
Along with my ad for photography and items I found while cleaning out my closet, I posted an ad for live aquarium plants. I didn’t expect much demand, and at only a few dollars per plant, I didn’t expect much profit. But as the plants were produced from prunings that I would have otherwise thrown away, every cent was earned (almost) which cost me nothing to produce. Talk about a profit margin!
What I thought was a low-key Craigslist ad that almost no one would pay attention to turned into $800 in extra cash over the course of two weeks. While I don’t think it will replace my day job anytime soon, it was the easiest (and most fun) $800 I’ve ever made!
Do you have a service, product, craft or hobby that could potentially be monetized? If you want to test the business model in a low-risk environment with minimal upfront costs, consider advertising on Craigslist or one of the many online platforms available to you.
What is Craigslist?
Before getting into how to make money on Craigslist, it might be helpful to talk about what exactly Craigslist is. Craigslist is a no-frills classifieds website reminiscent of newspaper classifieds.
Most people know about Craigslist’s sales section, but you can also find listings for jobs, real estate, apartments, lost pets, garage sales, services, and even discussion forums.
The company is based out of San Francisco and has local listings in nearly every major city worldwide Although Craigslist has numerous buying and selling competitors these days, such as Facebook Marketplace and OfferUp, you can still find plenty of activity on Craigslist in every category.
Here’s how to get high-quality responses and make money from Craigslist ads
1. Use quality photos or example pieces
If you don’t use photos in your ad, you’re less likely to get a response – period. And a simple link to your portfolio site isn’t likely to be clicked if the person didn’t open your ad in the first place. Include at least 4-8 photos in your ad to give people a bite-sized preview of your work.
Professional photos are not required for your listing; You can get great, high-quality photos with your iPhone. If you’re listing items for sale or advertising physical products, be sure to use good lighting and include shots from multiple angles if possible. Here are some photography tips for taking high-quality photos in your home.
What about writing or more abstract services? Head over Canva To design a nice-looking service provider graphic yourself.
2. Introduce yourself
This seems like such a simple step, but it’s one that is often overlooked! Especially with a platform like Craigslist, making your ad friendly and personable is one of the easiest ways to build trust with potential buyers. Tell people who you are, why you’re posting, and where to find additional information about you
3. Tell people exactly what kind of work you want to do
When you create your ad, consider your potential clients and customers and what they are looking for. For me, especially with my plant ads, I was targeting people who were looking to buy used fish tanks on Craigslist. Think – will anyone search for the exact genus and species of aquatic plants I’m selling? Not high! Instead, I listed my ad for “live aquarium plants” and in addition to the plant names, I included naturally occurring search terms like “fish tank” and “aquarium” in my description.
Do the same with your services. I could have left my photography ad under “Photography,” but instead, I listed “Engagement Photography,” “Senior Portraits,” etc. separately.
4. Leave an agreement or room for negotiation
Now, this may seem counterintuitive if your goal with advertising is to bring in cash, but I assure you, this tactic of the trade works – and it works well. Ads that include “OBO” (or Best Offer), “Price Negotiable” or “Discount Available” have a roughly 75% higher response rate. Price your services and items so that you have room for negotiation; People love a good deal.
5. Have an onboarding plan in place
Learn from my mistakes. I was unprepared for the rush of business. My inbox was flooded with emails and looked like a complete disaster zone, most of them asking the same questions, inquiring about the same dates, and almost all of them coming from the same, automatically generated Craigslist email addresses that removed any identifying information. Learn how you manage these emails, organize them, and how you set your rates.
Safety Tips
As with any buying and selling platform, you’ll want to take some precautions to ensure your safety as a seller on Craigslist. Depending on the type of posting, you may want to meet your buyer in a public location to complete your transaction or perform some type of verification or screening for potential clients.
When selling high-dollar items, the police station is a safe bet. For smaller items, a busy public parking lot will usually do.
Keep in mind that even for services where you’re not necessarily dealing with expensive products, you’ll likely still be working with expensive equipment – like photography or woodworking. Best practice is not to invite strangers into your home, studio, shop, or wherever you store such equipment.
If you can’t meet with potential service clients in person, I’d recommend making a phone or video call or (if following tip #5 from above) having them complete a questionnaire.
Whether selling goods or services, cash is definitely king, but there may be times when you want to accept payments through third-party platforms like Venmo, CashApp, or Gel. In general, you can avoid most scams by not allowing buyers or clients to pre-pay without seeing the meeting or item. If, for some reason, this isn’t an option, using a PayPal business account will give you some protection as the seller.
Conclusion
So there you have it; These are my top tips for finding clients and customers and making money on Craigslist when you’re just starting out. It serves as a great, free platform to test the waters of a product-based business you may have in mind. If demand for your product is so high in such a small, local area — just think: what could you do with an online store?
Do you use Craigslist to make money? If so, we’d love to hear your story!
Originally published August 6, 2018. Content updated in May 2023.
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