The Modern Hippy Male

Question:
How much would it cost to have a website like craigslist.com designed?
I want to create a classified ad type website similar to craigslist that would be nationwide but would be limited to specific industry related products. It would be membership based with a monthly, qtrly or annual fee to list items but free to search. But it would also have to be city or zip code search able. Like craigslist, it does not have to be fancy or with a lot of graphics. Photos can be added by the ad posters if desired.

My Answer:
It would be expensive.

However, I would ask if you have considered the effort to which you would need to go to, from a marketing standpoint, and the costs necessary to make a site anywhere near as popular as craigslist.org. This could quite possibly end up being more expensive then the design of the website to begin with. As you can read by visiting criagslist, they started as an email list of San Francisco events as a hobby by Craig Newmark in early 1995. They were then allowed to identify and fill a large niche that existed for free classifieds. This is what allowed them to skyrocket in popularity.

I do notice that you would be targeting a niche within the classifieds community, focusing on industry related products. But, are these products not already allowed on craigslist? If they are, what incentive would people have for paying to list with you, when they can list with craigslist for free?

As a Web / Graphics Designer with my own sites, this is one of the steps I have to go through when determining if it is feasible to continue with a specific business plan.

This is not intended to discourage, only to inform and provide some information based on my own schooling and findings.

Question:
How do you get something off Craigslist?
I’ve found a few good deals on craigslist and wanted to make an offer but the seller never gets back to me or returns any emails. I’m not sure if i should just wait or if i’m doing something wrong. I’m just afraid that by the time he responds or gets the message, he won’t be selling it anymore.

My Answer:
This is somewhat of a common problem. In fact, if you live and are searching in an area which has a lot of craigslist users, it’s more of a first-come-first-served thing.

I’m a freelance Web / Graphics Designer and I have been using craigslist to find work for awhile now. One of the best ways I have found to get the jobs is to be one of the first to respond. I wrote an ebook on a technique I used but never attempted to sell it, instead I posted it to my blog. I have listed the url to the post in the source section.

Also, if what you are looking for is a popular item, you may have some competition in the form of other people looking for the same ads. In this case the more quickly you respond to an ad the better. Keep in mind also that if you offer a lower price than what they are asking, and someone else has emailed and is willing to pay more, you may not get a reply as the seller is busy delivering his item and collecting his money.

In the end, it comes down to luck, speed, and your offer.

I hope this helped.

While looking through Yahoo Answers I came across this question:
How do I format my post on craigslist?
When I typed a couple of paragraphs in the message field on craigslist and clicked “continue” all the paragraphs appeared mushed together. How do I seperate them???

Thanks!

I’ve decided to share with you all the template that I use for posting to craigslist along with an explanation of how to edit / customize it.

Here is the template, with a few inline explanations:

<table width=”600px” bgcolor=”#f3f4ee” border=”1px” cellpadding=”5px”>
<tr>
<td>
Text here will not be centered
<center>
Any text entered here will be centered. Any text appearing outside of either the staring or the ending center tag will not be centered.
</center>
<p>If we type a long string of text without breaking the text will run into the edge of the table and wrap back around.</p>
<p>If we want to break a line of<br /> text we use the line break.</p>
<p>Otherwise the text will display all on the same line, unbroken.</p>
<center>
<img src=”http://www.yourdomainname.com/yourfolder/image.jpg” border=”0″>
</center>
</td>
</tr>
</table>

When rendered by craigslist, it should look something like this:

Text here will not be centered Any text entered here will be centered. Any text appearing outside of either the staring or the ending center tag will not be centered. If we type a long string of text without breaking the text will run into the edge of the table and wrap back around. If we want to break a line of text we use the line break. Otherwise the text will display all on the same line, unbroken.

The width has been reduced in this visual representation so that it will fit on this page.

Now, the explanation:

The <table> tag begins the table, and the </table> tag at the end, ends the table. The width=”600px” is an attribute that modifies the table tag. It tells the table that it will have a width of 600 pixels. You can change this number to change the width of the table. A lower number will make the table more skinny, while a larger number will make it wider. The bgcolor=”#f3f4ee” tag sets the background color of the table. The color is in hexidecimal form. You can get different colors to use here. The border=”1″ attribute tells the table to display a 1 pixel border around its contents. You can set this number to zero and no border will display, or set it higher for a thicker border. And finally, the cellpadding=”5px” attribute tells the table to add 5 pixels of space between it and the border. This can be changed as well, with expected results.

Next up is the <tr> tag, this defines the start of a table row which is ended when you are ready to end the row and start a new row. In this template, we have all of the contets displaying on one row, so you will only need to start and end one table row.

The <td> stands for table data. This is essentially the cell of the table from left to right. It is ended with a </td> tag after we are done entering that cells contents. Because this template us only one row, and does not utilize more than one cell, we will only be ending this tag at the end of the template.

The next tag is the <center> tag. This does as you may expect, it centers whatever code or text is in between the opening tag and the closing tag within its container. In this case, the container is the cell, which is contained by the row, which is contained by the table, which has a set width of 600 pixels.

You will then see the <p></p> tags. These tags are positioned at the beginning and the end of a paragraph. They force line breaks which set them off from other paragraphs or elements which would otherwise appear beside, above, or below them.

After that, I used a line break tag, <br /> to show you what a line break looks like and how you can use it. You will find this tag in the middle of the sentence that starts “If we want to break a line of …” This tag actually contains the start tag and the end tag in one. The start tag is denoted by the <br and the end tag by the />. Please note that there is a space in between the br and the /.

You will then see an image tag surrounded by center tags. The image tag appears as:
<img src=”http://www.yourdomainname.com/yourfolder/image.jpg” border=”0″>

The attribute src=”http://www.yourdomainname.com/yourfolder/image.jpg” denotes the source, or location of the image. You can utilize a service such as photobucket to upload your images so that they can be referenced in this fashion. The border=”0″ attribute is simply telling the image to display a border of zero pixels. While this may seem odd, some browsers display a border around images by default, by defining a border of zero pixels, we are telling all browsers to display the image with no border at all, regardless of their default. You can change this to a positive number in order to display a border. Although this is a completely acceptable way to post images, it is much more simple to utilize the add images feature that craigslist already has.

Then you will see the closing tags, </center></td></tr></table>.

So, there you have it. All you need to do is copy the text template above into the craigslist ad submission form, change the text information, remove the various tags that you do not wish to use (such as the image tag if you are not going to be posting an image), and then post your ad.

If you have any questions, please leave them in the comments section below.

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