Online marketplaces – best practices
December 17, 2007
Craiglist.com – the classic example of a local classifieds website, thinking global. Great community atmosphere on a no frills utilitarian website.
eBay.com - Big, bigger, biggest. This auction behemoth knows how to market itself. Less of a local touch as the feedback system reduces the need for direct contact.
Alibaba.com – the gateway to the biggest online asian b2b souk in the world. Need a herd of camels anyone? Or looking to source a container of Nike’s? Say no more, all here. Great categorie choice.
Marktplaats.nl – absolute no frills classifieds website – now part of eBay. Direct, cheap and straight to the point, the best of Holland.
Feel free to come up with more examples, even if it is your own
December 29, 2007 at 6:22 pm
I have used Craigslist in the past and haven’t had any success. My question is how do you use it for affiliate marketing, and do you use it? Thank you for any reply.
December 31, 2007 at 1:05 pm
Sorry for the late reply: festive season!
Here’s my tack on your interesting question.
I think you hould use Craigslist for it’s strong points: it’s America’s local classifieds website.
As such, it’s really strong for posting and finding local jobs, local housing, people who want to buy pes and furniture and anything else local.
Affiliate marketing is not really a local thing as you need large numbers to make affiliate marketing work. That’s less possible on a local field like Boston or Chattanooga.
So no, Craigslist isn’t strong in affiliate marketing and will probably never be.
Hope this answer is any useful.
January 5, 2008 at 7:27 pm
Thanks for your reply. I have another question: Can you list an affiliate product in the Craigslist Services section? Like one for a program that shows you where you can sign up for police auctions in your area? Not a direct link to the affiliate product, but a link to your minisite of different police auctions, where someone can compare the best prices? Could something like that work?
Thanks again.
January 7, 2008 at 10:27 am
Hi dudley, Craiglist is to my knowledge pretty open about what you can or can’t list on their classifieds site.
However, you can find that their terms of use forbid postings:
k) that constitutes or contains “affiliate marketing,” “link referral code,”
“junk mail,” “spam,” “chain letters,” “pyramid schemes,” or unsolicited
commercial advertisement;
l) that constitutes or contains any form of advertising or solicitation if:
posted in areas of the craigslist sites which are not designated for such
purposes; or emailed to craigslist users who have not indicated in writing that
it is ok to contact them about other services, products or commercial interests.
m) that includes links to commercial services or web sites, except as allowed
in “services”;
I interprete these rules that you cannot ask people to enroll in an affiliation program on craigslist. However, you should be able to link to police auctions in the small and medium business services and maybe the legal & financial services categories.
I definitely would refrain from “spam”mish behaviour such as writing in capital letters only or inferring that you can get rich in four days if you catch my drift.
In the end, it’s up to the people of Craiglist to see if they accept your classifieds or not.
And it’s up to the visitors to see if they’re interested in your classifieds or not. Police auctions sound pretty public at large, so it could work.
So I guess you could give it a try in their bigger cities/aea’s like SF Bay Area and NY. See if you can use a tool like doubleclick to measure the links you get from Craiglist. You’ll quickly see if it’s worth the effort. I’ll be happy to know if it works.