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The first step you need to take when using Craig’s List is to sign up for an account. Once you’ve created your account (this will make it easier and faster to post your ad), then you need to confirm your email address.

Once you have done this, and before posting your ad, you need to read the guidelines for this site, as well as the terms and conditions.

Start with the help section. You only need to read the section “Classified Postings”, if you are new to the site. If you’ve posted ads here before, then you can skip this section.

Your next step is to read the FAQ. This is where people are getting into trouble.

FAQ - Read this if you are doing business postings.

You can only add postings related to business products and services in the services category. Period. If you post them anywhere else on the site, your ad will be flagged, and then it will be deleted. I know this because Craig’s List changed their terms of service and my ad got deleted.

What you should know about flagging: Craig’s List doesn’t flag ads. Readers do. If enough readers flag an ad, it’s deleted. If you’ve read some of the postings on Craig’s List lately, then you’ll notice that there are some pretty lonely people out there, as well as some outright nuts with too much time on their hands. These people think they are the arbiters of what’s relevant on the internet. Even if you write a good ad that meets the terms and conditions of this site, you can still get flagged.

Also, you can only post one ad related to one product, every 48 hours. You can’t post any more ads that that. Also, you can’t post the same ad twice. You can only post it once, and then renew it when it expires.

Another area where a lot of people seem to be getting in trouble is posting too many ads.

Where I got in trouble was I posted in the wrong category because you can only use commercial URLs in the services catagory.

I’ve reposted my ad here: Jinger’s Craig’s List Ad. This way, you can see what I have done with mine.

Now, I’ll be honest with you. After scanning this site and looking at these ads, I see a lot of ads that violate the terms of service and faq.

First, they use all caps in the headline. Big no-no in anything you do online because it’s the same thing as shouting. At least for me, I’m going to doubt your claims. If you can’t do something as simple as properly format your headline, then I doubt your ad.

Make your headline make the reader want to read it. You want to grab your reader’s attention, but don’t overhype to do it.

Don’t put your URL in the headline. Someone told me about this one. This is simply bad form. Your headline is about 80 percent of your ad. Why would you waste valuable space by including your URL?

Save it for your ad. You have plenty of space to write an ad. In fact, you can basically write a full page ad. You have plenty of room to tell others all about your product or service.

Make sure you include your URL or some other way to have others contact you.

Don’t use white text to raise your rankings in the search engines. This is just another form of spamming. In fact, don’t use any kind of fancy text for your ads, unless you are creating your headlines in red, or something like that, because it’s hard to read.

If you are selling any kind of physical products, you can post them just about anywhere. The thing is, you can’t use a URL. Also, if you are selling affiliate products, you better cloak the link or do something else that will make it look like it’s not an affiliate. You can’t post affiliate links on this site anymore.

Personally, after seeing the changes in the terms of service, as well as having problems with my own ads, I’ll post elsewhere and just put one ad up here. It’s not worth the hassle.