Struggling to Get Started » Internet Marketing – Craigslist

More Marketing

Scott Costello — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 13:34:19 +0000

I’m not quite getting the results I was hoping for with the craigslist and backpage marketing. On average I’ve been getting about 2 hits per day from craigslist and 0 from backpage. In fact I’ve yet to get 1 single View on backpage so go figure. Here are the current stats

	Craigslist			Backpage
Ad Type	Views	Clicks	C/V	Views	Clicks	C/V
Picture	85	0	0%	1	0	0%
Article	99	4	4%	1	0	0%
Extended	6	5	83%	1	0	0%
Link	5	0	0%	1	0	0%

After a few days I was noticing that the Extended ad was never being viewed, or at least being registered as being viewed. I took a look and found that I placed the wrong tracking image in the ad so it wasn’t registering any views. That is why the stats are way off (6 views 5 clicks). I’m going to have to reset the counts to make sure I’m going to get accurate data. Also I’m going to take out the Link ad because it is not seeing any love.

It also might be a good idea to start keeping track of which headings i’m using. The heading is what makes someone “view” an ad so from here on out I’m going to be tracking the following Headers.

In Foreclosure? The Secret to getting out
5 Ways to Get out of Foreclosure
What the banks don’t want you to know about foreclosure
Must Read if you are Nearing Foreclosure

if anyone has any other ideas for a heading or has one that works leave a comment.

So to sum up what I’m going to keep track of…

Views associated with a header
Clicks associated with ad type
Click throughs to my squeeze page from my local blog

Facebook Marketing

I’m just about ready to get started with my facebook marketing. I setup a quick fanpage for this blog just to test everything out. If you want to be a fan click below

Real Estate Investing Tips

Promote Your Page Too

Also if you haven’t done so already take a look at my findings on ways to market using facebook here…

Internet Marketing – facebook

Click to View Ratio

Scott Costello — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 15:10:22 +0000

Class yesterday went pretty quickly. We covered the types of contracts you can sign with a seller in order to list their property.

Open Contract: Who ever brings in a buyer gets the commission

Exclusive Agency: Only agents of the signing broker can sell the house. You yourself can also find a buyer, and if that happens you don’t pay the brokerage a commission.

Exclusive Rights: This is the most common type of agreement and states that during the contract life, if the house sells the broker will get a commission.

Net Pay: This type of contract says that a seller and their broker agree to sell a house for a set value (say 200k). If the agent sells the house for more then 200k, then the brokerage will receive the difference as commission. This is illegal in NJ.

So…anyone learn something new today?

We also covered hazards in the home such as mold, radon, lead paint, etc. These classes really take up some time during the week, leaving me little free time to do much else. I haven’t studied outside of class yet, but I continually do well on the post chapter quizzes and I got an 80% (70% is passing) on the chapter 1 thru 9 test. They main thing I’m going to have to review before the test are all the Laws that were passed and what they covered. I tend to mix them all up in my head.

IM – Craigslist Marketing

I wanted to see if I could find a way to track ‘ad views’ in craigslist. I first looked into using Google Analytics but quickly discovered that since it is Script based (read java) that it wouldn’t work in the HTML only craiglist ads. I then thought about using statcounter.com which is HTML, but read that craigslist is rejected ads with that code.

The answer??? it’s pretty simple. Use craigslistadtracker.com to track ad views. How this works is you’ll put a tiny image in your ad that craigslistadtracker.com will count the number of times the image is viewed. Easy Peezy Japanezy and free.

So here are my stats for today..

Ad Type	Views	Clicks	C/V
Picture	13	0	0%
Article	6	1	17%
Extended	2	1	50%
Link	3	0	0%

The views might not be 100% accurate as there are robots and spammers who will skew the stats a little bit, but it should be equal for all types. That being the case I’ll still get a good idea of which ad types work the best.

Low views probably mean the heading was weak and didn’t attract attention. I will work on that. What we want to concentrate on is the C/V (click to view) ratio. As you can see even though the picture ad gets the most hits, the Extended ad returns the highest C/V ratio.

It’s still a bit to early to determine anything, so I’ll give it another week or 2 before comming to any conclusions.

I feel lighter

Scott Costello — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 13:13:44 +0000

With August just starting it’s time to report on my monthly improvement plan. The idea was to pick one thing per month that you’d like to improve upon and concentrate on that one thing only. Since I’m also reading the Total Money Makeover I chose to eliminate my debt, which obviously is going to take more then 1 month but that is what I’m working on.

I am happy to report that we just paid off our student loans today! It had a shade over 2k left so we just paid the balance off. ONE LESS DEBT! Outside of our mortgage, all we have left is out two cars. My car we took a 5k chunk out of last month and this month I still have to figure out how much we can afford to pay off. It’ll at least be $200 more then minimum payment as I sold my car computer (that I took out of my old car). Good news though!

Goals for this Week

Some my have noticed I didn’t set any goals for this week. So I’ll set them now..

Advertise my Local Blog every day on craigslist and backpage
Write article about using Facebook for internet marketing
Go to 3 Open Houses on Sunday

Internet Marketing Update

No great results yet from my craigslist ads. I got two hits yesterday and here is the ad type hit count…

0 – Link Ad
0 – Picture Ad
1 – Extended Ad (this ad has an intro, 2 links to articles and a closing)
1 – Article Ad

The article ad clicker spent 45 seconds on my site, which means they looked around. The Extended Ad clicker spent no time on the site.

Today I posted the same ads on backpage so we can see how that does.

Video Tutorials

I cam across this software that will allow me to record my desktop like a movie. If you follow J.P. Mosses’ blog (reitips.com) you will have seen him demonstrate products with similar software. I think it would be great if I create some video tutorials on setting up wordpress blogs, using craigslist to post ads and alike. What do you think??? anyone have an requests?

IM – Quick Update

Scott Costello — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 13:39:50 +0000

Quick Update…

I created the 4 ads and placed them on craigslist. Actually I could only place 3 ads as craigslist said the Straight Link Ad and the picture ad were too similar and wouldn’t post both. Since I posted the Straight Link Ad first that was the one that I’ll use.

I’m debating if I should post these ads on backpage as well. It might mess up my ability to analyze the results though, so I’ll have to deeper look into google analytics and see.

In case anyone has wondered why I haven’t posted the link to my local blog, I don’t want people visiting the site unless they find it by way of one of my craiglist ads.

Tomorrow I will report back the initial results, this should be interesting.

Ready to Advertise

Scott Costello — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 14:56:56 +0000

After what seemed like way to long and a few change of directions, I’ve finally written the 10 articles about foreclosures. I will start advertising the artiles tomorrow on craigslist to see how well different advertisements work. I will post 4 different types of ads over a 2 week period and use google analytics to track which produced the most hits.

Types of Ads

A ad that just has the link to my site
A picture ad
ad advertising some of the articles
Place one of my articles in the ad with a link at the bottom leading to my site

In accordance with craiglist rules I can only post these ads every 48 hours, so that is what I will do. Since I’m concentrating on Northern New Jersey, I will only post them in there and I will be using the Real Estate Services section.

Additionally…

On the website, I will also have links that go to my seller squeeze page in hopes of pulling in some leads.

I’m not expected big results, but it’ll be interesting to see which type of ad brings more page views.

Few more articles to go

Scott Costello — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 15:34:23 +0000

Because of the hacking, I had to rebuild my local blog as I didn’t have that one backed up. Luckily the 4 articles that were written, I stored on google docs so I just had to copy them over.

I’m back in business!

Yesterday I wrote three more articles, Avoiding Foreclosure Scams, What to do if you owe more then your house is worth and Selling a Probated house. I really had to do some research on the Probate process to write that last article and it turned into a good learning experience.

In the near future I need to come up with a good signature that links to my squeeze pages. That’s pretty much the point of it all right? to get the reader to send me their information.

Lately, my mind is spinning in circles with all the ideas of how to setup and market my blog. I’m constantly trying to figure which direction to go…

Do I have a blog type page with articles only and point to the articles using craigslist?
Do I publish the articles on ezines and similar sites (marketing them on craigslist) and have the articles point to a squeeze page?
Do I do both?

I think I’m going to do both, as I want to try and earn some extra income by using adsense on the blog. Speaking of which I just bought a step by step tutorial that deals with adsense, blogs and seo if anyone is interested…

Cash Cow Guide to Adsense Wealth

Final 4 Articles

I will be writing the final 4 articles by Friday or I’ll owe Shae $5. I’m testing out a new service called stickK where you can put your goals. With each goal you assign a finish date and a monitary value (or not). Once you setup your goals you can assign a Referee who will confirm if you accomplished them. They take your credit card information so if you fail your goal the money gets automatically sent to your referee, kinda cool I think. You can also invite supporters to help cheer you on. I’m gonna give it a shot for a few weeks and see how i do.

IM – Craiglist Update

Scott Costello — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 12:49:35 +0000

Sorry I haven’t updated in about a week. The process is a little slow going as I get some content on the local blog. I want to have a least 10 articles on the site and also a “contact me” form created before I release it.

So far I have 4 articles written and some ideas for a few others. These are the topics to the articles I have written

Selling FSBO
How much is my house worth
Foreclosure Options
What not to do when in Foreclosure

Ideas for more articles are

Foreclosure Scams
Quick Selling options
Truth about investors (this will obviously have a good slant to it)
Market conditions in Northern New Jersey
Selling with equity
How a Short Sale can help

Anyone have any other ideas?

My Plan is to have these articles written by the end of this week. The “Contact Me” form won’t take long to create and can probably do it this week as well. After that I will start marketing on craigslist and backpage. I’ll Market for 1 week and see how I do. I will continually ad articles as I go in order to keep fresh content on the site.

Keep checking back for more updates, I promise I’ll make them more regularly as we move forward.

IM: Created the Local Blog

Scott Costello — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 15:10:14 +0000

Last night I created the local blog for real estate. I’m still struggling with the content I’m going to put on it. Ideally it would be helpful seller tips with a slant towards getting them to contact me. My first two articles where about determining a value for a house and selling FSBO.

After reflecting I would say I failed to really point the reader towards using my “service.” Writing about it now actually gave me a few ideas about my next batch articles. I would right about foreclosure, absentee owner problems, probate and things like that. I guess the articles should be more advertisements with some help full information to make them want to read it.

Once I have 10 articles I will start to advertise it on Craigslist and Backpage as well as a few other classifieds. Once this happens I will be able to report back with my progress.

On an additional note, I’ve also setup my adsense on the site for extra income.