Craigslist is not "Web 2.0". Heck, it barely qualifies as Web 1.0. The design of the site is Spartan and for a first-time user can seem a bit intimidating due to the fact there’s just so much stuff on it.
Fear not, CL is actually really easy to use. My personal opinion is that it’s far superior to eBay because there’s no sign-up required whatsoever (other than an e-mail confirmation) when posting a listing, and for most sections, posting an ad is absolutely free.
CL is divided into cities, states then countries. You pick your locale and go from there.
After that there are 9 major sections of the site, that being:
- Community
- Personals
- Discussion Forums
- Housing
- For Sale
- Services
- Jobs
- Gigs
- Resumes
I’m not going to cover all of what CL is, however I’ll touch on some areas you may want to check out.
Housing
I live in Tampa Florida. Some friends I have in northern states periodically ask me where to find information on vacation house rentals. The only link I ever give them is this one; it points directly where they need to go to look up information on that stuff.
Other times I’m asked how much it costs to rent apartments here. In that case I send this link.
For other locales on CL, they all follow suit.
Free stuff
Everybody likes free stuff, right? Well I can’t think of a better place to locate free stuff other than CL. You’ll find a lot of furniture, "curb alerts" (just drive on by and pick up what you want) and a whole bunch of other stuff. Tampa’s freebies is a good example of what you can get. Once again, other locales follow suit.
This is listed simply as the "free" subcategory under "for sale" for your locale.
Jobs
CL’s job boards are both known and unknown at the same time. They routinely command an enormous amount of web traffic yet there’s a good chunk of the internet populous that’s never heard of it. If that’s you, now you have.
Out of all job boards on the internet, CL’s is by far the easiest to work with. It’s also arguably the fastest place to get work right now.
And by the way, if you ever asked the question "Where do I find smaller businesses to work for instead of large corporations?", CL is it. If Big Corporate isn’t your thing (and it isn’t for many), look in CL to find your next job.
Computer gigs
Gigs are different from jobs. They are listed by people who need help with specific things computer related. Whether they pay or not is up to who posts the listing (and most are honest about it). It could be a web project or someone local that needs help with computer training. This is something you should look into if you’re adept at computers and want more options than just the job boards.
Computer gigs are listed under category "gigs", subcategory "computer".
Have you had good and/or bad luck with CL?
Let us know in the comments.
Big CL fan here (although big eBay fan also).
My only complaint w/ CL is in the jobs section – there are so many email and data mining scams out there so my word of advise to those looking for work – do not post any personal information on your resume or in your email until you can verify further on down the track that the company really is who they say they are. A good chunk of them are creating realistic job offers but are in fact just really good attempts at getting your personal information.
“Praemonitus praemunitus” – (forewarned is forearmed)
I’ve had good results with Craigslist advertising my local classes and events in the community section. Once you post an ad for a course up, it remains in your account and you can re-post it easily. I’ve had a few sign-ups from it,there is very minimal time invested, and it free.
Plus I’ve had my course posting on CL come up higher in the google rankings than my website posting. That helps too.