I like good free advertising tools.

Everyone does right?

Have you ever used http://www.craigslist.org/ to post any ads online?

Do you think online classifieds are so… 1998? Don’t work anymore?

Think again, cause there is a goldmine in Craigslist and you can be taking advantage of it today.

Go there, pick your city area closest to you. For this example, since I am in the small business services, I want you to look at the area on craigslist where it says…

“sm biz ads”

It’s usually under “services” at the bottom of the page, in the middle section.

Here is a picture.

Now, as you look through the ads, you get the idea. People are posting their biz opps there, services there, and other things, and there are actually 1000’s of people looking here everyday for solutions.

Do you see, by any of the ads this orange word? img

The img means that the ad has an IMAGE in it. And people would rather see ads with images, than just a snazzy headline.

Which reminds me, with craigslist, you’ll need a snazzy headline which will get people to click on your ads in the first place, so test some good headlines. And then when you combine the img tag at the end, it’s sure to be an ad that someone will click on and open.

Wanna see an example of a great image ad? Click here 

Well, so, how do you make the image ad? You have to do it with html code. That Ad uses this simple html code:

So, I paste that code into the posting box on Craigslist, and now my ad is an IMAGE ad, and combined with a good headline, will get more clicks than the rest of the PLAIN TEXT ads.

REMEMBER: You need to host the image file on your own server online. You cannot leave it on your computer.

Try it out for your biz opp or services you wish to advertise. You may need to play with the html code a little to suit your needs. Sorry the image is so tiny, but everytime I tried to post the html sample as text here, it tried to accept it as html I was adding into my post so it never looked right.

But I think you get the idea at least. Enjoy the tip!