When you own a virtual retail store, the biggest problem is getting people to know you exist. The world wide web is not only huge, but it’s also over crowded with billions of sites all competing for the same customers you are. While advertising can be effective, it can also be expensive, drastically hurting your bottom line as you try to maintain a balance between income and expenses each month.
One great way to draw in customers inexpensively is through Craigslist advertising. Craigslist offers a wide variety of different categories that people can use to offer up specific goods and wares to people in their local geographical region. The best thing is that it’s free to post an ad in most of these categories, giving online retailers a place to easily get more exposure for their wares.
However, online retail store owners don’t necessarily want to sell only to local people. The point of having a store on the web is to be able to reach a broader audience. That is why it may be useful to post your ad in multiple locations on Craigslist, in order to draw in the most traffic you can in the most effective way possible.
The problem with this method is that Craigslist frowns on retailers posting similar ads in different locations. Their goal is to try and keep everything divided by region, and so they make people posting verify their identity through phone and email in order to cut down on cross geographical listings.
One way to get around this is to use a professional Craigslist posting company that knows the ins and outs of their rules and can place your ad in different categories and locations across the entire site. This will allow you to draw from an audience of millions of people, all of whom can equally enjoy the wares you carry in your retail store.