I am a big fan of Craigslist. I have bought and sold several items through advertisements on Craigslist – The most expensive item I have sold is a car (for $1000) and the cheapest item I have bought is a computer desk (for $30).
Craigslist has a well organized site with ads for different items classified under different headings. For example, ‘housing’ is further classified into apts/housing, housing swap, housing wanted, office/commercial, etc. As a buyer, you can browse through ads or as a seller you can post ads in the respective section. There are also ads for services and jobs.
Ad titles highlight the item for rent/sale and may mention the price the seller is looking for and the body of the ad provides information such as the age of the item, location, etc. When posting an ad, the seller has the option of using his/her email address or an anonymized email address (that direct email to the seller’s address) generated by Craigslist. While some people choose to place their email address and telephone number in the body of their ad, some sellers use the anonymized email address to conceal identity. So there is a lot of flexibility in how a seller want to place an ad.
Craigslist charges a nominal fee to place an ad in some cities like San Francisco. But it is free in Washington DC.
A couple of years ago, I sold my car through Craigslist. Posting an ad for my 2002-Nissan Sentra was extremely simple. The steps involved posting an ad in the site for my local area – washingtondc.craigslist.org. I chose an anonymized email to avoid giving out my email address to the world. I posted 4 pictures of my car and wrote up a description about the features of the car, mileage, etc. I also indicated an expected price of $10,000 in the ad. Craigslist sent out a confirmation-request email and within immediately my ad showed up on Craigslist.
Thanks to the outreach that Craigslist has, Within a couple of hours, I started receiving email requests for more information and requests for seeing/test driving my car. I received close to 20 emails. I filtered out potential buyers that did not appear serious. Over the next couple of days, I had at 5 potential buyers that test drove the car. And I had an offer that met my asking price! We closed the deal on the 4th day from from when I placed the ad.
So that was how I sold a fairly expensive item on Craigslist – I did not pay a cent to advertise, I cut the middle-men out and am very happy about the deal.
I have also bought many items like printers, furniture, etc. advertised on Craigslist. I have been to yard-sales and moving-sales advertised on Craigslist. I have hired many home-maintenance service providers from ads on Craigslist. And even looked up white-collar job postings! Craigslist has made everything easy and free and helped me save a lot of money!
