Portland Craigslist – PDX Oregon (OR) Pets, Jobs, Cars & More
Craigslist is a website that serves as a platform for people looking to sell-off items. These items might be items they have used in the past and no longer need or items that they have never made use off but want to sell. In addition to serving as a platform for people that are looking to sell off items, Craigslist is also made use of by people looking to fill up vacant job positions. On Craigslist, there are various sections with each section meeting a particular need.
Although now a major site for selling items, Craigslist started out as email distribution lists. It was established in 1995 by Craig Newmark. However, one year after being set up by Craig Newmark, it began offering services that are web-based. What started in San Francisco gradually expanded into other parts of the United States.
At the moment, Craigslist does not offer its services to only an English speaking audience. Some of those that it offers its services are people living in territories where French, Portuguese, German, Italian, and Spanish are spoken.
How did Craigslist Come into Existence
Craig Newmark had just arrived in San Francisco and was relatively isolated. Also, he had noticed the kind of help people offered one another on Usenet, WELL, and MindVox. He, therefore, decided to build a platform that would make it possible for people to interact socially and be of help to one another. His initial plan was just to build a system for people residing in San Francesco. He, therefore, came up with an email distribution list. At the early stages of Craigslist, Newmark was the one in charge of making posts. At the beginning stages of Craigslist, a lot of the posting Newmark submitted had to do with events that software developers were interested in. This was targeted to only people that were resident in San Francisco.
After being in operation for a fairly short while, there was a rapid growth in the number of subscribers, as well as the number of postings that had to be made. Also, Craigslist grew from a platform that was only used for event-related postings to a platform that was made use of for postings that were not event-related. A lot of people with vacant job positions soon discovered that Craigslist could be used as a platform to get the right people to fill technical positions. After being used as a means of filling technical positions with the right people, the job category was created on Craigslist. As Craigslist grew, the demand of users led to the creation of additional categories.
On a monthly basis, Craigslist gets over 20 billion page views. This, therefore, makes it’s the 72nd most vied page on a monthly basis all around the world and the 11th most viewed page in the United States. From just the United States, Craigslist gets over 49.4 million different visitors.
Craigslist plays various roles in the lives of various people. To people in search of jobs, Craigslist is perhaps one of the best things to happen. There are more than 2 million fresh job listings on Craigslist on a monthly basis. Due to this, it is considered one of the biggest job boards on the planet. Furthermore, the rental housing industry in the United States is dominated by Craigslist.
Personalized Services
Although Craigslist started as a platform for posting email listings, it has grown into becoming a lot of different things. It has now become a platform no just for people seeking jobs or people looking to sell items, but for people that want to get personal over the internet. Craigslist is now a platform for people that want to go on blind dates and also meet up for sex. Due to its open nature and the freedom people have to get personal on Craigslist, lesbians and gay men have taken advantage of it to build connections
How to Sell Items on Craigslist
If you live in Portland or in any other part of the world, there are certain steps you have to take to sell an item on Craigslist.
Follow the steps below to successfully sell items on Craigslist
Step 1: Visit Craigslist.org
This is the first step to selling items on Craigslist Portland. If you do not visit this site, there is no way you will be able to successfully make sales on Craigslist.
Step 2: Select your Location
Since you are visiting Craigslist.org from Portland, you have to select Portland from the list of available cities on this site. To get this done, look out for a list of cities on the right section of the page. If you fail to locate Portland on the right section of this page, look out for links at the end of the list for cities. With these links, you can easily detect your location.
If you are making use of links, all you need to do is select the link which indicates US States. If you do not want to make use of links or search for your city on the list of available cities, all you need to do is enter the name of your city.craigslist.org. So, as someone visiting Craigslist. Org from Portland, you simply need to type in “Portland.craigslist.og”. If you are not able to locate your city on Craigslist which is very unlikely, simply select the city that is nearest to yours.
Locating a city on Craigslist before going ahead to post your ad is vital as you are only permitted to make posts on one city. If you put up the same post in more than one cities, you will be violating Craigslist terms of use and will be penalized for doing so.
Step 3: Select ‘Post to Classified ads”
The ‘Post to classified ads” button is located on the left part of the page just beneath the Craigslist logo. Once you do this, you will be directed to the page which will ask you questions about the type of posting you are about to put up. Also, you will get various types of posts to select from.
You can place ads on Craigslist either as a dealer or as an owner. There are various sections for dealers to put up posts, as well as sections for the real owners of products to put up posts. If you put up items for sale every once in a long while, you should definitely select the section for owners. However, if you are a regular seller even if you are not a dealer, it is better to select the section which is set aside for dealers as you will be making posts very regularly and this might be a little out of place for the section meant for owners.
Step 4: Select the Sale Button
At this point, you need to select the sale button. Once you click on the sale button, you will be moved to a page set aside for categories. Contained on this page are 100 categories and you will have to select one category out of this many categories. Once you come to this page, take your time to go through all the categories it contains and select the one that seems most appropriate for the item you intend selling. If you are not sure of what category the item you are about to sell falls into, you can select the general category.
Step 5: Put in Posting Details
Generally, posting details are the details that prospective buyers will notice while searching for the item you have for sale. Some of these details are;
Price: You have to put a price for the item you are selling so individuals that are not with the right amount do not start up a negotiation process.
Title: This is the heading of your posts. It should indicate the item you have for sale.
Location: While location should contain the town, as well as the country you are selling from, you should not put in your exact address.
Reply to: In this section, you should put in your email address. It is up to you if you want to create an anonymous address for this or make use of your regular email address. If you are making use of “for sale by owner’ to avoid spam, you should create an anonymous address. If you are making use of “for sale by dealer’, you will have to put in your business contact information. In addition to putting in your business contacts, you can add a phone number. When adding a phone number, it is vital that you make it known if it is a number that can receive messages or a number that is strictly for calls.
Step 6: Description
At this point, the details you fill in can either help promote the product you have for sale or make your product look unattractive. While you have to make your description catchy and interesting, you should not hide the truth because you want people to buy your product. You need to write a great sales paper. If writing a sales paper is not something you can do, simply go through a newspaper ad and you will be able to come up with an interesting sales paper. If you are selling as a dealer, it is okay to hype your products. However, if you are selling as the owner of a product, you should avoid sounding like someone that is a commercial dealer.
Simply state the needed facts and that will be okay. If the product you have put up for sale comes with some flaws, it is vital that you state this in the description. While making it known that the product you want to sell has some flaws or even missing parts might stand in your way of selling the product easily, it is better to have a reputation as someone that keeps to their word than as someone that sells fake or bad products.
Step 7: Put up pictures
It is not enough to describe what you are selling. To get people to appreciate what they intend to buy, you should put up pictures of what you are selling. While it is not compulsory to put up pictures of what you intend selling, posting high-resolution images of the items you have for sale will make it a lot easier for you to have people patronize you. You should not just put up pictures of stock photos. You should put up pictures of the exact item you will be selling. This way, your prospective buyers can have a clear view of what they will be paying for and will not bother contacting you if it is something that they are not completely interested in.
As soon as you are done loading images, the next thing you need to do is select ‘Done with Images’. On Craigslist, you can put up not more than 24 images when making an ad. Furthermore, you are not allowed to post links.
Step 8: Look out for accuracy
Your listing has to be noticed by those it is targeted at. Due to this, it is vital that everything you post is accurate. If your posts and the details surrounding them are not accurate, you might not get so much attention for the item you want to sell even though it is a top-quality item.
If you have to make any changes to the details attached to the item you have for sale, select “Edit Text” or “Edit Image”. This way you can make any change which will give the item you have for sale a better chance of being bought.
Step 9: Select “Continue”
As soon as you get satisfied with the appearance of your ad, click on ‘Continue’. After clicking continue, your ad will go live in 15 minutes if you have an account on Craigslist. However, if you do not have an account on Craigslist, you will get an email from Craigslist which will notify you that your post will be published. For your post to become active, you will have to respond to this email.
