Craigslist Marketing Case Study

I keep saying it over and over again, just like many other bloggers who write about Internet Marketing. So, here it is again:

I don’t offer fish to all of my guests, but I will be glad to teach/show you “how to catch fish”.

But when I start thinking about people who are new to internet marketing or specifically affiliate marketing, I understand how frustrating it can get sometimes. You read all of these affiliate blogs and forums, you get pumped up with some great ideas, but never have the necessary skills and knowhow to implement that idea.

I wasn’t born as an internet marketer with full of skills, knowhow and resources, so I exactly know how you feel.

Don’t worry, I believe in KARMA. I have personally made so much money by simply taking a basic idea or case study and expanding it to a whole new level by creativity and hard work. And I’m sure, some of you will create successful businesses out of the ideas and case studies I share here.

And, I have thousands of ideas. I have more ideas that I can literally implement in my life time It won’t bother me or my business a bit if I share a few of these ideas and case studies with you once in a while.

Ok, I know you are excited, so let’s get started with the Craigslist Marketing Case Study.

I have made over $5000 Net Profit within 48 hours on Craigslist

Let me start with making this very clear. I won’t share any case studies unless I or somebody I trust did it. Also, don’t be a kid and ask for screenshots of payments and/or picture of my face with a check.

The whole purpose of sharing case studies with you is to share the marketing mindset.

Profitable ideas and offers come and go. Don’t depend on a single case study to quit your day job. Try to “get” the mindset I have behind these case studies.

Kapish? Ok, let’s move on to the case study…

How I Made $5000 Net Profit within 48 Hours with an Email Submit Offer

This is not going to be a short read. Because I want to share every single detail about this successful campaign from how the idea was born to turning it into real cash.

You will truly understand the mindset I had with this successful campaign if you focus on the details. Only if you “GET” the correct marketing mindset, you will be able to find your own winning campaigns easily.

Part 1: How Did I Find the Right Offer to Promote?

It was during 2005, and one of my friends gave me a call to ask my ideas about finding volunteers for her Ph.D. project. Since I have been a volunteer for AFS since 1996, and was involved with volunteer recruiting process, she thought I’d have ideas about finding volunteers.

She needed volunteers who were over 21 years old and who smoke at least 10 cigarettes a day (half a pack). She was an NYU Ph.D. candidate and the program was willing to pay $25.00/hour to volunteers. The whole process would take 2 to 3 hours (which means couple of cartoons of free smokes), and it was going to be a question/answer session only.

What gets better than this to somebody who already smokes to spend a few hours with a girl answering some general questions, right? I thought it’d be easy to find volunteers.

At that time, I was so busy with my ecommerce business packing and shipping products all over the world. I was staying at the office sometimes till midnight with my employees to finish the packing. But I was also testing several opportunities on Craigslist and many other sites ~definition: serial entrepreneur and/or ADD~

It was one of those busy days when my friend called me to ask for my help. I didn’t have a chance to think about where to find these volunteers since I was so busy all day. I thought, what the heck, if I can’t think about anything else, I’ll just post it to Craigslist.

I left the office around 7pm, and decided to walk home because it was a beautiful evening. My office at that time was in DUMBO, right under the Manhattan Bridge, and I used to live in Brooklyn Heights. So, it was a 15-20 minutes, very nice walk by the river with Manhattan view.

Even though I wasn’t new in online marketing, I was a newbie in affiliate marketing and was just starting to sign up with networks and test some offers. (it was 2005, Dr. Oz was aging like hell, because he didn’t think about acai berry at that time, yet. it was the glorious days of government handing out free grants and cash anyways, back to the topic)

My wife was on call that night, so nobody was at home waiting for me and I decided to grab a cup of coffee and walk to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade to relax before going home and getting back to the computer.

I’ve stopped by the Starbucks on Montague Street, grabbed my coffee and walked slowly to the Promenade. I’ve found a nice bench with perfect Manhattan view and sat to relax.

Part 2: Pure Luck + Creative Thinking = Great Idea

The second I thought about my friend’s need for volunteers an image appeared on my mind.

It was an image of an email submit offer I’ve seen very briefly a few days ago on one of the affiliate networks I’ve signed up.

I didn’t remember the details, but I clearly remembered it was an email submit offer with some pictures of cigarette packs on the landing page. I didn’t remember what the offer was about, why you’d enter your email, etc. But I knew right away it was targeted to smokers.

Probably it was the gorgeous Manhattan View which brought my inspiration angel to the earth

Small details during our daily lives bring us an unlimited number of opportunities for both business and personal usage. We rarely use these opportunities and take advantage of them. When you are making a living from internet marketing or affiliate marketing, you have to be more careful about these small details during your daily life.

It’s like the butterfly effect. You catch that small detail and turn it into a successful campaign, or even a business, or you just let these opportunities fly away, generously.

It was one of those moments, and I had to turn this idea into profit. I wasn’t after the few bucks I’d make with an email offer, I was after executing an idea which I thought was cool.

Part 3: Execution to turn that Great Idea into a Success Story (~benjamins in this case~)

I checked the offer when I got home. It was a 2 field email submit offer. First field was a drop down, asking the brand of smokes you smoke, and the second field was to enter your email address.

The catch was the “Free $100 Visa Gift Card”. It was a chance to win a $100 Visa Gift Card.

Using only little bit of my right brain, I have created a Craigslist post and posted it to the Volunteers section (if you don’t know, yes, craigslist has a volunteers section).

There were no links in the cl post. People would simply reply to apply for the study. It was a clear and short description of the volunteer study.

This was the title of the first cl post:

Looking for Volunteers for a Paid Study @ NYU who are Smokers & over 21

I don’t remember what I wrote in the post exactly, but the title shows you the big picture.

At that time I had enough knowledge of marketing on craigslist and community flagging, and I didn’t use any promotional language in the text.

I have also setup a gmail account with an autorespond message, and wrote a short and informative email explaining the details of the study. It had a PDF attached to fill and fax to NYU (my friend emailed this to me during the day). At the end of the message, I’ve added something like:

We really appreciate that you’ve applied to volunteer for this study. We, ourselves, are volunteers and we don’t get paid to help NYU. We have included your name into a drawing for a $100 Visa Gift Card to say “Thank You”. Simply follow this link and enter your email address, so we can get back to you if you win.

P.S. This $100 Visa Gift Card is not associated with your compensation. You will get paid $25/hour on the study whether you win the gift card or not.

It’s been over 4 years, I don’t remember the exact words, but it was something like above. I didn’t pay a copy writer. I just wrote this in couple of minutes. No lies, no tricks, no rebills, simple, clear. The points:

• It is a drawing, you don’t just get a $100 Gift Card. ~ Clear in the copy.
• We, ourselves, are volunteers. ~ This is true, doing a favor to a friend.
• We’d like to say thank you ~ Why not? being honest here

I’ve posted the ad to craigslist, went back to my site to check and answer my customer questions and spent around 2 hours on the site.

While I was ready to grab the remote and check if anything was on TV, I’ve refreshed the stats on the affiliate network page unawarely right before I stood up to get to the couch. And I saw:

31 Leads, $5X.XX dollars.

The cost was $0, it was just my time (around 30 mins to set everything up).

It was probably the sweetest 50 bucks I’ve made for a while. Even though I was making passive income from my organic sites, making cash with zero $ investment, in less than couple hours was so good to be true.

Part 4: Scale to Ultimate Success

I have spent the next 48 hours with less than 5 hours of sleep to scale the hell out of this craigslist post.

I don’t even remember how many versions of the title, text, and respond email content I’ve created, and I don’t think there was any city left unposted at craigslist.

The campaigns kept generating leads for the next 7 days (CL post duration) and total profit was little over $5,000.00 at the end of the 7th day.

Should I Try This at Home

I haven’t done any serious craiglist marketing in my life. I have done many tests similar to this one, and made money on craigslist.

This test I did was in 2005. I don’t even know how the volunteers section work nowadays, because I haven’t touched craigslist for over a year now (for marketing purposes).

So, try this at home or not. It’s not the point of this case study.

If you got the point, you will find so many ideas and offers to promote on Craigslist or on any other platform.

Don’t let your right brain die, use it to set trends & achieve success in online marketing.

Tagged as: Craigslist