How to Use CraigsList to Build a Wholesale Buyers List

Craigslist is an outstanding way to build a wholesale buyers list for little to no cost. 

Before reading on its important for newbie wholesalers to know that you can do this before you ever have a deal under contract. "How" you might ask? The key is partnering up with a few other active wholesalers in your area!  They have lots of deals - market those while you're working on getting your own under contract! However, one piece of advice: always ask permission to market another wholesaler's deals. You will only tick people off if you don't...plus its simply not cool. What's great is that you can not only build a buyers list, but you can make some money if you find a buyer for the other wholesaler's property!

Additionally, let's talk about cost. Yes, Craigslist is free, so it could be zero cost, but if you're looking to generate a large list of potential buyers and have better things to do than sit around posting ads on Craigslist (trust me, you do!), you will want to consider paying a virtual assistant to help.

So now that we have all of that out of the way, here's how you can use CraigsList to build a wholesaler buyer's list.

There are three key things we do with every ad:

• We hide the email address so that people don’t email us
• We include a link to our squeeze page that requests their email address and then provides access to the deals
• We place the links in the “For Sale By Owner” category for the appropriate county area (for us Broward, Miami, West Palm)

We have been experimenting with 4 different types of Craiglist ads, and each of them have a different effectiveness for us (but I haven’t completed my 3-month analysis to determine if I will completely stop doing any of these types of ads).  Examples below:

(1) TEXT AD: Property information on 1 or multiple properties at once (including property pics)

(2) TEXT AD: Generic ad promoting the fact that we sell wholesale deals

(3) GRAPHICS AD – Promoting multiple deals we have going at the moment

(4) GRAPHICS AD: – Generic ad promoting the fact that we sell wholesale deals.

So far we’ve found that the ads that have property info in them get a bit more attention than the generic ads.  However, we do get some clickthrus on the generic ones, so I’m going to keep using them for now until the cost-benefit analysis tells me I should stop.

I can tell you that this is not a science...its an art. You have to be willing to experiment, use Google Analytics to see what's working and what's not, and be willing to tweak things when they aren't working.

We started using this method in July of this year and we're still working to find the right formula of which types of ads to focus on (based on # of clicks) and how many ads to do each day.  I'll be sure to share my findings after 6 months of doing this, but in the meantime we're experimenting away!

I certainly hope these tips helped -- I actually do a monthly internet marketing report at goodfaithinvesting.com if you're interested in more detailed results on a monthly basis (just select "Internet Marketing" from the Categories selection box).

Adios amigas y amigos!

Important P.S.  Nick J. raised a great point in the comments about the follow up necessary after getting a lead. My very first blog post was on that topic so, check out "Will the REAL DEAL Investors Please Stand Up!"

Also, Nick has a great blog post on using Craigslist to find buyers as well. I'll warn you its a loooong post but worth the reading for sure! Check it out here.