Craigslist, being such a heavily used site, offers a lot of potential. With a vast number of classified sections, there is almost bound to be a place on Craigslist that you can advertise your goods or service. You'll find an enormous amount of people offering all kinds of services and goods, probably more than you can imagine. But is there anyway to make the most of Craigslist? Posting your ad and taking calls or emailing those who contact you is probably the most common method used. But what can you do to make the most of the traffic that Craigslist sends?

Perhaps the best and most important thing you should do when posting any kind of service or goods on Craigslist is that of list building. By offering people a way to opt-in you are building your business and not selling something (or possibly selling something) to a customer once off. By building your list, this offers you the chance of contacting that person again in the future and promoting your service or goods once more. Posting on Craigslist takes time (and maybe money if you have outsourced it) so by building a list you are making the most of everything. Just how then could you build a list from the traffic that you generate by posting on Craigslist? Well, this really does depend on what you are offering, but a simple and most common method would be to contact your potential customer by email and include them a bonus or free offer of something in return for joining your list. This freebie could be anything from an audio file, a video, an eBook, discount of x% on whatever you are offering or maybe even a free test drive of the service you are offering. Even if they aren't interested or turn down your offer and don't buy from you immediately, you have added their details to your list and you can contact them again in future. Perhaps next time they might buy, even if they don't you are still building a list and the lifetime value of the customer has just increased. It is no longer a hit or miss opportunity where you pitch to them once and then never again.

Craigslist is an enormous site with lots of traffic but one really needs to know what or how to utilize the traffic to its fullest potential. One way you can do this is by list building. Why spend all the time and energy to post your product or service on Craigslist only to have customers contact you once and then never again? Build a list, offer them something free or a test drive of your service and in return capture their contact details. They might turn you down the first time, but who knows what will happen the second or third time you contact them. Lists can be extremely valuable if treated right and Craigslist is a great place to start list building if you haven't already started.