Tips, Tricks, Rants, Stats, Help, Pulp
Craigslist is in the process of implementing new image CAPTCHA method. Friend of mine told me that the new captcha method is on trial basis in certain cities and categories. The new captcha seems more difficult to solve even for regular people.
We believe that the new captcha is going to put lot of software written that was automating old captcha image confirms.
We will provide more detailed and technical information on the new captcha pretty soon, so be sure to check back.
Just got the word that Craigslist now requires account to be created before you post any ads.
And the catch is that you need a phone number to create an account. And you guessed it right, you canNOT create multiple accounts with same phone number.
Is that it ? you ask. Nope, not done yet. Their verification system also require you submit a ‘verifiable’ phone number. Not sure what ‘verifiable’ means, but most of the VOIP service phone numbers, call forwarding services are out.
If you know of any forwarding services that work with this new verification thing, do drop a comment here or share with us at admin@allaboutposting.com
**Update**
Just got update on these
1. Phone verified account is required in Services section only.
2. People may jump from these services section to other sections that do not require such verified account.
Hello All - Starting somewhere midnight EST 3/13/08, CL seem to have issues with verification word. The one they use to verify its humans thats posting.
We have been following the forums and etc. Few folks noticed that if you confirm image within 30 sec range, you do not experience the problem.
I have tried it myself and it seem to work. So try yourself and report any success.
There are lot of interesting stuff going on there. Seems like CL is putting together yet another mechanism to block folks who might be posting with software, posting from far away lands etc.
CL helpdesk is also seeking information on what operating system and browser versions are in use by people who are experiencing this issue. So definitely something is cooking and we will report back with full details. Stay Tuned
We have been busy with new content management tool set for better posting.
Details will follow but for now, head to http://www.postingsecrets.com .
In a nutshell, you can do the following with this tool
1. Create and Manage Titles and Content in one place.
2. Because this is a web based tool, you dont have to worry about those text files, computer crashing etc.
3. You can create ‘mywords’ that lets you insert dates, times, phone numbers, website links, news, blog entries - virtually anything that you can think of AND rotate them so your ad looks new and DIFFERENT every time.
4. You can have your posts verified automatically to know if they are really live, flagged or ‘GHOSTED’.
5. Advanced features of this tool including scheduling that lets you schedule your ads - say you want few posts in the morning, few posts at lunch time and few in the evening.
6. We also provide ‘API’, a way software developers (programmers) can ‘hook’ into this web tool and provide enhanced functionality to the customers.
7. Reports - see what cities are doing good, what content is getting blocked or flagged or ghosted often.
Again, with tremendous advantage to customer of having all the information in one place that can be managed from any place.
We are very excited about this tool.
So you want to include really nice image at good resolution in your posts on CL. Uploading to CL while posting isnt option for you if you really want good resolution on images. Anytime you upload images to CL, they cut the resolution and viewable size of image to save space and bandwidth on their servers. Net results is really cut down version of your original image.
You have another option to include original image at the original resolution. That is to include it as HTML Image tag <img> as part of your ad content. For this, you need to first upload the image site some website where its accessible to all people. It could be your own website if you have website hosting account or it could number of free image hosting sites on internet. Search for ‘Free Image Hosting Sites’ using the search box on this site and you will see tons of results that will give you information on what sites on internet allow you to upload original images at full resolution for free.
So, you are posting on free classifieds sites with some success and all that good stuff. But as you expand your online advertisement campaigns, it becomes difficult to keep track of posts you did, how many were ‘ really live’ , when you did what and where . It really becomes time consuming, if not complicated, to keep track of these things and to see what campaign has best chance of working out for you.
Imagine a tool that can provide all the following statistics for you
* Let you keep all the links to posts you did at one place
* Track the posts with date and time of posting you did
* Track the posts you did and tell you if they were ‘really really live’. If you are seasoned advertiser, you know that lot of classified sites ’silently’ ignore your posts and block them appearing, though they appear to be alive. Refer my earlier articles to understand this
* Provide consolidated stats on how many posts did well per day
For limited time, we are offering this service as free. You have to be registered on this site to get access to the free tool. There is a ‘Register’ link on this site (http://www.allaboutposting.com). Register yourself and we will send you details on where to go, how to login and how to take advantage of this free tool.
Enjoy your posting on internet.
Most of the internet posting sites ask for your email address as part of the posting process. Site like craigslist (http://www.craigslist.org) , Backpage (http://www.backpage.com) , Kijiji (http://www.kijiji.com) etc ask your email address to send you a ‘publishing’ email that you follow instructions to finish the final step.
There is more to this than meets the eye. Surprisingly, there is lot more to it.
In posting world, there is common practice of routing the posts through machines located elsewhere, commonly known as ‘proxying’. Proxy is the machine located elsewhere. This type of activity makes it appear that you are posting from ‘proxy’ machine itself.
There are even commercial ‘proxy’ services out there who lend their proxy machines for your activity.
Lot of people use this practice thinking that it would confuse or otherwise make it accept posts and get around the problem of getting blocked.
If you are one of these guys or thinking about buying a proxy service, think again. Increasingly, posting sites such as backpage (http://www.backpage.com) are employing various techniques to find and block people who are coming from proxies. In this Part I of article, I describe one such method posting sites are generally employing.
Disclaimer: This is purely technical explanation and should not be used in anyway to violate TOS of craigslist or any other site.
“I completed posting my ad, I get email and I publish successfully. I even get message informing me that the post should be up online in about 15 minutes. But the post does not appear on the site even after an hour and it never comes online. Whats going on ?”
This is one of the several questions we get asked and we also see similar questions posed on craigslist help forum. We decided to decode this for you and give full explanation.
Here is the list of Posting Sites (Classifieds) that you can advertise your business, stuff you want to sell, look for special someone you want to meet …
We will elaborate on each of these sites, their strengths and weakness, pitfalls to avoid while posting on these sites, tips and tricks you can use to successfully post - basically All About Posting on these sites. More on that soon.
1. http://www.craigslist.com
2. http://www.kijiji.com (ebay company)
3. http://classifieds.yahoo.com
4. http://www.backpage.com
5. http://base.google.com