I like Craig’s List found at http://www.craigslist.org - the biggest, baddest online classified website found on planet earth. Here are 7 Strategies to make Craig’s List your hard working employee for buying and selling Michigan foreclosures:

1. Do not run a real estate ad without adding some pictures. When you add a picture, Craig’s List adds a little word “img” next to the listings. People prefer to see more than read. Those ads get clicked more than the ones without pictures. Don’t have a picture – add your own smiling mug shot.

If you are going to use pictures of a house – more is better. Don’t be cheap and put a picture size 2 inches by 2 inch. Use inside / outside / front / back / street pictures. Take these pictures during daylight so your house does not look like a house from a horror movie.

2. Use websites like www.vflyer.com or www.postlets.com to create incredibly beautiful flyers that could be cut and pasted on Craig’s List immediately. No computer knowledge needed.

Listen if you are thinking about flipping this house to another investor – that does not means that you have to put up crappy stuff up. A check is a check, right? So the same way you would pay attention to any flyer that you put out for a homebuyer – show same love to a fellow Michigan real estate investor too.

3. PLEASE don’t spam Craig’s List by putting up 50 variations of the same ad, over and over again. Not only your ads will get deleted but also you just clutter up the whole space and your legitimate ads get lost in the mess that you created also.

For some reason everybody thinks that if their ad is not on the top 5, nobody will click on it. WRONG. People either search by keyword (your ad position does not matter) or they will scroll down, down and more down to find what is out there. Majority of people who do this do not use Craig’s List except for spamming it. Because if you did use the site, observe how your self search and you would stop spamming Craig’s List.

4. If you are selling a house – don’t be shady and don’t put your information in the ad. I have seen private money / deal partnership ads in Detroit Craig’s List that do not have their name in the ad. That is just crazy. Use the anonymous email function that Craig’s List lets you use to avoid spammers. That is fine. But put your name, phone number, even a P.O. Box address is better than white blank space.

5. Post your ads in the right section. I have seen “I will save your home foreclosure” ads being run in Help Wanted, Casual Encounters, Cars for Sale – why would you want to waste your time putting your ad in front of people who are not looking for your help?

Its own users police Craig’s List. When they see ads in wrong places – they tag it as spam and eventually it gets deleted. Why bother doing this? It is beyond me.

I have done stupid things like these too when I first started Michigan Foreclosure Report – trying to “trick” Internet users to come to my website. It was a complete waste of time and money and I stopped immediately. People, who were not looking for me, stopped by, took one look and left immediately. You on the other hand were looking so you stayed. See the difference?

6. Know what Craig’s List is … it is a classified ad site, designed to put your company, your house, and your wholesaling business, even properties you want to rent out in front of a large audience in Michigan. That is all. You are not going to convince anybody to do business with you in any form by a Craig’s List ad.

All it is a glowing neon sign that says “Come On Inside – Open For Business” and people are going to come in, read you ad, call you or email you, develop a liking / trust with you and do business with you. If that sounds “work” to you than well don’t advertise there.

7. Before you run an ad – spend 10 minutes reading the other ads in that Real Estate Section. What catches your eyes? That ad or this ad? Why is that? Let me tell you why it is – it is the “headline” or the title of the classified ad that caught your eye.

May be it was the name of the city in the ad (very important to do it every time without fail – its bumps up responses) or may be the way it was said. There are good ads that get clicked and than there are ads that nobody clicks on. You decide by paying attention to other good ads which category your ad will end up. So spend 10 minutes before typing away and study the other ads in your target section.

Final tip – I hire almost everybody to do everything for me from Craig’s List / Gigs section. That is the most powerful section to get extremely cool and qualified people from all over Michigan to help you out to get your stuff done faster. Use it.