How to Beat Craigslist Ghosting and Flagging

For those of you not familiar with what Ghosting or Flagging on Craigslist is all about I shall explain. When you go onto Craigslist to make a post or place an ad, you expect or hope that this post or ad will be placed on the Craigslist website for all to see. A problem that has been occurring for some time is that after you go through all the time and trouble of creating a post or ad, and placing it on Craigslist, it never actually shows up.

You see Craigslist devised this sneaky plan to control spammers and scammers on their website. Previously you would get banned or blacklisted from Craigslist for being a trouble maker, so this made people create new identities and figure out ways to make post on Craigslist to get around the banning process. Human nature is pretty predictable. Once you know you are banned, you give up your methods and start new methods. So Craigslist was always playing catch up. So they decided to get in front of the problem. So the plan was to allow people to think that their scam ads were being posted same as always, BUT the posts would never show up on the main Craigslist directory. You could find your ad if you had the link, but it was on a different server and the public never actually saw it. So in reality you were ghosted. This was supposed to keep the scammers and spammers at bay. In reality it has hurt most of the regular good people and not the bad guys. Why? Because they always find ways to get around the tricks that Craigslist pulls.

So, how to you deal with Ghosting? I am here to help you the average Craigslist poster to help you get through the maze of craziness that Craigslist has created. What was a simple process is now complex and convoluted. OK, I'll give you a few pointers, BUT I can't tell you everything for the simple reason that this is a constantly evolving methodology. Whenever we come up with one way to deal with the problem, Craigslist changes it and we have to change again. You can visit my blog at www.howtobeatcraigslist.cu.cc for constant updates.

1- Create an account

2-Write and post your ad

3-Check to see if your ad was posted on the Craigslist main page. It should be live in a matter of minutes. If it is not live then you wasted your time.

4- If your ad went live, then sit back and enjoy! If it did not, move to step 5.

5- If your ad was ghosted, change the wording of your ad and try again. Some words are blacklisted inside Craigslist, and if you use them in your ad or title, it will trigger ghosting.

6- If your ad is ghosted again, give up that account and create a new one. This time change your IP and Phone number. Use a different computer or a proxy server.

7- Use a different email address.

8- Try not using too much text or images in your ads, and try not to use links in your ad. If you must use a web address, DON'T make it into a link. Just type it and tell the reader to copy and past it into their browser. Craigslist looks down on links at times.

9-Clear the cache in your browser so you are not giving yourself away each time you make changes.

10- Don't make multiple ads at first. Start small and fly under the radar.

11- The rest of the stuff I can tell you is A- Always evolving and changing, and B- Might be frowned upon by Wonderhowto.com so I will stop here. Try these methods and see if they work for you. If not then you have a choice to make whether you want to just give up and find another place to post instead of Craigslist, or you can visit my blog at www.howtobeatcraigslist.cu.cc where I am free to say whatever I want and not get anyone angry at me. NONE of the tips and tricks that I point out are illegal or wrong in any way, it's just that some websites don't like certain topics to be covered, so I know here to draw the line to prevent problems.

I hope this helps you. Flagging is another big problem on Craigslist which will take a lot of time to explain so I will write another How-To for that one. All I can tell you right now is that there are ways to beat flagging and you should not give up on that either. Good luck and happy posting.