Hey blog readers I have a favor to ask of you. Please do me a favor and go to craigslist and see if you can find any posts for a property in Brentwood, MO that I have. No looking it up by address….just keywords even simply by typing in Brentwood, MO. Thanks so much. Please let me know how many you find and how hard or easy it is! Thanks everyone I appreciate it. 
Please tell us your results in the comments section on this post.
Ok what gives??? It took me like 3 seconds to find them. I was hoping for something challenging and I am really, really curious as to why you asked us to do this. Also craigslist is so 1 year ago, but I have already teased you about that. I saw that you are on yahoo realty. I can’t believe how many realtors aren’t!!! That’s where we get half of our traffic. It’s always funny to talk to clueless realtors who think craigslist is the place to be….ummm…yeah about a year ago. ha! I think the people who think that are the same people who don’t really know how to use a computer very well, but think they do. By the way, thanks so much for answering my emails about realty questions even though we don’t work at the same company. I really appreciate that. You must have really good karma.
It took me like 2 minutes. Is this a test for people that don’t use the internet because that was just ridiculously easy? Oh and it was listed 4 times by you and once by someone else and yours looked and sounded much better. Is that the information you want? Thanks for the St.Louis Artists Guild information I am going to check them out right now on their website.
I really need to change my avatar picture on wordpress.
It took a minute and that’s because I am bad at typing with this dang arthritis. It doesn’t get any easier than that. I have actually listed things on craigslist (furniture and such) and had people email me and discover it’s not what they were looking for so I tell them I have other chairs or whatever it is that I think will work and half the time they email me back because they can’t find them when they have been given the keywords. What that means is that there are a lot of people who think they know how to search for things on the internet, but they really don’t have a clue. Of course, it’s usually the older people that have problems with this. I can say that because I am 60.
Hey Pamela. This is my second time on your blog and thought I would join in. I have been reading your AR blog for quite some time, but never felt comfortable commenting over there because it seems like it’s just real estate people over there. When I first looked and saw all the listings I went back and started the search query over because it looked like a lot to sift through (it’s so annoying when people post the same thing over and over again. they need to look up the term overkill) . I specified certain things in the drop box which I had never noticed before and it pulled right up. So I learned something new today. Thanks! So after I searched the right way it took about a minute. I always loved that you posted recipes on the other blog. I hope that you might think about doing that on this one. Thanks.
Donna
Thanks everyone! Keep ‘em coming.
Glad I caught all of you before bedtime.
Ok soooooooooo easy. Hello! There are only 81 possibilities!!! Do we get a prize for doing this? Maybe a glow in the dark decoder ring?
P.S.
People still use craigslist?
Are you going to do a post that teaches people how to use craigslist because a lot of them don’t have a clue. I’m a broker and I actually discourage our realtors from using craigslist because of the many housing scams being run on there we actually had someone use one of our listings and it was a huge headache. A big mess that was not worth it. As long as you are on MLS, Trulia, Realtor.com, Zillow (some people will argue about that one), AR, and Twitter you are fine. Actually you are way ahead of the game if you are on those websites because the realtors that don’t know any better think craigslist is the place to be. Let them keeping thinking that, I say.
Zillow! I thought most agents hated Zillow. I know Pamela is on there, but that’s because she is everywhere online. One of the smart agents who is everywhere the consumers are.
I loathe Zillow. They are always wrong on their “gestimates” for the price a house should be listed at. They are doing a great disservice by lying to the public. I am a real estate agent, by the way.
It took me 3 minutes and I hope you will tell us why you asked us to do this. I’m sorry, but anyone who says that craigslist is still a viable option for finding and promoting their home is living in a fantasy world. Even the creator of craigslist has said that they cannot possibly keep up with all the scams and the craigslist moderators have ALWAYS looked to the community to help them keep things safe and hopefully scam free. The issue now with these housing scams are that they look legitimate because the scammers are actually posting homes that really are for sale and this is why so many agents and home buyers are steering clear of that website. Why in the world would they use that as their primary source when they know that yahoo realty, trulia, MLS, realtor.com, and a few others are scam free because they do have a paid staff to keep up with it? Anyone who says differently doesn’t know what they are talking about.
Hi Pamela. It took me 3 minutes and there were 5 for that particular listing and 4 were from your team. Your posts looked great. Ummm….is the inside of that living room and bathroom pink? Wow. I would imagine that would make it very hard to sell.
Same as everyone else. Very easy. I am looking for a house right now for my parents and not once have I checked craigslist because it’s cluttered and full of scams. Who says it’s what people use? Only scam artists or for sale by owner’s would think that because they don’t know any better. Show me one article that says people primarily use craigslist to search for homes….it’s not possible because it isn’t true unless the article was written in 2005 and even then those people would be considered clueless by anyone that knows anything about real estate. I primarily use real estate company websites that allow consumers to access MLS. Don’t even get me started on the companies that don’t have that feature on their website in this technological age. After that I use Yahoo real estate, Trulia, AR, and agent blogs. In that order.
Thanks for the responses everyone. I am heading to bed soon so I may not approve all comments until tomorrow. Great feedback and it shows that the majority of consumers do know where and how to find listings. Thanks so much. I will comment more tomorrow. Have a great night!
It took me about 5 minutes and there were 4 from you on there. Wow what a mess craigslist is. I never go on there anymore because if you post something on there you get a ridiculous amount of spam. Yuck.
Very easy to find if one knows how to search for listings on craigslist. My 8 year old helped me earlier and he found it even faster than I did. These kids have practically grown up with computers though and I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. Craigslist is almost obsolete and it’s easy for anyone that has a brain to verify that. Go to google and put in “search for a home online”, as well as many other keyword combinations and craigslist does not show up on the first page….or the second page….or the third page….and so on. Any agent who posts on there more than once a month has no marketing strategy and needs to get into the game or they will get left behind. I would go so far as to say that if you see an agent posting more frequently than that its because they are letting their client who has no idea how to sell a home dictate to them how to run their business. Who on earth would let someone who knows nothing about real estate run their business? We see this all the time in my office where an agent has a client who thinks they know more about selling a home than their agent. Of course, one of the new things we are seeing with some seller’s (the ones without a conscience) is that they list with an agent to get the benefit of all that marketing and then try to get out of the contract so they can then sell their home without the realtor getting their commission. Very slimy and distasteful. This is why we have legal and binding contracts with sellers and buyers because too many of them think it’s ok to try and screw over the realtor that helped them in the first place. Sorry Pamela I am ranting a little bit on your blog. Didn’t mean to hijack it, but that happened to one of the agents in my office just last week and it makes you sick to your stomach to see people act like that.
Thanks everyone. Zillow is a whole other blog, but I think they are honest about how inaccurate their gestimates are…we will discuss that more later. So what keywords did you use? Just Brentwood, Missouri? Regina it’s no problem at all.
The agents should be getting internet/marketing training from their company, of course, whether they actually use that information or not is up to them. I have seen companies and agents who say having an internet presence isn’t necessary and never will be. They are certainly entitled to their opinion no matter how much information on the internet proves otherwise. 
You’re welcome Rachel. Rachel the only reason I have a picture as my avatar is because I have a blog and have to be on the internet for my business. Do whatever makes you feel comfortable. 
Hi Robert. You are great on the computer! Well, I think, a lot of people just go to the search and enter in a title instead of using those drop boxes like they were intended. We did a couple of polls 2 years ago on craigslist and how people use it and there were quite a few people that said they immediately changed their search to broker only listings because they will not deal with for sale by owner’s. What was even more interesting was that a lot of those people admitted they would give serious thought to trying to sell their homes themselves. Interesting. Hello Donna! Welcome. I’m glad you decided to comment. Yes, I see what you mean….if you don’t use the filters the way you are supposed to then it pulls up a lot more results to sift through. I will try to get some recipes up here when I have time to cook more again. 
Hello Cindy. Thanks lady. Is it possible to get decoder rings anymore? I’ll see if I can find one for you. haha Hi Margaret. Thanks for commenting. Oh no! I have heard that has happened a lot…not sure how the scam plays out, but that is horrible. I have seen posts from a lot of agents that say craigslist is a pain in the neck because they have to waste manpower making sure properties they post on there aren’t being used in any scams. I have also had clients tell me that under the services (?) section there are shady people posting stuff under real estate so people are using that one less and less. I’m not sure what that is…maybe a place for people in real estate to list what they do and contact info? Bottom line is if it doesn’t produce results and sucks away your time why use it consistently? We used to use sitemeter on our craigslist postings and knew other agents that did the same thing and we would keep each other updated on the stats…..the numbers just aren’t there anymore. Just like we track where all our traffic comes from on our blogs.
It’s easy to crunch those numbers and see what works right now and what doesn’t.
Hi Robert! Great input as always. Yes, a lot of agents do dislike Zillow, but to me it’s simple. If that’s where the consumers are then we need to be there also. Having a profile on there, because your listing will definitely be on there, is something all agents should do. But you determine how much time you spend on something. You spend more time on the things that yield results. Just like with myspace, facebook, and anything else. I read a blog where an agent on Activerain said it doesn’t matter if you use them or not. You need to have a profile on there so someone else can’t have your profile on there.
I understand your concern Regina. Wow this is a lot of typing. 
William you are absolutely right! We are seeing lots of numbers on realtor.com, trulia, the blog, AR, yahoo real estate, & a few others, but very little from craigslist which is why we stopped posting so frequently. That’s called a working business model. 
Hi Lisa. Thanks for your imput I appreciate it. Thanks Christopher. Christopher have you looked at twitter? There are a lot of listings on there now and we get a good amount of traffic on there. Hi Tanya. Thanks for looking! You would not believe the amount of spam we get everyday…hundreds of spam emails. Yuck is right. Hi Frank. Thank you for your very informative comment. The team nodded their heads vehemently when I read yours out loud and I did what you suggested with many different keyword combinations and you are right. Craigslist has lost its placement which comes from traffic so thats a very obvious example of what has happened with their website. Also the team just said something about how their page rank isn’t higher than say trulia. I need to ask them more about that, but it doesn’t sound good for craigslist. 
It looks like craigslist is still a place to find furniture, or many other items, but it also looks like the housing, cars, and jobs section are overrun with spammers. Such a shame. Thanks everyone! Hate to be a bother, but what did all of you use as keywords? Thanks!
Hi Pamela! I used what you suggested….Brentwood and Missouri. That’s it.
Just Brentwood and Missouri like you mentioned. I need to read the comments I missed.
Brentwood Missouri. This thread is getting long.
The keywords Brentwood and Missouri were all that was needed. Anything more and it would have pulled up even less.
I only typed in Brentwood since I was only looking in the Missouri craigslist. Thanks Pamela.
Ok. That’s what I thought, but wanted to make sure.
Thanks everyone! We will get to some of the other topics you brought up this week. I will do a post about them.