Yesterday was enough to make me a believer in the potential of Craigslist. If you haven't heard about this website yet, I'm not quite sure what to say - you must be somewhat out of the "technological loop", as more than 25 million people in the US alone visit Craigslist every month. In brief, Craigslist is a website providing local classifieds and forums for 450 cities worldwide. It's not flashy - you don't go because the website looks so cool. You go because you can find what you want quickly and at a good price.
Two examples from yesterday alone:
1. My roommate is moving to Texas and needed to sell his car quickly. He posted his ad for free at 9:15am and within the first 15 minutes had 15 email inquiries. By 11:15am he had the cash - his car sold in two hours!!
2. Erin and I needed a washing machine as we've been using our roommates. We searched for a particular brand in our area in the price range we were looking for. I sent an email, arranged a time last night to go by and look at it, and we brought it home and installed it that night - the seller lived literally 3 minutes from our house.
So... We've been wanting to sell our car too, so I posted it this morning on Craigslist just to see what would happen. I've had one inquiry so far, but I don't think it was anything serious. I guess we'll just see what happens. If you're interested in a '99 Acura Integra, check out the post - maybe I can sell it through my blog instead!
Well, the car hasn't sold yet, but I'm not too concerned. We're not in a HUGE hurry yet, which is a nice luxury. I did have a couple of people interested in it that same day. Thanks for the stories Holly and Laura - anyone else with some crazy Craigslist stories?
Posted by: Jeremy | February 01, 2008 at 10:17 AM
Hey I've been working on doing a "garage sale" via Craigslist and eBay lately! I just sold a futon mattress on there last week, but the craziest situation so far is this: We had tons of great HUGE pieces of Styrofoam left over after unpacking the nursery furniture last week. I felt like SOMEONE could use it somewhere, so I posted it on the local "freecycle" email list, but didn't get any bites. Next I posted it in the "free" section of Craigslist and immediately got 2 responses... The lady who came to get it was SOOO excited because her son is part of a school group building a massive dinosaur and she had gone to Google to type in "large pieces of styrofoam" and found my listing (just hours after I posted it)! Not only that, she had emailed friends and family with the same request and one of them wrote her back and said, "There's a listing for that on Craigslist!" and she said, "I know, I'm going to pick it up this afternoon!!"
Posted by: Holly | January 31, 2008 at 09:39 PM
I too am a firm believer in Cragslist. My best friend needed to sell almost half of her furniture. Within minutes of posting we had so many calls. All of the furniture was sold in a week. I was shocked at how fast it sold.
Posted by: Laura | January 31, 2008 at 10:51 AM
The classifieds were popular in newspapers for a reason, and Craigslist just multiplies the ease of use and reach exponentially.
My first car was an integra (a 1990 though)... Now we drive sensible 4-doors. :) Hope you can sell yours soon!
Posted by: Carla | January 30, 2008 at 10:51 AM