CLHandbook.com is like the missing instruction set for Craigslist.  If you’re new to Craigslist and looking for practical Craigslist tips, I can’t think of a better place to start.  Their guides can walk you through posting your first ad and the precautions you should take when buying and selling on Craigslist.

If you’re looking for the latest Craigslist news, they’ve also got a great blog.  Check it out.

I'm told Zhu Zhu pets are the hot holiday gift this year.  I guess I'm getting old because I really don't understand why and I want to say something like "kids these days..." 

A quick search of Craigslist yielded all sorts of options at a wide range of prices.  If you can't find these toys at the store because they're out of stock, then give Craigslist a try.

Watch out for scammers though.  Never buy anything unless you meet the seller face to face and can inspect the item in person.

I haven't been blogging much lately because I'm hard at work on the new version of NotifyWire.  While working on a couple issues, I noticed a really interesting change in Craigslist's html. 

It looks like Craigslist is going to start giving image previews as part of their browsing experience.  This is totally speculation, but look at what they've included in the HTML in front of each item description:

<span class="ih" id="images:3mc3oe3pa5Pb5S65R79an8ac3b5bbcc6e1752.jpg">

Looking at the HTML above, you can see the "id" of the empty span is specifying the address of the first image for the ad.  Why are they doing it this way?  I'm guessing they plan to do image previews using jQuery, but we'll see.

BTW, the image for the ad above can be found at http://images.craigslist.org/3mc3oe3pa5Pb5S65R79an8ac3b5bbcc6e1752.jpg, so you can see how they'd use the information in the "id" attribute and jQuery to dynamically make the image URL. 

Posting an ad on Craigslist inevitably leads to spam responses.  Some responses are scams looking to dupe you out of your money or your property (or both).  A twist on that theme sending out ads, this type of spam only steals your time.

Soon you can expect to see strange offers on Amazon.com in response to your Craigslist ads thanks to this project on GetAFreelancer.com.  If you see a response to your Craigslist ad that contains a link to Amazon.com send the contents to Amazon using this form.  Amazon won't put up with this kind of behavior from affiliates and will close that affiliate account in a crack addict’s heartbeat. 

Before Yahoo! froze my account for thoughtfully answering questions on Yahoo! Answers, I saw a lot of questions asking about harassment.  There were those getting harassed who wanted to know what to do and those doing the harassment who wanted to know if they're going to get caught (typically after they posted the ad!).

I would always explain to the idiots doing the harassment how they would get caught, with exact technical details, and left them thinking the next knock on their door would be the police.  I like the thought of these losers living in fear, but I knew most police don't have the resources to pursue internet related cases.

However, in Missouri, there is a new law on the books and it looks like the police have it figured out.  This lady got caught and I hope they throw the book at her.

I'm starting to write a eBook titled "Buying and Selling on Craigslist" (wicked original, I know).  When the ebook is finished I'll give it away for free. 

The purpose of the eBook is to educate people on how use Craigslist effectively.  People new to Craigslist often have a lot of questions about the buying and selling process that go unanswered until they learn them from the school of hard knocks.  My hope is to create a more standard and safe way of buying and selling on Craigslist; a point of reference that both buyer and seller could point to as an ideal transaction process.

• Proper ad posting and ad replying etiquette.
• Handling payments and documentation for private sales.
• Weeding out scams and crazies.
• Basic how to information, step by step.
• Real world examples, I will buy and sell something on Craigslist while documenting every detail.

I plan to post fragments to the blog as they’re being developed to get feedback from visitors that can be used to make the eBook even better.

Gary Wolf is doing an excellent series of posts on Craigslist for the Wired Epicenter blog.  One thing not covered in this post about Craigslist's competition is the chicken and egg problem with classified websites.  No one is going to spend time and/or money to place an ad on a website that get's very little traffic.  No buyer are going to check a classified website with very few ads. 

I've tried kijiji.com once (dumbest name ever?).  There was one listing under "boats" in my area (we're surrounded by water here) and I've never gone back to Kijiji since.  Whereas, I look at all the boats on Craigslist daily and it never disappoints (yes, I'm a little boat crazy).

To change this chicken and egg problem a conventional approach would be to advertise.  However, the economics of free services (assuming any real competition to Craigslist would be free) means there is no revenue to pay for advertising.  This creates another catch 22, if you have no revenue you can't buy massive amounts of traffic and you can't earn revenue without traffic.  Of course, you can buy traffic with venture funding, but that's more of a gamble than anything.  Gary hint's that Oodle.com is a 20 million dollar gamble that failed.  I would have to agree, even with their integration with Facebook.

If anything, there are online classifieds that focus on a singular type of product.  AutoTrader.com and iBoats.com are two sites that I'll check if I'm looking for a car or boat.  AutoTrader.com has done a great job parleying their print classifieds online.  iBoats.com is a great boating community site with classifieds bolted on.  These are legitimate ways to get a classifieds site the ground in my view. 

Wired has a great online piece on Craigslist that gets deep into why Craigslist is the way it is.  I've followed Craigslist for a long time now, so there was nothing new that surprised me, but if you don't understand Craigslist's dynamics then this article is an eye opener. 

Here's a quote that I've known for some time:

"Think of any Web feature that has become popular in the past 10 years: Chances are craigslist has considered it and rejected it. If you try to build a third-party application designed to make craigslist work better, the management will almost certainly throw up technical roadblocks to shut you down."

I built NotifyWire.com knowing this was their attitude.  For every feature that get's added, I think, "OK, if I was Craig, what roadblock could I throw up to kill this?"  At the end of the day, there is really nothing Craigslist can do to shut down NotifyWire's Craigslist search tool.  Not to get too technical, but NotifyWire is essentially a fancy, distributed, RSS reader and web browser made specifically for Craigslist. 

Soon, NotifyWire.com will expand to include simple to use features to eliminate SPAM and SCAMs as you reply to ads or post your own.  Again, with these new features, I've also built it in a way to ensure we can't easily be shut down by Craig.

It's not that I want to be stand-off-ish with Craigslist, but this is the reality they've created.  On the plus side, they've created a market for someone willing to play this cat and mouse game. 

Today, a federal NY judge favored on the side of freedom.  He dismissed a $10 million dollar lawsuit against Craigslist brought by a shooting victim.  The shooter, who was crazy, had purchased the gun on Craigslist, thus Craigslist is at fault, right? 

If the gun was purchased out of the trunk of a Ford Taurus at a McDonald's parking lot, does that mean Ford and McDonald's should be sued?

I do feel sorry for the victim, but if this line of thinking wins the day, we'll be living like the North Koreans in a no time.

Here's the full story.

For this blog post, I've reviewed EVERY Craiglist search engine.  Most are web based applications, but some are desktop software. Some only monitor Craigslist and send alerts, while others can only search.  If I've forgotten any, please let me know.  I don't want to exclude anyone.

Web Based Search Engines

Of the web based tools, a common scheme is to create a simple Google Custom Search and drop that into a two page site surrounded by ads.  There's not a whole lot of value in these types of sites, so they're listed at the end.

Starting with the best and working my way down:

http://searchtempest.com

SearchTempest searches Craigslist and eBay and it can do some cool zip code based logic where you enter your zip code and select a mile radius for your search.  This can save you some time when compared to crazedlist.org where you have to click on every Craigslist location you want to include in your search.

I was really hoping the search results would show up in one result grid, but that's not possible because of how web browsers work.  Instead the results are listed for each location in your search area.  While this makes it difficult to compare your search results, it's much better than just using Craigslist.

http://crazedlist.org

This site only works with FireFox...Chrome and IE can't hide the referrer which is important because Craigslist has blocked all traffic originating from websites like this one.  

However, even with FireFox the site won't let you search until you've changed the setting that removes the referrer information.  Desktop applications don't have this problem.  I never did get it working, but I've heard good things about this site from people who have.

http://padmapper.com

I really like this site.  Find your next apartment by looking at maps which is a very intuitive and instantly weeds out the apartment listing you'll never want because of their location.  

Unfortunately, they only cover major metro areas and, since not all apartment listing can be mapped because they don't have an address, I guess they're not shown. 

http://clgenie.com

This site will monitor Craigslist for you and send an email when a new ad is posted.  Unfortunately, you can only do one location and one category at a time.  If you have very simple needs this might work for you. 

Eventually, as more people sign up for their service, Craigslist will ban their IP address because they'll be generating thousands of hits per hour to run searches.  This has been the fate for all the websites that monitor Craigslist for you.  As soon as they get popular, Craigslist turns off the spigot.

http://craigswish.com

I just found this site even though it's been around for a while.  The concept is interesting.  Unlike our system that alerts you when a new ad matches your search, their website automatically responds to the ad with a message you provided ahead of time. 

I don't see a way to filter on location or category, so it must monitor all of the US?  I wouldn't be comfortable sending out form letters to whoever happens to match my search...maybe that's just me.

http://craiglook.com

This website looks really cool, but it looks better than it functions.  It doesn't complain about your browser, but it doesn't really search Craigslist in real-time either. 

I ran a search that I knew should have a few results for today, but the latest result on their website was three days old!

http://google.com

You can search Craiglslist on Google by adding the text "site:craigslist.org" to your search.  Many sites use Google Custom Search and as such have little difference in the value they add.  Here's the list:

• http://searchallcraigs.com
• http://craigzoom.com
• http://everycraigslist.com
• http://searchtheentirecraigslist.com

Notice some of these sites have Craigslist in the name.  They're just asking for trouble. Here's a site that learned the hard way: http://craigslist-search.com.

Desktop Based Search Engines

I tested every desktop tool on a Windows XP SP3 virtual machine using Microsoft's Virtual PC.  I used AVG 8.5 to scan for viruses before I installed each application and then I re-ran the virus scan after I had used each tool for a while.  Every tool listed here was clean.

http://motiont.com

This software is completely free, there is no premium option.  There are ads in the application, but they're not really that bad.  Some parts of the applications I really like, and some parts...not so much. 

I think the results display grid and menu on the right side of the built-in browser are slick, but other parts are kinda broken looking.  The advanced search doesn't seem to display correctly and creating an alert seems more complicated than it needs to be. 

Since this is a desktop application, your computer must be running to get alerts sent to you.  So it's not good for people who use laptops or keep their computer off most of the time.

http://craigspal.com

These guys have been at this for a while and have some great features.  Like our search tool, they store your searches online, so you can access them from any computer. 

For paying members, they have a feature for sending "digest" emails, which will email you new results from your saved searches at the beginning of the day.  They have instant alerts, but your computer must be on for you searches to be run.  So, like motiont.com's Craigslist Reader, it's also not good for laptop users.

http://craigstoolbox.com/

This is a browser plug-in that shows you the images in the ad without having to click into the ad.  That's all it does, but it's definitely better than the alternative as demonstrated in their video. 

My only grip with these guys that that they don't post a price.  There's a 14 day trial, but it's not clear how much they charge afterwards.

http://adnotifier.com/

This software is really just for notifications, but still it's not that easy to use.  You can not easily set up alerts across multiple locations or categories.  Your initial search only displays results in the normal Craigslist website, there's no value add for searching with this software. 

Like the other software mentioned above, you won't get alerts unless you're computer is running.

http://freecraigslistwatcher.com/

This is beta software that is a little under developed at this point.  I don't think there's any notification system built into the product, but it maybe too early to tell.

The NotifyWire.com Difference

So what makes NotifyWire.com different?  Well, our search tool is similar to some of the other desktop tools, however there are two key differences. 

First, all your data is stored on our website and that means you can access your account from multiple installations of our search tool (think work and home).  Also, you can view and edit your alerts and bookmarks directly on our website.  You can also change your Ad Alert search criteria online.

The most important difference is that we use "Grid Computing" to monitor Craigslist.  Every instance of our search tool functions as a node on the grid.  So, when you shut your computer off, only one node of the grid stops running.  

The grid always has active nodes running and we have a complex algorithm to make efficient use of hits against Craigslist's servers and also limits the number of hits per computer to Craigslist.

This is our "secret sauce" that allows us to monitor Craigslist when your laptop is off and enables us to check Craigslist more frequently than anyone else without getting banned.  The more people that join the grid, the better the entire system becomes, so make sure to tell your friends.