Your Craigslist Classifieds Authority Site

3) List the Good Specs/Features of the Item

Again, you want to grab the viewers attention, so take what remaining characters you have left in the title after doing the first two steps and put the best specs/features of the unit. You want people to be interested, so list the good points.

For example if you are selling the same Dell Inspiron laptop as in the above example, put “1GB RAM”, or “120GB hard drive” in the title if those are the best specs of the unit.

If you are selling a used car list the good specs like:

2005 Cadillac STS, Bose Audio & Navigation, Low Miles, Check it out!

instead of

2005 Cadillac STS, some dents in right front fender, back tire flat.

Only put the good specs because you can always list the complete specs in the description. And remember, you want people to click on your title and read your description. You may be able to sell them on something they didn't really want, if your description is good. That's why you don't want to list any mediocre specs or flaws in the title. The visitor may skip over your post if they don't like what's in the title

Another element you can put in the title is the condition of the item if it is very good to perfect. “Mint Condition”, “Perfect Condition”, “Brand New”, “Never Used”, “Excellent Cond.”, etc... All of these are good and should be included in the title if they apply.

Here's an example:

Brand New!! Acer 3690 Laptop Computer 1.6GHz/512M/Wireless

or

Perfect Ludwig Classic Birch Drum Set-Blue Oyster Pearl-Only one Made

Also notice the use of all the characters available in the title.

What not to do

In writing your title, try to avoid the following things:

Using all capital letters - Though it may catch your attention, it is hard to read and is sometime pretty annoying. also remember that as far as Internet and email etiquette goes, CAPITAL LETTERS = yelling!

Ex: 2000 PONTIAC GRAND AM GT"BEAUTIFUL PA CAR"LOW MILES

Excessive punctuation – This just looks stupid and is wasting valuable real estate in your title. An asterisk or two used to grab attention is fine, but excessive use is just a waste. It is unprofessional and annoying. Take a look at the example below and tell me if you would buy off this guy.

Ex: ***********1988 trans-am******************

Spell words wrong – Having bad spelling will reduce trust that you are a legit buyer. As you will find out in a later chapter, bad spelling and grammar are the first giveaways to a scammer. So do what you can to make your spelling correct.

Ex: 1998 Pontiack Grand Pree – Low Mile's – Great condishion

Use Bad Grammar – Bad grammar is just as bad as bad spelling. Not only does it make your posting hard to understand and makes your reader not associate with you, it is also a sign of a scammer in this day and age. Use bad grammar and you are dooming yourself to little or no sales.

Ex: Apple Laptop – Software it has loaded with – Fun many games!!!

Putting it all together

Now that I went over the main points about making a great title for your postings, let put it all together and go over some examples of good titles.

Let's first continue with the example of the Dell Inspiron Laptop. An example of a title I would use is:

New Low Price! Dell Inspiron 600m Laptop Computer 120GB HD/1Gig RAM
or
Clearance! Dell Inspiron 600m Laptop 120GB HD/1Gig RAM/Centrino

Say you are selling a Plasma TV:

Must Sell! Panasonic TX-42PX Plasma HDTV 42” 720P Dual HDMI Inputs

Here's a title I found for sunglasses in the “sporting” section on Craigslist that I like. Notice the use of the asterisks to get attention. If you put this title up against others on Craigslist, it really stands out.

**Wiley X PT-1 Smoke Lens Brand New Sunglasses w/ case**

I also like the way he used “Brand New”. Stating the condition can sometimes help your title, especially if it is a brand new item. The only thing I didn't like about this title is he had about 15 characters left that he didn't use and could of. Think of your title as valuable real estate and use every last character you can.

Here's a few others I found on Craigslist that I like:

ARNOLD PALMER Autographed Artwork 34"x42" 13th Green at Augusta
(the use of capital letters is the attention getter in this one – but don't overdo it)

BowFlex XTreme II and Elliptical - GREAT PRICE! Must see!!

Vintage 1977 RARE WEDGWOOD 9 Piece Peter Rabbit Dish Set

ROBIN ROBERTS 1957 Topps Baseball Card #15 - VG-EX Condition

Roland TD8 Drums WITH Peavy KB/A100 AMP THIS WEEKEND
(this one is nice because it forces the buyer into action by giving a deadline)

Alternative Method - Creating A Mystery

A person can rarely be given a mystery without craving that it be resolved. That's why those “Law and Order” type shows do so well on TV. The viewer just “has to see” how it ends. You can use this technique to increase your sales as well on Craigslist. By creating a mystery in your title you may get more people clicking on it wanting to resolve the mystery.

Following the philosophy of how the Craigslist search engine works, you could technically NOT have any words in your title that tell what item you are selling and still come up in the search results for a certain item. Take a title like this for example:

You will never find an item like this in your life!!!

This could be a posting for anything! But remember, Craigslist searches the description too. So lets say you're posting this item and it is for a Panasonic plasma TV. If somewhere in your description you included “Panasonic plasma TV” , someone doing a search for “Panasonic TV” would see the above title in their results.

The problem with making a title this vague is that it may not get the interest of someone actually looking for a TV. They may think it is spam or unrelated. So maybe a better title would be:

You will never find a TV deal like this in your life!!!
or
You will never find a Plasma TV deal like this in your life!!!

Now the reader at least knows you are pitching a TV and may be more inclined to click. It creates a mystery. The mystery being “How good of a deal is it?”

This method will ONLY work if the accompanying description contains all the keywords that describe the actual item. This is the only way Craigslist search will actually include your posting in the results for someone looking for a TV. So, though your title is vague, the description needs to be detailed.

You could say this method is extreme and the earlier way I told you to create the title is more conservative. And both methods have their place. See which method works best for you.

Here's some other suggestions for “Extreme” style title writing:

Panasonic Plasma TV!! – You'd be crazy not to click on this!!

Brand New Dell Laptop – This is the deal of the Century!!!

You will NEVER find a computer for a cheaper price than this!

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