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Advanced Description Writing

Like I mentioned earlier, Craigslist is very limited in the tools provided to write a description for your postings. For example, you cannot change the font, font size, colors, etc....

But because the posting follows the rules of HTML you can use HTML tags in your postings to jazz it up a bit.

HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language and is the language used to make web pages. I'm not going to get into how to program in HTML, but if you have knowledge in this area you can use your expertise to write your postings using HTML and make your descriptions more presentable and have more flexibility in using photos.

Don't know HTML? That's OK, even a beginner can use some simple web design software to create pages, then the software converts it to HTML, and you can simply paste it into your posting.

One such program for doing this is Nvu. It is free web design software that can be downloaded at www.Nvu.com. Use Nvu to create a presentable description page and then paste it into your posting on craigslist

Let's look at an example of how a posting written with HTML can compare to the same posting not using HTML. The next page shows a Craigslist posting, using HTML formatting in the description. Notice how fonts, and picture placement can be manipulated to create a presentable description.

With some basic HTML and web design skills, you can use our web editor to create descriptions like this:

Compare the above posting to a similar posting for a Jeep:

Pretty bland compared to the HTML one right?

Using HTML is an advanced technique and just something to think about when you feel like bumping up your professionalism in your descriptions. But don't feel like you absolutely have to. You can still make perfectly effective descriptions and have great sales while using the Craigslist default settings. In fact, the Craigslist default settings are still what I use in my own descriptions. Though fancy graphics and picture placement may seem like they would increase sales, I find the real selling point is what you say in your text.

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