The Craigslist Experiment

Trying to get page views on a blog heralds an interesting assortment of marketing. One dives head first into the world of SEO, digital marketing, social networking, forums, meta tags, and HTML leading to becoming a first-rate graphic web designer before you figure it all out.

I decided to perform a little marketing experiment through Craigslist to see if something so simple would actually work. The idea came to me via the significant other who suggested using the rants and raves listing (found under personals) as a marketing tool. I would write anti-supportive comments about my blog and post the link underneath the comments.

I used two Craigslist areas, one out-of-state and the other in my nearby region.  Next, I made my postings. The first posting I titled "This Blog Sucks" with no specified location. The contents were the following:

"Damn cashier writing crap about customers. She's probably rude as hell."

and underneath I placed a link to my blog Regaling Retail. My next posting titled "stupid cashier" went a little bit deeper into the rants and raves model. I wrote:

"i hate when i give my money to the cashier and she can't count stupid cashier had to look at the screen to figure out how much change to give me i read this stupid blog about retail from a cashiers eyes she probably cant count either"

and of course I placed a link to my blog beneath this posting too. I checked my page stats to monitor the views and sure enough my trafficking popped up with the referral URL's from the two postings. 

In under twenty-four hours I received eleven views from my region and twelve from out-of-state. Granted theses are not big numbers, but the fact that the views keep coming says something about digital marketing, no? 

I could not believe that people were actually reading my postings in rants and raves. I thought someone would try and flag my posting or at least make some sort of reply, but it seems we have gotten so used to being scammed that we walk in and out of it with no issues. 


I did not receive one reply nor did I receive any comments on my blog whatsoever. I hope I found new followers or someone enjoyed my work.