Someone I knew (lets call him Kevin) was looking for tickets to a concert (lets call it Brittany Spears). This concert was sold out and has been for months. Kevin posted a Want Ad on Craig’s List including the fact that he was just dying to go see Brittany Spears. Within a few hours, he had an offer to sell him the tickets at half the price he would have had to pay if he had gone the retail route.

What Is Craigslist

If you have been sitting in a deep, dark cave for the last half-decade or so you might be asking that question. Craig’s list is the internet’s equivalent to the Classifieds. You can buy, sell, beg for employment and otherwise make interesting and often terrifying requests — take this one, for example:

Dear Crazy-As-Bat-[ahem]-Lady:

3. Please call me only once with ALL your questions. I left for the day, and had 5 messages on my answering machine, the last one was at 10:30 pm. Frankly lady, you were sounding a bit too crazy by the end of the day. It’s a fridge. A small metal box that keeps shit cold. I don’t have the fridge’s family tree. For all I know the fridge’s was conceived by a slutty young Maytag that graced some hillbilly’s side porch. I don’t know the exact age of the fridge. I bought it a few months ago, I used it for a couple of days, ok, I lied, I used it a whole week. The fact is, you’re not buying a race horse, you’re buying a used fridge…

Creative Uses Of Craig’s List

Seeing Craig’s list as merely a more entertaining version of eBay is a bit short-sighted. Thus, in typical How To Split An Atom fashion I am going to give you a few creative uses of Craig’s List.

Find Free Labor

I knew someone who wanted to shoot a movie, and didn’t have a budget for it. A day after he posted the request on Craig’s list he had 20 candidates willing to drive across the state to come work for him for free. If you have a compelling idea and just need people, Craig’s list is the place to go.

Waste An Hour

Craig’s list is a bastion for entertaining bits of human drama. It’s like a forum, but involving money. It’s a system just overflowing with entertaining banter. Thus, if you have some free time — pick a region, open up a browser window and go to town.

Drive Traffic

A company that I do consulting for is currently hard at work looking for employees. As such, they posted a job request on Craig’s list. That post is now one of the larger sources of traffic to their main page. The point? People who are interested in working for you are often also interested in your product, and Craig’s list provides a great platform to introduce them to it.

Be An Internet Troll

It’s old news, so I suggest following the bouncing link to today’s history lesson.

Web 2.0 Roundup

So next time that you are on Craig’s List, try some of these tips and if you find anymore uses for this great site send them my way.

Photo Credit

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