Just about everyone has used Craigslist (www.Craigslist.org). If you have something to sell and you want local buyers, you just post a free ad for your area and the phone starts ringing. Same thing if you are looking to purchase something – there is a category for just about everything, and if you can’t find a category for it, just do a search on the item name.
The biggest advantage of Craigslist is the fact that it is local – usually you can find people within a few miles or so. The biggest disadvantage is… it’s local. So what if you are looking for something and you don’t care if it is 50 miles away or 500 miles away? The standard Craigslist site doesn’t really work because it isn’t designed for that.
That’s where Craiggers comes in (www.Craiggers.com).
Craiggers gives you more options for searching Craigslist than are available on Craigslist itself. How would you use this to find what you want? Here are a few examples given on the site:
I live in the Tampa Bay area of Florida. Let’s say I’m looking for a special breed of dog – one that is not all that common. There might not be one in my local area, but maybe there’s someone in Orlando that has one – that’s only 2 hours away. Or I might find one in Jacksonville (4 hours away). Someone shopping for a rare, expensive dog – especially if it is to be a family pet for years to come – might want to search the whole state instead of just the cities around Tampa and Clearwater.
Your $2200 bike got stolen, and it’s likely that the thieves will post it for sale on Craigslist (which is one reason to be wary of too-good-to-be-true deals on there). However, they are probably not going to advertise it in the same city where it was stolen – they will probably list it outside that area. You can use Craiggers to search the areas where you think you might find it, not just in your neighborhood.
You’re a coin collector, and part of your vintage collection is almost completed. You need a particular Morgan silver dollar to complete a set. Since a coin is easy and inexpensive to ship, why not search Craigslist listings nationwide to see if anyone has that particular coin for sale? It’s actually pretty likely, since many thousands of items are listed for sale every day. Then you can contact the seller and work out the arrangements for payment and shipping.
Using the site is easy. There are 3 fields for your input on the home page:
1. Enter your key search word (what you’re looking for)
2. Click the drop down menu to choose the Craigslist category that’s appropriate (for sale, housing, jobs, etc.)
3. Click the drop down menu to choose the area you want to search. You can do a city, or a whole state, the entire US, or even the whole world. Then click “Search”.
The results page comes up in 3 columns. The column on the left offers additional filters to narrow down your results. The middle column is the list of results for your search. When you click on one of them, that actual Craigslist ad is displayed on the right (the third column).
I made a quick video to show you an example of how to use it:
Do you use Craigslist? How would the Craiggers service come in handy for you?