Craiglist users publish about 50 million new classified advertisements every month. http://www.craigslist.org/about/factsheet You might be wondering with all these adverts, how can I find the ones relevant to me? This is largely achieved by the use of keywords and also by identifying the location you are wanting to respond to. In this guide you will be taken through the steps necessary, that guide you [[how to reply to a Craigslist ad].

When using Craigslist you will not know at all the people that you are replying to. It is therefore advisable to practice significant caution. Read the following Craiglist sections before replying to a Craigslist advertisement:

• Avoids scams and fraud http://www.craigslist.org/about/scams
• Personal Safety tips http://www.craigslist.org/about/safety

This guide has been split into three steps, which are summarized below:

• Step 1 – Select the location you wish to search for advertisements in – In this section, the process required to refine searches in Craigslist to restrict advertisements only to the area you are interesting in
• Step 2 – Finding a Craigslist advertisement – In this step the exact method to reply to Craigslist advertisements is detailed
• Step 3 – Reply to an advertisement – Some users prefer to be contacted in an alternative way to e-mail. This method is discussed, also detailed are approaches to troubleshooting advertisement responses

Step 1 provides guidance on how to best complete the set-up of a location. This will mean that when you search for Craigslist advertisements you will see advertisements only for your chosen area.

Location set-up You will need to set-up your location so that you can find advertisements in your preferred area. The process to achieve this is defined below:

• Click on a country (e.g. US)
• Click on a state (e.g. “Illinois”)
• Click on the area nearest to you (e.g. “Chicago”)
• At the top center of the screen you will now see the heading “Chicago”
• You can now select one of the 6 area settings, these are shown to the right of the “Chicago” heading:
  • Area 1 – code “CHC” – Chicago City
  • Area 2 – code “NCH” – North Chicagoland
  • Area 3 – code “WCL” – West Chicagoland
  • Area 4 – code “SOX” – South Chicagoland
  • Area 5 – code “NWI” – North West Indiana
  • Area 6 – code “YAM” – North West Suburbs

If area 1, Multnomah County is selected, this now creates a URL – http://chicago.craigslist.org/chc/ http://chicago.craigslist.org/chc/

Once you have completed the above you will have set-up the Craigslist search to output searches for your selected location. In this case, Chicago City, Chicago, Illinois has been selected.

Before you can reply to an advertisement you will first of all need to find an advertisement. There are two aspects of replying to a Craigslist advertisement:

1. Selecting your location (we accomplished this in step 1)
2. Find your advertisement within the sections of Craigslist, we will detail this throughout the rest of this step

The process of finding an advertisement is:

• Click on any of the categories:
  • Community – 14 sub categories (e.g. activities, artists, childcare)
  • Personals – 9 sub categories (e.g. strictly platonic, women seeking women, women seeking men)
  • Housing – 9 sub categories (e.g. apts/housing, rooms/shared, sublets/temporary)
  • For sale – 36 sub categories (e.g. appliances, antiques, barter)
  • Services – 19 sub categories (e.g. beauty, computer, creative)
  • Jobs – 32 sub categories (e.g. accounting and finance, admin/office, arch/engineering)
  • Gigs – 9 sub categories (e.g. computer, creative, crew)
• When you have clicked on any of the categories/subcategories you will see a whole list of advertisements.

You have now found an advertisement to reply to.

There is in addition a discussion forum (with 72 sub categories). This can similarly be responded to, but is treated differently as the content of the forums is not advertising.

In the previous steps you will have (A) Identified your location and (B) found your advertisement. In step 3 the process of replying to an advertisement is detailed.

To reply to a post via email (except personals which is detailed further down the page):

• Find your advertisement as per step 2
• Click on the advertisement
• You will see an e-mail address in blue and underlined in the top left area of the screen. This e-mail address will be formatted in either of two ways:
  • A standard e-mail address (e.g. peterjones1234@yahoo.com) any replies would go direct to this e-mail address
  • A craigslist e-mail address (e.g. xxxxxxxx@craigslist.org) all replies are forwarded to the real email address (but you would not see the real e-mail address).
• Click on the e-mail address, this will open your default e-mail application (alternatively you could copy the e-mail address (Control & C) and paste this into your e-mail application)
• Type your message in your e-mail application and send as usual and you have now replied
• N.B. Please be aware that the recipient of your e-mail will now know your e-mail address

For personals advertisements the process is:

• When you have clicked on the e-mail address, the following process will start
• You will see a Captcha box which will prompt you to type the words you see (this is to stop spam through bots)
• Type the words and then click reply
• Then you will need to complete the last 3 tasks of the process above

By following the above you will have replied to an advertisement, whatever its original category.