Copywriting is king, even on Craigslist September 4, 2007
Posted by Niels in : Personal, Work , trackbackThanks to good copy, I sold a desk in a few hours that sat on Craigslist for an entire week with no takers. My original ad was very traditionally sales oriented - it listed benefit after benefit, then covered the features, then had four pictures of the desk. The ad was up on Craigslist for almost a week and I had only one person contact me.
A few days after I listed the desk, I listed my old bed as well. The ad was very simple, basically saying that I got the bed off of Craiglist a year ago for $50 and now wanted to pass it along by selling it for $40. I made sure to include a benefit rather than a feature in the headline (”relax in a queen-size bed” vs. “a relaxing queen-size bed”) and listed the features at the end of the ad. I figured since I was only selling the bed for $40, I wouldn’t need good copy.
My phone rang off the hook all weekend while I was at Bumbershoot. It good so bad I finally just took the ad down. I put it up again last night and sold the bed soon after waking up in the morning.
Apparently, that was good copy. Know your audience, build rapport, and all that.
So I threw out my desk ad and pasted in the bed ad, replaced the word “bed” with “desk”, took out all but one photo, reposted the ad, and within hours had sold my desk for $80. The buyer even threw in a few extra dollars to replace the saran wrap that I used to hold the drawers shut for transport.
Good copy makes a huge difference. Learn to do it right.
Comments»
Would you care to share with us examples?
Could you recommend a book on copywriting? How do you learn to copyright?
Thanks a lot for your help Niels