This clever idea was pointed out to us by WayneW in our forums. In his post, he highlighted a way to use the power of free listings, free affiliate programs, and free email to earn money. Yes I used the word “free” three times in the last sentence. This is a great way to earn an income online because you don’t need a blog or website to participate. Here’s how you do it:

Pluck out Popular Want Ads

1) Go to the “For Sale” section of any Craigslist city. The very last option is the “wanted” section. That section contains posts from people who are looking to find or buy a variety of things.

2) Pick an item that is reasonably popular that might have a fair amount of listings: somthing like “Ipod”. (Basically you’re going to look for something that does have quite a few listings available on eBay.)

3) Now (for this example we will use the Ipod) do a search in the search field and that will bring up all the ads from people wanting Ipods or things related to Ipods. If there are no ads pick another item but if there are some ads, go in and read a few of them to see what they want.

Find Matches on eBay & Set up Links

4) The next step is to go to Ebay and type in the exact search you want. You can search for all Ipods in Seattle using the advanced search if you are in the Seattle Craigslist or you don’t have to be that specific and just search for all Ipods anywhere. Once you have that page open with the search you want listing all the Ipods, copy that URL as that is where you are going to direct your “customers”.

5) You then need to go to Ebay’s flexible destination tool which you can find here. Fill in your Commission Junction PID number (you did sign up for the CJ Ebay Affiliate program first right?) and then paste in the URl that you copied from the Ebay search. Finally, enter in the text that you want your customers to click on to take them to the Ebay Ipod section. Something like “click here” or “right here” will do.

Contact Your Potential Customers

6) The final step is to email all the Craigslist people who placed the ads with your information. An email that is worded similar to this will work well:

Hi,

I noticed you were looking for an Ipod. I did some searching and found some Ipods that you might be interested in right here (the “right here” would be your link to Ebay as exlpained above in #5.)

I hope this helps.

Your Name Here

Send the email and then do it again and again for each of the people looking for those Ipods. By the way, this is not spamming since these people have placed wanted ads and you are simply pointing them in a direction that may help them find what they are looking for. Always be curtious of course and try to help them.

You can do this in any city, for any item, and the wanted ads keep changing so you will never run out of ads to respond to! If you have questions about the Ebay affiliate payout structure please see this post from last week.

This system is not neccessarily an easy one but it is free. It costs you absolutely nothing to try and the more you do it the easier it will become. Remember, you get $25.00 for everyone who signs up and wins an auction through your link! That is a nice payoff that may motivate you to send off another batch of helpful emails.

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