How To Create an Ad Like Mine! Status: feeling generous.

I get e-mails from time to time asking how I'm able to put so many pictures in my ads when Craigslist only gives you the option for Four total pics. I'm happy as a clam to help anybody out I can. It really sucks seeing the same seller with 15 or 20 ads taking up half a page of a Search. I don't know if having all my stuff in just 2 ads is a selling advantage or not but it sure makes it easier on me! I DO know that having crisp clear Pics that the buyer can click on to see larger pics IS an advantage.

So here's my "formula". I sussed this out by looking at other sellers ads and deconstructing or reverse engineering them. You can learn a lot from "right clicking" on a page and then selecting "view page source"!

1. Create a Flickr.com account. Flickr.com is a place to store your pictures on the internet. You will need to create a Yahoo account which is associated with Flickr.com

2. Take good pictures of your items. Use daylight instead of lamps or a flash if at all possible. Use low and interesting angles. A 3 megapixel (2048) picture is plenty big. Any bigger is a waste and Flickr.com will not show the picture at larger than PC screen size anyway. Plus Flickr.com limits the bandwidth per month you can use and big pictures use that up faster than medium pictures do.

3. Upload your pictures to Flickr.com

4. Open another instance of your web browser so that you can have both Craigslist and Flickr open at the same time.

5. Create a Craigslist ad.

6. On your Flickr "photostream" click on the picture you wish to include in your ad.

7. At the upper left of the page you should see "share this". Click on this.

8. In the drop down window you will see "grab the HTML". Click on this.

9. In the light grey box you will see the HTML address of your MEDIUM size picture. If you are only going to utilize a few pictures it would be OK to use the MEDIUM size picture. If you are going to use quite a few pictures you have to worry about how long it will take for all the pictures to load when a potential buyer clicks on your Craigslist ad. I suggest you click on the arrow pointing downward next to the "medium 500 (375 x 500)" and select "small (180 x 240)"

10. RIGHT click (use the right button on your mouse) on the HTML address of your picture. This will "highlight" the entire address and open up a small options box. Select "copy" from the options in the box.

11. Go back to your Craigslist ad and RIGHT click in the body where you want the picture to be. An option box will open up. Select "paste" and the HTML address of your picture will appear.

12. Repeat steps 6 through 12 for each additional picture you wish to include in your ad. Placing them "end to end" will result in the pictures being side by side. Placing a blank line between each will result in them being stacked on top of each other.

13. Place a blank line or two between the pictures of a particular item and its text description and then a few more blank lines between that description and the next set of pictures of another item.

14. Good luck seller! Hope this helps. Have fun.