According to Alexa, Craigslist.org is one of the top internet destinations. In fact, in the United States, Craigslist is a 10 most visited U.S. websites. It is so large that it gets 0.2% of all traffic on the internet. That means that on any given day, one in 500 people worldwide will visit Craigslist with the vast majority being U.S. visitors.

This kind of traffic puts Craigslist on par with places like eBay and Amazon for number of visitors looking to buy, sell and network opportunities per day. And unlike these other sites, you can use Craigslist to help your business grow with no cost to you. There is no cost to place messages and ads on Craigslist (with some very small, limited market exceptions.) In fact, for 99+% of your uses, Criagslist requires nothing more than a bit of time for you to post and read ads in categories that interest you.

So what is Craigslist and how can it help your real estate investment busniess?

Craigslist is the ultimate high traffic, city centric niche classified site. It is broken down into hundreds of cities so visitors can look for and conduct local business in a variety of topics. If you live in Miami, there is a section for Miami. If you live in Los Angeles, there is a section of Craigslist for Los Angeles. In fact, there are literally hundreds of U.S. cities represented in Craigslist and many more internationally. Each city offers its own comprehensive collection of categories offing areas where you can sell or find goods, look for a job, advertise real estate and more.

You may be thinking – great another place besides my local newspaper where I can spend my advertising dollars. Well, if you are thinking that, you are in for a shock. Craigslist ads can be posted for free. There is no fee to place an ad and no fee if a deal happens. (There are a few small exceptions to this rule but 99.9% of all Craigslist users will never have to pay a fee to conduct business in this massive classified site.)

Now that you know what Craigslist is and how many visitors it gets on a daily basis, let's look at how you can you use this to benefit your real estate investing business? Lets see how savvy investors are using Craigslist today to make even more money buying and selling homes.

1) Find Workers - Lets say that you purchased a house and need to find a worker to help you with landscaping or general handyman tasks. You can use the services section to find help. They have categories like “skilled trade” and “labor” where you can find people willing and able to help you out. And here is the exciting part. You can post an ad spelling out exactly what skills you need and people will contact you. And you can do this at no cost to you.

2) Troll for leads – There are sections of Criagslist where you can look for leads for your next property acquisition or even find investors willing to offer funds to buy your next property. Some good categories is Services/Real Estate and housing/real estate for sale.

3) Find renters – If you put an ad in the housing section called apts/housing, you will be able to find all the tenants you need. I have a friend who is a licensed realtor specializing in rentals and he uses Craigslist exclusively to generate all his leads for his landlord clients.And he rents many apartments, townhouses and houses each and every month with zero lead cost.

4) Selling a House – Utilize the Real Estate for Sale section under Housing and you will have your phone ringing off the hook with hot prospects looking for a house just like yours. Or use it to build a buyer’s list or to determine needs by advertising different houses you have for sale. When those houses are sold/rented, keep the ad up a bit longer and build a list of more people looking for specific types of properties or to take backup offers in case the primary offer falls through. And then go find new properties that match the lead's wish list.

5) Sell Your Castoffs – If you just bought a house and are cleaning it out, you can use Craigslist to sell any valuable items you cleaned out of the house – or just give away stuff to save on the cost of hauling them to the local landfill. You can sell just about anything on Craigslist and it is a great way to get rid of old kitchen cabinets, appliances, etc. It is amazing what people will take if the price is right.

6) Find an Employee – If your business needs a part-time or a full time employee or a contractor to help you out, why pay the exorbitant fees that your local newspaper charges. Just place your ad in the employment section of Craigslist and find that person without spending a penny on your help wanted ad.

These are just a few of the ways Craigslist can be used to grow your investing business. Take some time to study the ads that people are currently placing in various categories and you will be able to find many other innovative ways to use Craigslist for your profit.