My Wife, Our Hot Tub, Craig's List & Extra Money
As we all know, love it or hate it, Craig's List is one of the largest market places on the internet to buy, sell or trade nearly anything.
Here is the story how I made some extra cash, and the simple marking tips to help your sales, and maybe even start your own business.
My wife and I purchased a used hot tub from a local hot tub service tech in our home town.
We placed the unit on our patio under an add-on roof line attached to our house.
A couple of winters later, we had a very bad ice storm, and the add-on roof collapsed.
The hot tub survived, but the roof was a toast.
Next I built a new deck in the yard for the hot tub, and added a nice cover with netting and some privacy panels.
Again, an Oklahoma winter took out cover, and left the hot tub sitting open.
At this point we decided to sell the hot tub, and move on to other projects.
Although we were not crazy about selling the item on Craig's List (We all have heard the horror stories), we moved forward the idea.
First I checked the other listings to see the price and quality of our local competition.
To my surprise, there were plenty of hot tubs for sale, but the listings were so poorly done, that I actually got excited about building a really great ad.
At this point I should disclose the fact that I am a professional sales person, and market & sell materials across the United States.
I decided to not only sell the hot tub on Craig's List, but also see if I could gain some new customers for our Material Handling business at the same time.
So along with the ad, I decided to build a basic sales funnel, and do some list building to promote our local business.
(More on the sales funnel & list building in a bit)
The ad:
Headline: Hot Tub For Sale (Video: Wife & Tub)
Yep, just that headline and the link to a video made the ad a success.
While all of the other ads had a few pictures, or no pictures at all, this ad really got folks curiosity up.
It did not matter that the homemade video (Hosted On YouTube & Embedded On Our Web Site Page) was just a video of the used hot tub working, and my wife off camera describing the item.
The Craig's List ad made the viewers take action by clicking the link to our web page to see the video, where we also promoted other items, including our industrial & material handling equipment.
An "Opt-In Form" was also included on the site, offering previews of the newest items we had coming in.
Here is an example of a Opt-In Form:
Fill it out and you will be automatically sent a free Craig's List - Check List that will guide you to making more money with your ads, and the opportunity to add additional revenue through lead generation and sales funnels.
