The adage is something like – It pays to advertise. In this case, in didn’t pay but the results were certainly impressive.
If anyone has doubted the power of Craigslist, I can assure you that people are reading those classified ads. In an attempt to clean out the storage space, I listed the lumber that I had used to assemble my makeshift bookshelves under the ‘Free’ heading.
The post listing button had barely been pressed before the telephone began ringing. The first caller gave me his name and promised to hop in his truck and head to Broken Arrow. After explaining to the next ten callers that the lumber was spoken for, I signed back into Craigslist and deleted the ad.
Still, the calls continued.
It took a few minutes for the ad to disappear, but even that wasn’t the last of it. I presume some folks wrote down the number to call later. By that time, my first contact had called back to say he was in town.
Half an hour later, I’m back in the store and the lumber is gone.
Now, if I can just have a bit of that success trying to sell the glass showcase, also in storage.
That bit of advertising might actually pay off in cash.