For many of us Craigslist is a great source of wood. Most of what I have has been from these listings. But make no mistake about, it can be competitive. I've arrived at several wood sites to find only the discarded crotches and narlies...or just piles of dust on the ground.
Here is my tip for being the first to receive those listings and ultimately the first one at the wood site. If speed is not your game this will still provide your Craigslist info to you faster than ever without having to enter your search criteria, or actually check Craigslist, again. Beyond that, this is a fantastic way to manage all your online information sources and review hundreds of articles in record time from a single screen. It's like having an inbox for each website so the news, info, articles come to you. It takes a few minutes a day for me to monitor 40+ sites (but just a bit longer to read what I want).
The answer: RSS
If you know what RSS is then you might as well stop reading. It's not magic. It's been around a loooong time but I'm constantly shocked at how few people adopt this simple tool. I figured I'd mention it to my friends here who may be spending to much time checking Craigslist and not enough time bucking!
I'll show you how this works with an example of how I've used it to find free firewood from Craigslist.
1) Run your search in Craigslist as usual.
2) At the bottom right corner of the results screen is a small, orange 'RSS' graphic. (pic #1) Right-Click on the graphic and choose to copy the link. Internet Explorer will give you the option to 'Copy Shortcut...' Using Firefox you choose 'Copy Link Location' (pic #2)
3) Paste that copied link into your RSS Reader (more about the reader in a minute)
4) I've done this for 4 different Craigslist searches covering 4 geographic areas that I might travel to for wood. My results look like pic #3.
I have it setup to refresh every 15 minutes so my wood listings are always up to date, I can quickly glance to find a new listing and I never have to click around in Craigslist again
As suggested in step #3, you will need an RSS Reader. There are many to chose from and they are free. I use Feedreader and have been happy with it. (I'll give it a 7 out of 10) I'm sure others can offer reviews for other readers. If you don't want to (or can't) download/install a small application then you can use Google Reader. This is also a good choice if you move from computer to computer and want to keep your feeds with you. The only downside is that you have to log in to your Google account for each session.
Again. this is not limited to Craigslist. Look around for the orange RSS icon on any site you visit and add those links as well. You'll be surprised how many sites provide this feature...look at the bottom of this post
This is one of my most powerful tools for mining news sites, message boards and more. Hope it helps you too.
Here is my tip for being the first to receive those listings and ultimately the first one at the wood site. If speed is not your game this will still provide your Craigslist info to you faster than ever without having to enter your search criteria, or actually check Craigslist, again. Beyond that, this is a fantastic way to manage all your online information sources and review hundreds of articles in record time from a single screen. It's like having an inbox for each website so the news, info, articles come to you. It takes a few minutes a day for me to monitor 40+ sites (but just a bit longer to read what I want).
The answer: RSS
If you know what RSS is then you might as well stop reading. It's not magic. It's been around a loooong time but I'm constantly shocked at how few people adopt this simple tool. I figured I'd mention it to my friends here who may be spending to much time checking Craigslist and not enough time bucking!
I'll show you how this works with an example of how I've used it to find free firewood from Craigslist.
1) Run your search in Craigslist as usual.
2) At the bottom right corner of the results screen is a small, orange 'RSS' graphic. (pic #1) Right-Click on the graphic and choose to copy the link. Internet Explorer will give you the option to 'Copy Shortcut...' Using Firefox you choose 'Copy Link Location' (pic #2)
3) Paste that copied link into your RSS Reader (more about the reader in a minute)
4) I've done this for 4 different Craigslist searches covering 4 geographic areas that I might travel to for wood. My results look like pic #3.
I have it setup to refresh every 15 minutes so my wood listings are always up to date, I can quickly glance to find a new listing and I never have to click around in Craigslist again
As suggested in step #3, you will need an RSS Reader. There are many to chose from and they are free. I use Feedreader and have been happy with it. (I'll give it a 7 out of 10) I'm sure others can offer reviews for other readers. If you don't want to (or can't) download/install a small application then you can use Google Reader. This is also a good choice if you move from computer to computer and want to keep your feeds with you. The only downside is that you have to log in to your Google account for each session.
Again. this is not limited to Craigslist. Look around for the orange RSS icon on any site you visit and add those links as well. You'll be surprised how many sites provide this feature...look at the bottom of this post
This is one of my most powerful tools for mining news sites, message boards and more. Hope it helps you too.