Ideas For Making Money With A Cyber Yard Sale On Craigslist.org

Ideas For Making Money With A Cyber Yard Sale On Craigslist.org

You have a lot of items you want to get rid of or sell. The idea of a yard sale or moving sale does not appeal to you because you do not want to give up your weekend to sell your items. Auction sites on the web will not work for some of your items as you would like to sell larger things that are not easily shipped. They can also be expensive if the items do not sell. The ideal place for you would be a free website that has enough traffic to make it worth your while. Craigslist.org is what you are looking for. Chances are you are close to one of the 450 areas that this website covers. Here are some ideas for making money with a cyber yard sale on craiglsist.org.

The first step is to take great photographs of all of your items. A digital camera is the best way, but if you only have a 35mm or APS camera that is ok too. Just have the place where you get the film developed put the images on to a CD for you. Then write your ads. Use a good title with a keyword that will get it noticed. If you are selling vintage dinning room chairs, then in your title say "Vintage Dinning Room Chairs". This way, your ad will attract only the buyers that are looking for vintage chairs; not someone who is looking for a rocking chair. Your final step is to write a really good descriptive ad for your item. Be sure to include any flaws your items may have and if they are new state that. If they are used also state that. The price of the item should be clearly noted. Craigslist.org will protect your privacy. You can have all emails forwarded to you through their system. Your email address is not posted for all to see. Now that you have your ad written, do the same for every item you wish to sell.

Getting your ads posted is easy. All it takes is a valid email address to register. It is always free on craigslist.org. Once your ads are posted, you will have to manage them. Every ad you post is valid for 45 days. What is not told to you though is that as your ad gets older, it drops to the bottom of the listings. In order to keep your ad toward the top of the first page, you must delete and repost every 2-3 days. By doing this your ad will be visible to all. A lot of people searching for items do not search past the first page. If you have many items for sale and do not think you will be able to keep up with deleting and reposting in this time frame, then think about posting fewer items at a time, if you can. This way there is less to manage.

The advantages of selling your items in a cyber yard sale on craigslist.org are numerous. You do not have to depend on the weather. Traditional yard sales, no matter how well planned are at the mercy of the weather, unless you wish to bring it indoors. Another advantage is that you post and manage the ads, and then wait for responses. You do not lose an entire day or two. Finally, there is a greater level of security for you when using craigslist.org. Instead of advertising a yard sale with your address, everything is kept private and only interested individuals are given your contact information. You decide who you are going to sell to. This eliminates those who "browse" yard sales. Some of these browsing individuals may have ulterior motives.

Hopefully these ideas for making money with a cyber yard sale on craigslist.org have helped you. The internet has opened up a whole new way of turning our unwanted items into cash. Craigslist.org is a free way to get your unwanted items for sale in front of millions of visitors from your area. Many people are realizing how valuable an asset like this can be. With time becoming a rare commodity, why not use craigslist.org for your next yard sale. This way you can get to your kids baseball game without a conflict.

Call the Cops. There's a Criminal in my Computer!

Call the Cops.  There's a Criminal in my Computer!

A common plot of Hollywood thrillers is the “Don't Answer the Phone” device.  In this kind of movie, the babysitter is aware that there is a maniac about to come to kill her or the children.  The big moment comes when she gets a phone call from the police who say “The calls are coming from inside the house!”  Pretty scary stuff.

But we have a modern day version of “the maniac is inside the house”.  The maniacs are actually hiding in the house but not in the closet, not in the basement, not in the attic but in the computer!  And it isn't just happening to an occasional unfortunate victim.  These kinds of crimes are happening to thousands of people every day, people like you and me.  It's called cyber crime and it's an epidemic that law enforcement is putting all the skill and detective work they can muster to try to control.

When you hear a phrase like “cyber crime”, it makes you think of Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator as a heartless android out to create chaos.  But cyber criminals are far more elusive than Arnold.  They could be any one in your neighborhood or halfway around the world.  They don't need a key to your back door or a tunnel under your house to get in.  Cyber criminals can take up residence inside our computers and quietly commit crimes as we sit there enjoying our YouTube selections or having an IM chat with Aunt Edna.

The problem is not that our legal system has not done a good job of defining crimes committed using the internet as crimes.  The legal community has all the laws on the books that they need to stop these criminals.  The problem comes with finding the criminals and even know when a crime is being committed.  But despite the elusive nature of cyber criminals, some of the kinds of crimes that can be committed directly over the internet are pretty scary including…

* Identity theft.
* Fraud.
* Embezzling hundreds, maybe thousands from your bank account.
* Hijacking an elderly person's Social Security checks.
* Cyber seduction of youth and even children.
* Unauthorized access to your financial information which they can sell to other cyber criminals.
* The downloading of computer viruses and other destructive software that can damage your computer.
* Cyber terrorism.

Amazingly, most of this kind of crime can be happening inside your computer without you ever knowing it is there.  The key to success for cyber criminals are these little programs sometimes called “spybots”.  A spybot is a tiny program that can take up residence in your computer by hiding in your internet system with cookies and other content that you download when you are surfing the web.  These programs can then capture and record your keystrokes and send them back to the cyber crimanl who can capture your secure information from that data.  Or they can watch your cyber surfing and learn where you go to help cyber criminals figure out better ways to commit their crimes.

Cyber crime is something we hope our law enforcement professionals will eventually learn how to stop.  But because cyber criminals can be anywhere in the world, stay on the run and even change electronic locations of their “headquarters” without ever betraying their physical location or who they are, it's a amazingly difficult job for our law informant professionals to learn how to find these criminals and to capture them and put them away.

We can help by being ever vigilant about our computers.  There are programs we can install that can “lock the front door” of our computers.  The two top names in this kind of software are Norton and McAfee but there are dozens more that can do the job just as well.  The good news is that these programs can simultaneously watch our emails, monitor for spybots and keep our computer clean of viruses and other internet surprises that can cause so much damage.

So just as we work with neighborhood watch and put locks on our doors even though there are police in our neighborhoods, we have to view cyber crime as a problem that everybody has to work together to stop.  By making sure your computer is protected, you take one more victim out of the cycle.  And that helps everybody in our quest for a safer internet.