If you want to embed a video in a craigslist ad you can’t do it anymore but there are new workarounds that will help you.
ATTENTION: Read Craigslist’s Terms Of Use before linking from your ad in any way.
I just uploaded a new ad to craigslist with video embedded in it (sort of).
But when I was placing my ad there was a note from craigslist stating that they will not allow self hosted images in the ads ‘very soon’.
Why does this matter? Because craiglsit will not allow you to embed a video into the craigslist ad. But a way around this is to take a screen shot of your youtube video of your product, and then place that screen shot in the ad, and then ask your prospective buyer to click on the ‘video’ or image and they will be direct to the video on Youtube.
Since craigslit is not going to allow you do this ‘very soon’, you will have to use the craiglist image upload feature as usual, along with text links to your Youtube videos (or any videos on any site).
Here’s what my current ad looks like with the images and video embedded into the ad:
Since they won’t allow you to do this in a few days here’s how I will do it next time:
If I were to list this ad or another ad like with links to my videos I will take a screen shot of my video on Youtube and then place text in the image which will ask my prospect to click the video links in my craigslist ad. See Step 4 below.
Step 1: First create your craigslist ad with html, and post one or two links to your vidoes on Youtube. They will allow this.
Step 2: Place a link in the ‘About’ areas of your Youtube video back to your craigslist ad. You’ll have to go into your Video Manager and click Edit.
Step 3: Go to the actual video and take a screen shot of the video.
Step 4: Place Text and maybe arrows like I did to get your prospect to read what’s in your image like this:
Step 5: Write your ad using an html editor and place links to your Youtube video or videos in it like this:
First Highlight the text and click the link button to insert a link:
Second, place the link into your text and use your html editor to make your text look decent. In this case I highlighted the html that shows a subheadline centered above the two Youtube video links:
Here’s what the text will look like:
Here is a free html editor if you don’t have one.
Step 6: copy and paste your html into your craigslist ad and then upload images including the image of your Youtube video with text explaining that they should click the links in your ad to see your videos.
That’s it!
Why bother with the image of your Youtube video?
Because you want to make people feel more comfortable about clicking out of craigslist ad and by showing a picture of your product in a video and supporting images of the same product you will give them that much more confidence.
I hope this ad video to craigslit article was helpful 🙂
