by Joe Wallace
Some writers I know swear by Craigslist; I used to swear by it myself until the advent of the CL scraper sites where “freelance jobs” means every CL post known to mankind along with all the other popular writing job sources. Now those who post jobs on CL are flooded with a massive amount of replies from writers from every skill level. Some who used to post jobs on Craigslist have given up and while there are still legit jobs to be found there, you have to wade through such an enormous amount of crap that it hardly seems worth it from where I sit.
But there are PLENTY of people who still love Craigslist as a source for freelance jobs. And in spite of the clearinghouses (a nice way of saying “Craigslist scraper sites) there is a way to beat the system. It’s so obvious that I’m sure many of our readers here are already doing this…but for those who aren’t, let me explain why you absolutely DO NOT need to rely on ANY third party website to get the Craigslist info you need.
Here’s the rub. Third party CL scraper sites often post once or twice a day. Do they update in real time? When those new job posts hit the web, do these third party sites update? Does it even matter? No. Because there’s a simple trick that eliminates your need for the third party site.
1. Go to the writing section of Craigslist in your city of choice and scroll all the way down to the bottom
2. On the righthand side, click on the orange RSS box and subscribe the RSS feed.
UPDATE:
Turns out TwitterFeed isn’t going to help as much as we thought. Craigslist now has some kind of setup where any links shortened by bit.ly get directed to a NOT FOUND message. Unfortunately the info below won’t work properly. Looking into a workaround but for now you can still use the above–RSS feeds into your browser–to access CL jobs without resorting to a third party.
Now you have the feed coming directly to your browser folder. Do this for as many cities as you like. But what if you need to have mobile access to these feeds on the go? Take the extra steps below:
3. Follow steps one and two. Right Click on the RSS feed to record the address.
4. Go to TwitterFeed.com and set up an account.
5. Create a new feed to post to your Twitter account in TwitterFeed using the RSS addy of the cities you choose in Craigslist.
6. Now you have instant Twitter updates anytime Craigslist adds a job listing in the cities you add to the Twitterfeed account.
What’s that? Don’t know how to setup a TwitterFeed RSS feed to your Twitter account? Once you have set up a TwitterFeed account, click CREATE NEW FEED and follow the instructions. It’s very easy. Add as many CL cities as you need and now you have all the fresh CL jobs INSTANTLY posted to the Twitter account of your choice. Make your Twitter account private and only you and your pals will see the jobs, for better or worse.
FZ is doing this now on our twitter account for our readers. We’re adding one city at a time so it’s going to be a bit slow at first…but we’re doing it more to encourage people to set it up for themselves rather than trying to be the new Freelance Jobs Scraper of the Week.