For those of you who don’t know, Craigslist is a classified website serving many cities across the U.S. The site is completely free to both purchase and sell items in your area with the exception of if you want to post a job ad. You can find everything there from a new apartment to a used toaster.

They opened up a section dedicated to my area about 2 years ago. and it took about 6 months for it to start getting a little popular and now its at the point where you can just about anything you are looking for. I imagine it has started putting a hurt on the local newspapers classified ads.

Sure if you are selling something your market is more limited than on EBay, but are you really going to ship that 8 year old couch to someone in California? I love it for finding stuff that I only will use a couple times a year so feel silly paying retail price for it - right now I’m scouring for a snowblower.

Here are some examples of great things that have happened to me on Craigslist:

• Purchased a barely used automatic swimming pool cleaner for $125. Retails in store for $550.
• Sold some computer monitors I was on the verge of just throwing out for $100.
• Posted an ad when I was selling my townhouse for sale by owner. Had multiple people come to my open house and say they saw it on Craigslist and one person from there put in a bid on it.

People have also done some really cool things with it like Housing Maps which takes the real estate for sale on Craigslist and puts it into a google map so you can look at only a particular desired area easily.

So if Craigslist is in your area and you haven’t checked it out yet, give it a shot! However as with everywhere on the internet, be vigilant of scams.