Use RSS and Google Reader To Save Time On Craigslist

If you’re shopping for a new job, used car, microwave or whatever, Craigslist combined with Google Reader (or any RSS reader) can be a powerful combo due to a little thing called RSS!  It’s a huge time saver AND, helps me get exactly the data I need in one centralized place.

How To Make Planned Purchases On Craigslist Without The Craigslist Hassle

1. On Craigslist when performing a search, enter into the category for whatever you’re looking and carry out the search as normal.

Search Tips:

• Always enter a minimum price, this will keep junk from showing up, and help you avoid “too-good-to-be-true” scams.
• Check the only search titles box.  Many sellers like to keyword bomb their ads, so this check keeps out unrelated spam.
• If you’re a budget, enter a max price but remember you can usually negotiate with a seller to work out a lower price.

2. Once you’ve performed a search, Right-Click the RSS icon at the very bottom of the page and Select Copy Link Location for Firefox or Copy Shortcut for Internet Explorer.

2.B. Optionally you can just Click the RSS icon at the bottom of the page or in the toolbar of your browser.  You then come to the feed page where you can easily subscribe with your RSS reader or Copy the URL from the URL Toolbar.

3. If you’re using Google Reader Click Add a subscription and then Paste the RSS Url into the box and Click Add.  In other RSS readers, the process should be very similar.

4. By default, the reader is likely in Expanded view; this makes it difficult for the reader so let’s switch it to List view.

Personally, when I’m looking to buy something, I like to subscribe to several different RSS searches from Craigslist and stick them in my Google Reader.  Saves me a lot of time and, I can save the data in my RSS reader if I ever want to go back and read a listing from the past.

Do you have a nice trick, hack or tool for Craigslist?  Would love to hear about it in the comments!