Getting unwanted responses to my Craigslist Ad for my home childcare services

Hello Ladies,
I have recently posted an ad on craigslist and have only had unwanted responses from people who spam or fraudulent mail. When I created my Ad I placed my e-mail as visible not "hide" or "invisible" to make my Ad more legit. Since, I have had to shut down this e-mail and create a new one. What can I do to avoid many unwanted fraudulent e-mails to get into my inbox? So frustrating!:mad: Also, I noticed some of you work other jobs to keep income coming into your household. What jobs would be good and legit to look into that I can do for a few hours in the evening? Thanks for your help!

I posted on craigslist too and all i got was spam as well. I stick to Kijiji... I haven't had anything unwanted there.

I dont use Craigslist at all. I stay away from that site. Kijiji works best for me too.

I don't use Craigslist at all and only ever once used kijiji (got tired of everyone trying to barter for daycare services on kijiji) so now all my responses pretty much come from this site and word of mouth :)

I don't use craigslist either and only occassionally get spam from my kijiji ads.

Don't use craigslist for the same reasons. Never had anyone positive from there anyways.

Ya - I have never used Craigslist cause I have never heard anything 'good' about it ... and the fact the media portrays it as a place pedophiles and rapists use to scout victims does not help either :(

Personally I do not publish my email address anywhere online ... my website says 'click here to contact me' and the word here is a link to being up an email box, on Kijiji you have to click respond to the ad for it to come up and so forth .... when you publish an email address online such as janedoe@hotmail.com there are bot programs people have whose sole purpose is to scour the internet seeking 'email addresses' and spamming them with email - it is not even a HUMAN doing it cause the program detects the @ and .com and goes from there on an autopilot to record the address and add it to the spam list :(

Strangely, nearly all of my website traffic comes from craigslist. I have never been spammed, but I do not put my email address on the ad as I have a website with a form submission for getting in touch with me.

Have not used Craigslist, as I haven't heard good things, either. :no:

Criagslist has been horrible for me. Alll scams, and many. Will never post on there again.

This is good to know, thanks ladies. I've never advertised on that site, just this site and Godaycare and kijiji. But when I hear back from people who found me on kijiji I'm really cautious with them, because I feel they haven't researched for better quality providers like they find on this site. I don't know, is that snobby?

Mostly it is word of mouth on where to look for care too. Things like kijiji have a reputation as a place to search for what you need - including daycare so people go there. Since there are usually so many listings they can find several to choose from without going any further. Some of the other sites come up more by chance than routinely. If you type your city name childcare not all of those other places will be in the list so it depends on what terms the parents are using in the search box.

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Originally Posted by Momof4

This is good to know, thanks ladies. I've never advertised on that site, just this site and Godaycare and kijiji

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I tried entering in Godaycare but it asks for your address and that scares me- do you just enter in a dummy one?

I've never used Criags list as I've always found people speak badly about it. I've had some success with Kijiji with the new place I've moved to but always had luck with Daycare bear

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Originally Posted by jec

I tried entering in Godaycare but it asks for your address and that scares me

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It needs your address so that the map feature works so that clients can search for providers closest to them - however there is the option to check the 'do not show street address to public' ... so that you show up on the map for a general idea but the exact address is not given - just the 'street'.

Or you can put the correct street name and put 00 for the house and see if it would accept that ... IMO you would not want to put a 'dummy' address though cause clients seeking care based on location would be turned off by that... your street should be a safer choice.

This is why kijiji doesn't allow you to post an email address, to avoid SPAM mail. I would stick with your phone number on craigs list ads.

P.S (don't mean to hijack) How can you guys tell where all your traffic comes from? On Google Analystics?
TIA

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Originally Posted by WAHM

P.S (don't mean to hijack) How can you guys tell where all your traffic comes from? On Google Analystics?
TIA

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My website has a 'statistics' option that shows me where people arrive to my website from.

I have never used the google analystics though - how does that work?

I have not had any issues with kijiji (other than one ad that I replied to & it turned out to be a scam) however as soon as I posted an ad on craigslist - TONS of spam emails. Luckily my hotmail settings have picked them up but I've since deleted my ad on craigslist - terrible site! Other than that I just use this site and used ottawa...I tried signing up for godaycare.com but for some reason it won't work :( even after I adjusted my settings so I gave up.

Ive only had one call from godaycare.com in the last year... you're not missing out on much.

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Originally Posted by apples and bananas

Ive only had one call from godaycare.com in the last year... you're not missing out on much.

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Some of my friends swear by that site as getting good results, but I have never had any requests through them. Most of my clients are from word of mouth referrals or from daycarebear. When I advertised on kijiji for an opening I had in June I didn't even get one request from there either.

So I'm a big daycarebear fan! To answer a question asked on the first page, I look at my freewebs.com website statistics too so I can tell where the inquiries originate.

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Originally Posted by apples and bananas

I posted on craigslist too and all i got was spam as well. I stick to Kijiji... I haven't had anything unwanted there.

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I had a craigslist ad and got nothing but spam and weirdos asking me questions. All my clients and legitimate replies have been from Kijiji .