I didn't even know what affiliate marketing was until the beginning of january...so bare with me.
I've been stumbling upon the web trying to find out if my "brilliant" and "unique" craigslist idea was against amazon's tos. That's how I landed here and found out someone came up with my "unique" craigslist idea years ago.
So for those that are asking if it works, it does. I made $100 last month and $100 this month.
For those having trouble making it work, understand that you aren't trying to sell them any particular product. Your goal is to get as many people to the site as possible because SOMEONE is going to buy SOMETHING in the next 24 hours. The products I use are almost always under a $100. More people are likely to click on cheaper items than expensive ones. I know that I would probably never buy anything expensive off of craigslist...too much risk...So I won't even bother clicking on your ad. Also, your post shouldn't ever include a picture because you want them to be like "What exactly is he selling? Lemme click on this amazon link and see".
But be warned, after reading many different posts on this website, I realize I am probably going to be banned. It sucks because I didn't even know it was "black hat". Hell, I didn't even know what black hat meant lol. I had 8k in clicks last month...all from craigslist...with a conversion of 1.09%. Which I guess is bad...and will contribute to me getting banned. Now I know that I should have been using some kind of redirect thing. On a few of them, I used url shorteners and the clicks dwindle down to nothing. People do not want to click on "scary" links. But if they see amazon, they have no problem clicking on it.
Also, for craigslist, you need a phone verified account. I had my own personal one, but didn't want it getting banned. So I bought one online (google it). It was less than 10 bucks. And no, gmail voice or any VOIP will not work. It has to be landline or cell phone. this would probably work for those of you trying to do this outside the US. But make sure you are using a different IP when you log in. Cell phone tethering works perfect for this. Everytime you connect with your cell phone, you have a new ip.