Ads on Craigslist

Recently, at the suggestion of a very kind supporter, I was reminded of Craigslist as a route for finding work. When my girlfriend, oops - I mean this kind supporter, sent me a bunch of links for possible jobs, I was enthusiastic. I sent replies back to those ads, but none of them panned out.

A few days later, I posted an ad under 'creative services'. The following morning, I posted a new ad which I created in Illustrator. It was a graphical ad. I noticed some ads have a very nice and formatted mixture. View the Ad.

At my first response I was excited. It sounded like someone was going to send me to a site that could also help out. When I followed the link sent later that day, it didn't make sense. The following day, I got a similiar email. And as of now, all Craigslist has yielded on my ad is spam.

The jobs out there seem legit and some of the other companies advertising had valid and impressive work. Have I found an avenue or stumbled onto a road under construction? Much of what I have seen and experienced on Craigslist has matched my contempted opinions before this experience.

To create an ad under creative services, which is free as opposed to creating an ad under jobs wanted which cost $25 an ad for people in some of the major cities, you have to re-post it daily to be competitive and found. I'm not so sure of the spamming rules there, (obviously they are weak in the way of email), but they do warn you that deleting existing ads to re-post the ad immediately or within a two day period is considered overposting or spamming. So, I will have to research a little more and see how to approach this.

(In testing Craigslist on deleting the post, my previous ad was deleted without asking me if I was sure I wanted to delete my ad, so I guess after that spamming period has expired, your ad gets deleted immediately when you hit the delete button, BE CAREFUL! I quickly had to re-post the ad! The link above has been updated.)

In each of the 3 ads I have posted, I have changed the title. Am I spamming or over-posting? I saw one company there on multiple days, so I figure there is an allowance of some type of repetitive advertising under the creative services.

I guess the point or moral of this post is to figure out the advantages of posting on Craigslist. I can"t hurt and the spamming on my email hasn't been overwhelming. Only time will tell. I had much contempt that Craigslist was a bunch of spamming and quick online dating results (after hearing a story a few years ago about someone who got caught using Craigslist as a way to hook up), and although it may all be ture, it still may be a valid way to expose (should I use a better word?) or advertise my creative services.

Playing With A New Logo - Part II

In 'Playing with A New Logo - Part I", I displayed some logo ideas I came up with the other night. Basically all are the same logo and color, just different fonts on the name and tag.

Years ago in college, at ITT Technical Institute, I was taking a clash in Flash animation and we had an assignment to create a short animation for a company logo. That is when I created "BH Creative Media & Design" - now shortened to "BH Creative Design". Back then, I created a flash animation which I never did live down during that class.

Before I embarrass myself with the link, (and most of you will scroll down anyway and find it), the idea of my company was to inspire creativity in every person. My thought was that if I could be creative, so could the next student or person. Throughout my life, I was fascinated at people's creativity. So I created the idea of, "Deep Down A Creative Fire Burns", then came the punch line, "Let It Burn". Once I overcame the humility of all the ointment puns, I realize this was a marketing strategy that would just backfire, no pun intended. OK, so here's the link, please keep reading though: http://www.bhcreativedesign.com/samples/bhcreative_burn.htm

The next thought I put into the name and logo came after a few therapy sessions and months later ... and no ointment! I wanted complex simplicity. Yes, I realize how it sounds and how it looks. I created the logo currently used. If you look at it, between the "b" and the "c" there is a small line connecting the too letters, whose purpose was to serve as the middle stroke of a very curvy and inter-twined "h", all representative of "BH Creative". The biggest ponderance out of this logo was what "bc" stood for. So I had failed again and given in to a new idea for awhile. This and I had a delusional self-serving thought that it didn't matter if others understood it, or that the artists in the room woud see it as I saw it, because I was an artist. Eventually, the flaw in much of that last thought came through. Other artist aren't looking at my site, employers and clients are.

The New One
So for this next venture into self-expression. I created the logo that upon inspection, represents all the letters, "BH" and "C" and "D" for creative design. Upon looking, it looks like a box unfolded (the C and D) and a box coming out of the other box (the B and H), so is born the theme of hinking outside the box, represented by various ads in a box - we'll work on that one. Hopefully, this can evolve into a permant idea, or at least a more sensible anc clear representation. But you can email your puns and jokes to me, you just have to track down my email address! Enjoy.

Playing With a New Logo - Part I