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I was recently searching for a used laptop on Craigslist in Chicago, IL for my girlfriend. I came across a wonderful Sony laptop that was well priced, almost brand new, and what I thought was a local item on craigslist:Craigslist Scam & Fraud - Selling laptops from

I got the old bait and switch when I received this email back after contacting the seller.

How do I know this is a scam?

• Seller stated she was from Chicago - then pulled a bait and switch and is now in the UK
• It is a she - most people trust women for some reason more than men
• The product is priced extremely well and at a believable rate
• Photos look like they were shot with a personal digital camera and not taken from an ecommerce website
• Seller is from the UK, not an African nation that is associated with scams like this

When purchasing from Craigslist only purchase local goods. I usually have sellers bring the items I purchase to my home or office - and I give them an extra five or ten dollars from this. But be warned, don’t purchase outside your own city on craigslist, especially not a high priced item like a laptop from someone in the UK or any country for that matter. This was one of the cleanest and believable scams I have seen in a while, I imagine quite a few people are getting taken for some nice pocket change. If you have been scammed in a similar manner, or even scammed by this same thing, please leave your comments and help make other more aware.

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Savy online marketers are realizing that paying for skins on highly trafficked sites is one of the best ways to break through Banner Blindness. PerezHilton.com was featuring a skin by NBC’s new television show Lipstick Jungle (looks like another Sex In The City Show). Below is another website (CollegeHumor.com - owned by IACI) that regularly features skins, but I was unable to capture an example.

So how can custom skins break through banner blindness and help your business achieve dramatic online marketing results:

• Make sure the price of the skin is a low priced CPM, don’t just pay to have it up there for a week. Make sure you are being billed anywhere from .05 - .25 cents per CPM. Of course, this rate will vary with the website and whether or not it corresponds with the topic of what you are advertising. For the Perez Hilton example above, I’m sure NBC had to pay a pretty penny to get the customized skin - but the skin correlates with the targeted user demographic that Perez Hilton attracts.
• Skins should have a strong call to action
• Skins should feature something shocking or attention getting
• Skins rarely involve direct response marketing - most of the examples I have seen have been for new television shows
• Skins should practice the principle: Less is more
• If you are advertising a site, be sure to use analytics and track how many type-ins or clicks you generated

If you are interested in having a Skin developed to use on a highly trafficked site - please contact Banner Blindness to see examples of skins we have designed in the past and how they might enhance your online marketing strategy.