Would you like to be the first to know when someone in your neighborhood posts something you might find useful up on Craigslist for free?
Now you can with a really neat new online tool called IFTTT (If This Then That). It's free and very easy to use. I created a little 4 minute video that shows you how to set-up a “recipe” so that you can be the first to know about that new-er gas grill or metal file cabinet the church down the street are getting rid of (that would go perfect in your garage).
Find free stuff in your neighborhood
Basically IFTTT uses different “recipes” to so that when certain things happen on various channels (ie, Craigslist, blogs, weather channels), you will get notification of that event via email, text message or even a phone call.
IFTTT has been a round for a couple of years now, but seems to be gaining more steam with the desire to make the web more automated. IFTTT Even works with different channels that can alert smart devices in your home to come on when you arrive (as it reads the signal being sent off your location beam on a smartphone).
We’re going to set up a recipe that notifies you of when free stuff is available in your city or town.
In IFTTT, let's find the Craigslist channel. Click on CHANNELS in the menu and then find the Craigslist logo. Click on er and then go down to browse more recipes. In the search box, type in “#FREESTUFF”. This will bring up the recipe for finding free stuff in your neighborhood.
Next, you’ll want to open up the Craigslist website in another tab in your browser while keeping IFTTT open. Go to your Craigslist city and then to FOR SALE > FREE. When that comes up, type in your city/town in the search box and hit enter. After that – copy the URL from Craigslist website. We’re gonna place it in the IFTTT recipe that we’re about to customize.
So, going back to IFTTT, go to that Craigslist recipe and we’ll select USE RECIPE.
In the trigger section, we’re going to add the URL we just grabbed from Craigslist. Paste it in there.
And then we are going to fill out the action in for the recipe. The action is that you want Craigslist to send you an email (or text) when free stuff gets posted to it in your neighborhood.
When you’re done, hit UPDATE and the recipe is activated.
Whenever free stuff is involved, time is of the essence. You will now be one of the first (if not the first) to get notified of anything free in your community that might strike your fancy.
Let us know if this helps you snatch up anything cool!
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