In a world where we are constantly inundated with emails, it can be hard to sift through and find the ones that are actually important. For book lovers, one of the most important email alerts to have is one that tells you when books are for sale on Craigslist.
If you’re not familiar with IFTTT, it stands for “If This Then That.” It’s a service that allows you to create recipes that automate certain tasks. So, for example, you could create a recipe that would automatically post a Tweet every time you posted a new photo on Instagram.
Creating an IFTTT recipe to get email alerts when books are for sale on Craigslist is incredibly simple and only takes a few minutes. Here’s how:
First, sign up for an IFTTT account (if you don’t already have one). Once you’re signed in, click on the “My Recipes” tab and then click on the “Create a Recipe” button.
On the next page, you’ll be prompted to choose a “trigger.” This is the event that will trigger the action. In this case, we want the trigger to be when someone posts a new Craigslist ad in the “books” category. So, select “Craigslist” from the list of options and then select “New CraigsList Ad.”
On the next page, you’ll be asked to specify some additional information about the trigger. First, select “Any” for the Region field. Next, type “books” into the Has The Words field. Finally, click on the blue “Create Trigger” button.
Now it’s time to choose your action. This is what IFTTT will do whenever it sees a new Craigslist ad matching your trigger criteria. In this case, we want IFTTT to send us an email alert whenever there’s a new ad, so select “Email” from the list of options.
On the next page, you’ll be able to customize your email alert. Enter whatever Subject and Body text you want and then click on the blue “Create Action” button.
Finally, review your recipe and make sure everything looks correct. If it does, click on the blue “Create Recipe” button and you’re all done!
Now whenever someone posts a new Craigslist ad in the books category, you’ll instantly get an email alert so you can check it out and see if it’s something you’re interested in. No more combing through dozens of ads just to find the few that are relevant to you!
