How to plan and prepare Craigslist posts with Sheevook
A local classified ad in one city's Services section. In the US a services post costs $5 and runs 30 days; you post it by hand. Sheevook turns one approved idea into a Craigslist-native post - grounded in the platform's real rules, not a generic cross-post - then schedules it and measures what it drove.
Sheevook helps you prepare Craigslist content and plan the post; auto-publishing for Craigslist is not live, so you post the prepared draft yourself.
Is Craigslist worth your time?
Worth it for a local service business with a clear offer in one city: cleaning, repairs, moving, lessons. For software sold nationally it is the wrong place, and Craigslist's rules against nonlocal and link-driven ads make that explicit.
Craigslist at a glance
- Character limit
- 4,000 (sweet spot 300-1200)
- Hashtags
- None - they read as spam here
- Best times
- No published best time. Post when you can answer replies the same day.
- Links
- Links stay clean in the copy. The tracking is recorded on our side instead of hanging off the end of your URL, so the post reads like a person wrote it and the click is still attributed.
A Craigslist ad is found by city and category, then judged on its title
Craigslist describes no engagement ranking. A person finds your ad by opening their own city, choosing a category, and scanning the list, or by searching it. The posting title is what appears in that list of posts, so it is doing nearly all of the work: it has to say the service and the place in words that person would use.
Where an ad may go is a rule, not a tactic. Craigslist prohibits miscategorized, overposted, cross-posted and nonlocal content, so one ad belongs in one city and the one category that fits. Posting the same ad in three nearby cities is not wider reach here; it is the exact thing the rules remove.
In the US a services post costs five dollars and runs thirty days. A paid post cannot be renewed, so running it again is a new paid post. That makes timing a budget question: post when you can answer replies quickly, and let the ad run its month rather than reposting it for attention.
What gets a Craigslist post buried
Stuffing the ad with keywords
A list of every service and town you can think of is keyword spam, which Craigslist prohibits. It gets the ad removed instead of found.
Making the ad a link to your website
Craigslist prohibits posts whose main purpose is sending traffic to a website. Put the details in the ad itself and ask for a reply.
Posting the same ad in several cities
Cross-posted and nonlocal content is prohibited. Each extra copy is a reason to remove all of them, not a way to reach more people.
Reposting a paid ad to bump it
A paid post runs thirty days and cannot be renewed, so every repost is another paid post, and repeating the same ad counts as overposting.
Publishing to Craigslist with Sheevook, step by step
- 1
Get your Craigslist account ready
Create an account: Sign up on Craigslist with a business email so replies and renewals come to one inbox. Pick one city and one category: An ad belongs where the customers are. Posting the same ad in several cities or categories is prohibited.
- 2
Know why Craigslist is posted by hand
Craigslist’s terms forbid posting through third-party software unless Craigslist licenses it, and its bulk posting interface excludes services. Draft the ad here, then post it yourself on Craigslist in one city and one category.
- 3
Write once, let Sheevook tailor it
Write your post once. Sheevook re-authors it natively for Craigslist, inside the 4,000-character limit, with a per-platform diff showing exactly what changed, and it blocks a near-copy of another platform's version before it schedules. The voice it writes in: Plain, specific, and local. Say what you do, where, and how to reach you.
- 4
Copy it and post it yourself
Approve the draft, then use Copy for manual post and paste it into Craigslist. Sheevook does not publish to Craigslist, so nothing goes out until you post it.
- 5
See what actually worked
Craigslist reports nothing back to Sheevook, so there is no engagement to read. Where the post carries your tracked link, the clicks and conversions it drove are still tied to it. Results rank on outcomes, never on vanity reach.
What wins on Craigslist
- Name the service and the area in the title, in the words a customer would search
- Say plainly what you do and what you do not do
- Tell the reader exactly how to reach you
- Post once, in the one city and category that fits
Craigslist questions people actually ask
- Can Sheevook post to Craigslist?
- No. Craigslist's terms forbid posting through third-party software unless Craigslist licenses it, and its bulk posting interface excludes services. Sheevook writes the posting title and the ad, and you post it yourself.
- How much does a Craigslist services ad cost?
- In the US, a post in the services section costs five dollars. It runs thirty days, and a paid post cannot be renewed, so running it again means paying for a new post.
- Can I put a link to my website in a Craigslist ad?
- You can mention it, but it cannot be the point of the ad: Craigslist prohibits posts whose primary purpose is driving traffic to a website, and clickable links work only in certain categories.
