Etsy Offsite Ads Explained for Print-on-Demand Sellers

What Offsite Ads are

Etsy buys advertising on other sites, such as search engines and social networks, and features sellers' listings in those ads. You do not pay to have your listings shown. You pay only when an ad leads to a sale.

When you are charged

The fee applies to an attributed order: a buyer clicks an Offsite Ad featuring your listing and then places an order from your shop within 30 days of that click. The order does not have to be for the listing in the ad. If the buyer's last click before ordering was one of your Etsy Ads on Etsy, only the Etsy Ads fee applies.

How much it costs

• 15% of the order if your shop made less than $10,000 in sales over the previous 365 days.
• 12% once your shop has made $10,000 or more in that period.
• The fee on a single order never exceeds $100.

Etsy checks the $10,000 threshold on the first day of each month. Sales here mean item price times quantity, minus discounts and cancellations; shipping, taxes and gift wrap are not counted toward the threshold.

The fee itself is charged on the order total: item price plus shipping and gift wrap, and outside the US, any taxes included in your prices. US sellers do not pay it on sales tax.

Opting out

Shops under $10,000 can opt out in their Offsite Ads settings and stay out while they remain under the threshold. Once a shop reaches $10,000, it is required to participate at 12% for the lifetime of the shop, even if sales later fall below the threshold and even if it had opted out before.

Is it worth staying in?

That depends on your margin, not on a rule of thumb. The question is simple: would you still be happy with an order if 15% of it went to Etsy? If your products are priced near break-even, an ad order can turn a sale into a loss. If you have room in your margin, ad orders are customers you might not have reached otherwise.

Pricing with Offsite Ads in mind

Take a US shop selling a $24.99 shirt with $5.99 shipping, producing it for $11.50, shipping for $4.95 and packaging for $0.40:

• Normal order: about $10.74 profit
• Offsite Ads order at 15%: about $6.09 profit

The break-even item price moves from about $13.13 to about $16.93. If your price sits between those numbers, ad orders cost you money. Our guide on pricing print-on-demand products shows the formula.

See it on your own numbers

In our free Etsy profit calculator, open the Advanced section, choose 15% or 12% for Offsite Ads, and the result shows the fee, its effect on your profit and the price you would need for your target margin.

Details in this guide come from Etsy's Fees & Payments Policy, checked on October 6, 2026.