You make a sale, open the order, and there it is: an Offsite Ads fee of 15% that you don’t remember signing up for. On a small order that can be more than all your other Etsy fees put together.
That’s Etsy Offsite Ads. Every shop is enrolled automatically, and a lot of sellers only find out it exists when the first fee shows up. This guide covers how the program works, what the fee is really charged on, what an Offsite Ads sale does to your profit, and how to decide whether to stay in or opt out (if you still can).
The short answer: Offsite Ads are worth keeping if your profit on an order is comfortably more than 15% of the order total, because then every ad sale still makes you money. If your margins are thin and you’re under Etsy’s $10,000 USD threshold, opting out is a perfectly reasonable choice. Once you cross that threshold, you’re in for good, so the real job becomes pricing for the fee.
What Are Etsy Offsite Ads?
Offsite Ads are ads that Etsy buys and runs for you outside of Etsy. According to Etsy’s Help Center, your listings can show up on Google, Bing, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, the Google Display Network and Etsy’s publishing partner sites. Here’s how it works in practice:
- There’s no upfront cost and no budget. You don’t pay for clicks. You only pay when an ad click turns into an order.
- You can’t pick the listings. Etsy chooses which listings to advertise based on what performs best on each channel.
- The window is 30 days. If a shopper clicks an ad for one of your listings and buys from your shop within 30 days, that order is attributed to Offsite Ads.
- It’s any order from your shop, not just the item in the ad. A shopper could click an ad for a print and come back two weeks later to buy a mug, and that order still counts.
- One click can lead to more than one fee. If the same shopper places separate orders inside that 30-day window, each order can be charged.
- The last Etsy Ad click wins. If the buyer’s final click before purchasing was an Etsy Ad (the ads inside Etsy search), only the Etsy Ads cost applies, not the Offsite Ads fee.
How Much Do Etsy Offsite Ads Cost?
Your rate depends on how much your shop has sold in any 365-day period:
| Your shop’s sales | Offsite Ads fee | Can you opt out? |
|---|---|---|
| Always under $10,000 USD in any 365-day period | 15% of the order total | Yes |
| $10,000 USD or more in any 365-day period, ever | 12% of the order total | No, it’s required for the life of your shop |
Two more rules matter here. First, the fee on any single order is capped at $100 USD, no matter how big the order is. Second, the Offsite Ads fee comes on top of Etsy’s normal fees. You still pay the $0.20 listing fee, the 6.5% transaction fee and payment processing on that same order.
What the fee is charged on (and what the threshold counts)
This is the part that catches people out, because Etsy measures two different things:
- The fee is charged on the order total. Etsy’s policy says that’s the item price plus what you charge for shipping and gift wrap, and in some places, taxes. So on a $20 item with $8 shipping, the 15% is on $28, not $20.
- The $10,000 threshold only counts item sales: item price times quantity, minus discounts and cancelled orders. Etsy’s Fees & Payments Policy says separately charged shipping, taxes and gift wrap are left out.
Etsy checks the threshold on the first day of every month, looking back over the prior 365 days. If your shop currency isn’t USD, your sales are converted to USD using the exchange rates Etsy used at the time of each sale.
The $10,000 rule is a one-way door
Once your shop reaches $10,000 USD in a 365-day period, your rate drops to 12% and you can’t opt out anymore, even if your sales fall back below $10,000 later. If you had opted out before, that opt-out stops applying. A big holiday season can be enough to tip you over, so it’s worth knowing roughly where you are before November and December hit. Etsy suggests checking with a custom date range on your Stats page in Shop Manager.
What an Offsite Ads Sale Does to Your Profit
Percentages are easy to wave away, so here are three example orders. These are example numbers, not real shop data. They use US fees (the $0.20 listing fee, 6.5% transaction fee, and 3% plus $0.25 payment processing), leave sales tax out to keep things simple, and are rounded to the cent.
| Example order | Order total | Your costs | Profit on a normal sale | Offsite Ads fee (15%) | Profit on an Offsite Ads sale |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $30 item + $5 shipping | $35.00 | $12.00 | $19.23 | $5.25 | $13.98 |
| $22 print-on-demand item + $6 shipping | $28.00 | $19.00 | $5.89 | $4.20 | $1.69 |
| $10 digital download | $10.00 | $0.00 | $8.60 | $1.50 | $7.10 |
Look at the middle row. On a normal sale, that print-on-demand item makes $5.89. When the same order comes through an Offsite Ad, it makes $1.69. Still positive, but barely, and a free-shipping promo or a small discount would push it under zero.
The digital download barely notices the fee, because there’s no product cost eating into the price. That’s why digital sellers can usually stay in without much worry, while sellers with thin print-on-demand or handmade margins feel it the most.
Want to run your own numbers? The free Etsy Fee Calculator has a checkbox for This sale came from Offsite Ads, with a choice of 15% or 12%. Enter one of your real listings, tick it, and compare the profit with and without it. It also applies the $100 USD cap for you.
Are Etsy Offsite Ads Worth It?
Here’s the one test I’d use: after Etsy’s normal fees and your costs, is your profit on the order more than 15% of the order total? (Or 12%, if you’re already over the threshold.) If yes, every Offsite Ads sale still makes you money. If no, every Offsite Ads sale loses money.
In the examples above, the print-on-demand order has a profit margin of about 21% before the ad fee, so it passes, just. The $30 item is around 55% and the digital download is around 86%, so they pass easily.
What I do in my own shops
For what it’s worth, we’ve always stayed opted in at LensLushBackdrops, and the same goes for my sticker shop. Some Offsite Ads orders have taken a bit of a bite out of my profit, but never so much that I wanted to turn them off. Every time, the order was still worth it to me: a sale, a little exposure, and the chance of a repeat customer and a review.
I’ll admit I’ve opened an order more than once and thought, wait, where did my profit margin go? These days Etsy shows an earnings breakdown on each order. In Shop Manager, go to Orders, open the order and select the Earnings tab. It lists what the buyer paid, shipping costs, marketing costs, fees, credits and refunds, so it’s easy to see what happened. That’s my experience with my margins, though. Run the test above on your own listings before you decide.
Staying in usually makes sense if:
- Your margins pass the 15% test on your best sellers, with room to spare.
- You sell digital products or anything with a low product cost.
- You don’t have the time or budget to run your own Google, Pinterest or Facebook ads.
- You’re close to $10,000 USD anyway, so you’ll be enrolled soon regardless.
Opting out usually makes sense if:
- Your best sellers fail the 15% test, and you can’t raise prices right now.
- You run frequent sales or free shipping that already squeeze your margins.
- Your Offsite Ads dashboard shows fees on orders you think would have come anyway, such as repeat buyers.
- You’re still testing products and don’t yet know your real costs.
One caveat: an Offsite Ads sale isn’t automatically a sale you wouldn’t have had otherwise. Some of those shoppers may have found you on Etsy anyway. That’s not a reason to opt out by itself, but it’s a reason to judge the program by your own numbers rather than by the total revenue Etsy shows you.
How to Price for Offsite Ads (Instead of Fearing Them)
If you’re over the threshold, or you want to stay in, the fix is pricing. You don’t need to add 15% to everything, because only some of your orders come through Offsite Ads. Here’s the quick math:
- Find your share. In your Offsite Ads dashboard, see what portion of your orders were attributed to Offsite Ads over the last few months. Say it’s 1 order in 5, or 20%.
- Multiply by the rate. 20% of orders times a 15% fee works out to about 3% of your total sales going to Offsite Ads.
- Nudge prices to cover it. A price increase of roughly 3% covers that cost on average across your shop.
That’s an average, though. A thin-margin item still loses on the individual orders that come through an ad. So check your lowest-margin listings in the Etsy Fee Calculator with the Offsite Ads box ticked, and raise those first. If an item only makes money when nobody clicked an ad, it’s probably underpriced.
How to Check Your Offsite Ads Results
Etsy gives you an Offsite Ads dashboard in Shop Manager, under Marketing and then Offsite Ads. It shows clicks, attributed orders, revenue and the fees you’ve paid, plus which listings and search terms bring in ad traffic.
I’d look at it once a month alongside your own numbers. If you log your weekly orders, revenue and visits in the free Etsy Sales Tracker, you can jot down how many of that week’s orders were Offsite Ads orders next to them. After a couple of months you’ll know your real share, which is the number you need for the pricing math above.
How to Opt Out of Etsy Offsite Ads
If your shop has never made $10,000 USD in any 365-day period, you can opt out. Etsy’s steps are:
- Go to Shop Manager on Etsy.com.
- Select Settings.
- Select Offsite Ads.
- Choose Opt out of Offsite Ads.
- Confirm that you want to opt out.
Changed your mind? You can turn it back on from the same Offsite Ads page by choosing Turn on Offsite Ads. If you don’t see the opt-out option at all, your shop has most likely passed the $10,000 USD threshold at some point.
Offsite Ads vs Etsy Ads
They’re easy to mix up, but they’re two separate things:
- Etsy Ads are the promoted listings inside Etsy’s own search and pages. You choose to run them, set a daily budget and pay for clicks, whether or not anyone buys.
- Offsite Ads run outside Etsy. You’re enrolled automatically, there’s no budget, and you only pay a percentage when an ad click leads to an order.
If you’re wondering whether to switch on Etsy Ads too, I wrote a separate guide on when to run Etsy Ads (and when not to).
Selling from Canada (or Anywhere Outside the US)?
A few things change if your shop currency isn’t USD. The $10,000 threshold is still measured in US dollars, converted at the exchange rates Etsy used when each sale happened. The $100 cap is also in USD. And your other fees (payment processing, regulatory operating fees, currency conversion and, for many Canadian sellers, GST or HST on Etsy’s fees) stack up differently than the US example above. The Etsy Fee Calculator has Canada options for all of that, so pick your country, tick the Offsite Ads box, and you’ll see the real number in your own currency.
Etsy Offsite Ads FAQ
Can I choose which listings Etsy advertises?
No. Etsy decides which listings to advertise based on what performs best on each ad channel. Etsy says better listing quality makes it more likely your items get picked.
Do I pay if someone clicks an ad but doesn’t buy?
No. You’re only charged when an ad click leads to an order from your shop within 30 days.
Why was I charged on an item that wasn’t in the ad?
Because the fee applies to any order from your shop within 30 days of the click, not just the advertised item. Your Offsite Ads dashboard shows which orders were attributed.
What happens if my sales drop below $10,000 again?
Nothing changes. Once you’ve reached the threshold, Etsy’s policy says you stay enrolled at the 12% rate for the lifetime of your shop.
Is the Offsite Ads fee charged on shipping?
Yes. It’s charged on the order total, which includes what you charge for shipping and gift wrap, and in some places taxes. The fee is capped at $100 USD per order.
Can I control how much I spend on Offsite Ads?
Not directly. There’s no budget setting. The only levers you have are opting out (if you’re under the threshold) and pricing your listings so an ad sale is still a profitable sale.
The Bottom Line
Offsite Ads aren’t good or bad on their own. They’re a 12% to 15% sales commission that Etsy charges on some of your orders. If your prices can carry that, they’re free marketing you’d never have time to run yourself. If they can’t, that’s useful to know, whether you opt out or fix your prices.
In my shops, staying in has been worth it so far. Your numbers might tell a different story, and that’s okay.
Start with one listing: put it in the Etsy Fee Calculator, tick the Offsite Ads box, and see what’s left. Then browse the rest of the free Etsy seller tools to keep an eye on your numbers week by week.