Advertising
Etsy Offsite Ads: when 15% is worth it, and when it isn't
The fee looks brutal because it is quoted against revenue while you think in profit. Here is the number that actually decides it — and it is not 15%.
What you are actually agreeing to
Etsy buys advertising for your listings on Google, Meta, Pinterest and elsewhere. When a shopper clicks one of those ads and then buys from you within Etsy's attribution window, you pay a fee on that order:
- 15% if your shop has made under 10,000 in the past 365 days. At this level participation is optional — you can switch it off.
- 12% once you pass 10,000 in annual sales. At this level participation is mandatory; the discount is the compensation for losing the choice.
- Either way, the fee is capped at 100 per order, which matters enormously if you sell high-ticket work and not at all if you sell earrings.
The fee is charged on the full order total, shipping included, and it stacks on top of everything else: listing fee, 6.5% transaction fee, payment processing, and — if you sell from the UK, France, Italy or Spain — the regulatory operating fee.
What it does to a real order
A $25 item, $5 shipping charged, $8 of materials, $5 of postage, sold from a US shop:
| Ordinary sale | Attributed to an Offsite Ad | |
|---|---|---|
| Buyer pays | $30.00 | $30.00 |
| Etsy fees before ads | $3.30 | $3.30 |
| Offsite Ads at 15% | — | $4.50 |
| Materials + postage | $13.00 | $13.00 |
| You keep | $13.70 | $9.20 |
| Margin | 45.7% | 30.7% |
The order is still comfortably profitable. It simply earns a third less. That is the honest shape of the deal on a healthy-margin item: Offsite Ads take a slice, not the meal.
The number that decides it
Forget the 15%. The question is your margin as a percentage of what the buyer pays — the figure the calculator labels "profit margin".
Offsite Ads subtract 15 percentage points from that margin, near enough. So:
- Margin above 35% — an attributed order still earns well. Leave the ads on. The fee is buying you customers you could not otherwise reach.
- Margin between 20% and 35% — attributed orders survive but do not thrive. Worth keeping only if a real share of that traffic is genuinely new. This is the band where it is worth switching off for a month and watching what happens to total sales, not just to fees.
- Margin below 18% — an attributed order is close to break-even, and one refund tips it negative. Either the price is too low or the ads have to go.
Note what is not on that list: how much you like the idea of advertising. The fee is charged on outcomes, so the only thing that matters is whether the outcome still clears your floor.
The cannibalisation problem
Here is the uncomfortable part. You pay the fee on every attributed order, including the ones from buyers who already knew your shop, had it bookmarked, and would have bought anyway. Etsy does not distinguish between a stranger who discovered you through an ad and a repeat customer who happened to click one on the way in.
Nobody outside Etsy can measure that share precisely. What you can do is measure the total: turn Offsite Ads off for a full month, compare total orders — not just non-attributed ones — against the same month before, and see whether the top line actually moved. If total sales hold steady while your fees drop, you were paying for traffic you already had.
That test only exists below the 10,000 threshold. Above it, participation is mandatory and the right response is to price for it.
When the cap changes everything
The 100-per-order ceiling is invisible on small orders and decisive on large ones. On a $2,000 commissioned piece, 15% would be $300 — but you pay $100, an effective rate of 5%. If you sell high-ticket work, Offsite Ads are dramatically cheaper than the headline rate suggests, and the case for leaving them on is much stronger.
The calculator applies the cap automatically and tells you when it has kicked in.
Where the money should go instead
If your margin sits in the danger band, the fix is almost never "advertise harder". In order of effect:
- Raise the price. A 10% increase on a 20%-margin item does more for profit than any advertising decision, and Offsite Ads then take a smaller bite of a bigger number.
- Cut the postage bleed. Charged shipping is taxed by every percentage fee on the page. If you are subsidising it, you are paying fees on money you never keep — see the free shipping guide.
- Then, and only then, look at ads.
Etsy Ads are a different thing
Do not confuse Offsite Ads with Etsy Ads, the on-site promoted listings you set a daily budget for. Those are a cost whether or not anyone buys — you pay per click, not per sale. In the calculator they belong in the "Etsy Ads spend attributed to this sale" field: take your daily budget, divide by the orders it actually produced, and put that number in. It is usually a more sobering figure than the 15%.
Fee rates in this guide reflect Etsy's published schedule as checked on August 30, 2026. Etsy revises its fees and its Offsite Ads terms; verify against your own Payment account before pricing around them.