Guide · By DQ · October 6, 2026
You quoted a custom piece, sent the buyer a private listing link yourself, and they paid. Then the statement shows an extra fee: 15% of the order, gone to "advertising". Or a buyer who has ordered from you three times comes back, and that order gets charged too. Seller forums are full of posts like this, usually with a title along the lines of "how is this an ad sale?"
In most cases the charge follows Etsy's rules as written, even though it feels wrong. This guide explains how Etsy decides an order came from an Offsite Ad, why custom orders and repeat buyers get caught by it, how to check a specific order, and how to price so the fee doesn't wipe out your margin. Fee figures come from Etsy's Help Center (linked at the end) and use US rates. Confirm current rates in your Shop Manager.
Etsy charges an Offsite Ads fee when a buyer clicks one of Etsy's ads on another site and then completes a purchase from your shop within 30 days. The fee is 15% of the order if your shop has always made less than $10,000 USD in any consecutive 365-day period, or 12% once it has made $10,000 or more (and from then on, participation is required for the lifetime of the shop). The fee on a single order is capped at $100. Your listings may appear in these ads on Google, Bing, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, the Google Display Network and partner sites such as Buzzfeed and Martha Stewart.
Three words in that rule explain almost every surprising charge: "your shop", "30 days" and "each order".
The ad doesn't have to be for the item they bought. Etsy's wording is a purchase "from your shop", not from the advertised listing. A buyer might click an ad for one of your ready-made pieces on Pinterest, browse your shop, message you about a custom version, and pay for the custom listing you made for them two weeks later. That order was placed inside the 30-day window after an ad click, so it's attributed to Offsite Ads, even though you did all the selling in Messages.
Sending the link yourself doesn't reset anything. Etsy's Offsite Ads page doesn't list an exception for custom orders, private listings, or links you shared with the buyer. What counts is whether that buyer clicked an Offsite Ad for your shop in the previous 30 days, not how they reached the checkout page.
Custom orders tend to be big orders. That's why the fee hurts here more than anywhere else. A $360 custom order at 15% is a $54 fee. The $100 cap only starts to help above $666.67 at 15%, or above $833.33 at 12%.
Etsy's page doesn't exclude past buyers either. If a returning customer clicked an Offsite Ad for one of your listings at any point in the 30 days before ordering, the order is attributed, whether it's their first purchase or their tenth. For example, a regular might search Google for the kind of item you sell, see your listing in an Etsy ad, click it, and then buy through your shop.
One click can lead to several fees. Etsy says plainly that a single ad click can lead to multiple attributed orders: if the buyer places separate orders within that 30-day window, each one may incur an Offsite Ads fee. A happy customer who orders twice in a month after one ad click can be charged twice.
The one case where you don't pay it. If the buyer's final click before purchasing was an Etsy Ad (the ads inside Etsy search), only the Etsy Ads fee applies, not the Offsite Ads fee.
What about refunds? Etsy's refund help page says that when you refund through Shop Manager, the transaction and processing fees for the refunded transactions go back to your Payment account. Etsy's Offsite Ads page doesn't say what happens to the ad fee on a refunded order, and third-party guides disagree. After a refund on an attributed order, check your Payment account, and contact support with the order number if the ad fee is still there.
You can't exclude a listing or an order. Etsy says you can't choose which listings are advertised, and the help page describes no way to exclude a single order, a custom listing, or a specific buyer.
You can opt out entirely, but only under $10,000. If your shop has never made $10,000 USD in any consecutive 365-day period, you can opt out in Shop Manager, under Settings, then Offsite Ads. The trade-off is that you also lose the traffic those ads send, and you can turn them back on later from the same page.
Over $10,000, there's no off switch. Once your shop has crossed the threshold, the 12% fee is part of doing business for the life of the shop. The only lever left is your price.
Here's a hypothetical custom order: a $340 piece plus $20 shipping, so the buyer pays $360. Your costs are $150 in materials and time plus $20 postage, $170 in total.
| Organic sale | Attributed to Offsite Ads (15%) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transaction fee (6.5% of $360) | $23.40 | $23.40 |
| Payment processing (3% + $0.25) | $11.05 | $11.05 |
| Listing fee | $0.20 | $0.20 |
| Offsite Ads fee | $0 | $54.00 |
| Total Etsy fees | $34.65 | $88.65 |
| Your profit after $170 costs | $155.35 (43%) | $101.35 (28%) |
The ad fee alone is bigger than every other Etsy fee on the order combined. You have two sensible ways to price for it.
If losing a chunk of margin on a custom order would really hurt, quote as if every custom order will be attributed. With US rates, the order total you need to keep a margin m is:
Order total = (your costs + $0.45) ÷ (0.905 − a − m)
where a is your Offsite Ads rate (0.15 or 0.12), and $0.45 is the $0.25 processing fee plus the $0.20 listing fee. To keep a 40% margin on the $170 job above at 15%, that's 170.45 ÷ 0.355 = $480.14. Charge $20 shipping and the piece itself comes to about $460, against about $318 for the same 40% margin on a sale with no ad fee (170.45 ÷ 0.505 = $337.52, minus shipping). That's a big jump, so this option fits shops where most custom buyers arrive through ads.
If only some orders are attributed, use the average. Check the dashboard for the share of your orders attributed to Offsite Ads over the last few months. If, say, 1 in 5 orders were attributed at 15%, the fee averages out to 3% of revenue (15% × 0.2). Put that 3% in place of a in the formula. To keep the same 40% margin on average: 170.45 ÷ 0.475 = $358.84 order total. Some orders will come in under target and others above it, but the shop as a whole lands where you want it.
If you'd rather not do this by hand, Canopio's free calculator applies Etsy's fees to one order, with or without Offsite Ads at 15% or 12%, and can work backwards from a target margin to a price. It runs in your browser and there's no sign-up. If you want every live listing checked at once, there's an optional $9.90 one-time Shop Audit. Canopio is independent and not affiliated with Etsy, so always confirm current rates on Etsy's own pages.
Because Etsy attributes the order based on whether the buyer clicked one of its Offsite Ads for your shop in the 30 days before buying, not on how they reached checkout. Etsy's help page lists no exception for custom orders or links you shared.
It can. Etsy's rule doesn't exclude past buyers. If a returning customer clicked an Offsite Ad for your shop within 30 days before ordering, the order is attributed.
Yes. Etsy says a single click can lead to multiple attributed orders, and each separate order placed in that 30-day window may incur the fee.
In Shop Manager, go to Marketing, then Offsite Ads. The dashboard shows which orders were attributed, along with clicks, revenue and fees.
No. Etsy chooses which listings to advertise, and there's no setting to exclude a listing or an order. Shops that have never made $10,000 in a 365-day period can opt out of Offsite Ads entirely.
Etsy's refund page confirms that transaction and processing fees are refunded when you refund through Shop Manager, but its Offsite Ads page doesn't say what happens to the ad fee. Check your Payment account after the refund and contact Etsy Support with the order number if it wasn't credited.
Canopio is independent and not affiliated with Etsy, Inc. Examples are hypothetical and use US rates unless noted. Confirm current fees in your Shop Manager.