Ads guideWhat promoted and boosted listings cost on eBay, Etsy, Depop, Poshmark, Mercari and Whatnot

Paying to promote a listing adds a second fee on top of the normal selling fee. Some platforms take a percentage when the item sells, some charge per click, and one charges nothing at all. Here is how each one works, with worked dollar examples and the official page for every number.

Checked Nov 2, 2026 against each platform’s own help or policy page. US sellers.

eBay Promoted Listings: general (pay when it sells)

With the general strategy you pick an ad rate between 2% and 100%, and eBay charges that share of the item’s total sale amount, including shipping and any taxes, but only if the promoted item sells within 30 days of a click on your ad (eBay Help: General campaign strategy, checked Nov 2, 2026). A click includes adding to a watchlist or cart, and since the click can come from any buyer, the buyer who purchases doesn’t have to be the one who clicked (eBay Help: Promoted Listings overview, checked Nov 2, 2026). The ad fee comes on top of eBay’s final value fee and per-order fee (eBay Help: Selling fees, checked Oct 27, 2026).

Selling fees from the same fee code as our eBay fee calculator (final value fee on the $58.00 total plus the per-order fee). “You take home” is before your shipping label. Sales tax is left out; because eBay counts tax in the total sale amount, the real ad fee is slightly higher where tax applies.

To work out whether an ad pays for itself on your own item, get your selling fees and take-home from the eBay fee calculator, subtract the ad rate times the total sale amount as above, then track what your promoted sales actually net in the free profit tracker.

eBay Promoted Listings: priority (pay per click)

The priority strategy charges for clicks, not sales. Each click is priced in a second-price auction (listing quality, keyword relevance, your bid, competition and a reserve price), and you’re charged for valid clicks whether or not the item sells (eBay Help: Promoted Listings overview, checked Nov 2, 2026). You set a target daily budget of at least $3; a single day can spend up to double it, but eBay says a campaign running a full month won’t be charged more than 30.4 times the daily budget (for example, no more than $304 a month on a $10 budget) (eBay Help: Priority campaign strategy, checked Nov 2, 2026). Because the cost isn’t tied to one sale, there’s no fixed percentage to add to a single item: divide what a campaign spent by the items it sold to see your real cost per sale.

eBay Promoted Offsite

Promoted Offsite shows your listings on outside channels such as Google and uses a cost-per-click model that eBay adjusts for each listing daily (eBay Help: Promoted Offsite, checked Nov 2, 2026). As with priority, it’s a budgeted per-click cost rather than a share of each sale.

Etsy Offsite Ads and Etsy Ads

Etsy may advertise your listings on other sites. If a buyer clicks one of those ads and orders from your shop within 30 days, you pay an Offsite Ads fee of 15% of the order total, or 12% if your shop has made $10,000 or more in any 365-day period. The fee is capped at $100 per order. Under $10,000 you can opt out; once you pass it, you can’t (Etsy Help: Offsite Ads, checked Nov 2, 2026). Etsy’s policy says the order total includes the item price, shipping and gift wrap, and in some places taxes (Etsy Fees & Payments Policy, checked Nov 2, 2026). The fee is on top of Etsy’s transaction and payment processing fees (Etsy Help: Fees, checked Oct 21, 2026).

Example: a $40.00 item with $6.00 shipping ($46.00 total). Etsy’s normal fees are $4.82 (listing, transaction and processing, from our Etsy fee calculator). If the order came from an Offsite Ad, add $6.90 at 15% (total fees $11.72) or $5.52 at 12% (total $10.34).

Etsy Ads, the on-Etsy search ads, work differently: you set a daily budget (at or above a minimum Etsy sets) and are charged for clicks, never more than your daily budget (Etsy Fees & Payments Policy, checked Nov 2, 2026). If a buyer’s last click before ordering was an Etsy Ad, only the Etsy Ads fee applies, not the Offsite Ads fee (Etsy Help: Offsite Ads, checked Nov 2, 2026).

Depop Boosted Listings

US sellers pay no Depop selling fee, only payment processing. A boosted listing adds a 12% boosting fee on the item price (excluding taxes), plus the shipping cost if you don’t use a Depop shipping label; the 12% applies to US listings created from March 23, 2026. If the sale is refunded, the boosting fee is reversed too (Depop Help Centre, checked Nov 2, 2026).

Example: a $40.00 item shipped with a Depop label. Processing is $1.77 (from our Depop fee calculator); boosting adds $4.80, so fees go from $1.77 to $6.57 and you take home $33.43 instead of $38.23.

Poshmark Promoted Closet

Poshmark’s Promoted Closet is pay-per-click. You set a weekly budget, Poshmark prices each click in an auction, and a click counts when a shopper opens, likes or bundles the promoted listing. You’re invoiced after each 7-day cycle for the budget used, never more than the weekly budget, and click charges aren’t refunded (Poshmark Promoted Closet Terms, checked Nov 2, 2026). It’s separate from Poshmark’s normal $2.95 or 20% fee (Poshmark’s fee guide, checked Oct 21, 2026): a $40.00 sale still pays $8.00 in commission, and whatever the week’s clicks cost comes on top.

Mercari Promote

Mercari’s Promote costs nothing extra: cut your price by at least 5% and Mercari boosts the listing in search and notifies everyone who liked it. The price drop is permanent, and an item can be promoted once every 24 hours (Mercari Help: Promote, checked Nov 2, 2026). The real cost is the price cut. Mercari’s 10% selling fee is on the item price plus buyer-paid shipping (Mercari Help: Fees, checked Nov 2, 2026), so the fee shrinks a little with the price: dropping a $40.00 item 5% to $38.00 costs you $1.80 after the fee ($2.00 less price, $0.20 less fee).

Whatnot Promote and Boost

Whatnot promotes live shows, not single listings. You can promote a full show with an hourly budget (you’re charged for how long the promoted stream runs) or run a Boost of up to 15 minutes by entering a bid (Whatnot Help: Promote Tools, checked Nov 2, 2026). Whatnot doesn’t publish a fixed rate, so the cost is whatever budget or bid you choose, on top of commission and processing.

How to tell if promoting paid off

For a percentage-of-sale ad (eBay general, Etsy Offsite Ads, Depop Boost), add the ad rate to the selling fee and check you still keep enough: on the eBay example above, a 10% ad rate takes $5.80 more of a $58.00 order. For per-click ads (eBay priority and Offsite, Etsy Ads, Poshmark Promoted Closet, Whatnot), divide the week’s or month’s spend by the extra sales it brought in. Work out your payout before ads in the payout comparison, then subtract the ad cost.