Boosts and promotions

Boosts are the main paid extra on big classifieds sites. Instead of choosing between a featured period and a move back to the top, sellers pick one ready-made package that gives them both, spread over several days. Alongside boosts you can sell small add-ons (an Urgent label, a highlighted card) and a few premium places on your home page.

All of these are switched on in Make money and need a payment method.

Boost packages

You sell up to three packages. Each one combines:

• Featured days: the listing is featured, with its badge and first place in results. Days are added to a featured period that is still running, never lost.
• Moves to top: the listing goes back to first place among the newest. The first move happens as soon as the seller pays; the others follow automatically, a set number of days apart.

The suggested packages are:

Package	Price	What sellers get
Quick	3	Back to the top now.
Fast	9	7 days featured, and back to the top 3 times, every 2 days.
Max	19	30 days featured, and back to the top 10 times, every 3 days.

Prices are in your site’s currency. Rename the packages, change what they include, or remove the ones you don’t want.

Switch on boosts

1. Go to Make money and continue to step 2, What sellers pay for.
2. Switch on Boosts.
3. For each package, set the Name, Price, Featured days, Moves to top and Every (days). Click Remove to drop a package, or + Add a package to bring one back.
4. Finish the steps and click Save and switch on.

Every package needs a price above 0 and something to give: featured days, moves to the top or both. A package without them isn’t saved, and boosts stay off if no package is left.

What a seller buys is fixed when they order: changing a package later doesn’t change boosts already bought.

Where sellers find boosts

Sellers see a Boost button on their own live listings, which opens a page with your packages and how many views the listing has had so far. Where the button appears depends on your theme:

Theme	Where sellers are offered boosts
Nova	Right after posting, on their listing page and in My Listings, which also shows each listing’s views.
Other themes	In My Listings and on the page where they edit a listing.

While boosts are on, sellers see one clear choice: in Nova, the Boost offer on their listing replaces the separate Go Featured! and Go Top! offers; in other themes, Boost replaces the Featured button. Your featured plans and bring to top stay on sale wherever else your theme offers them.

Five days after posting, sellers also get one email with how many people saw their listing and a link to boost it. It isn’t sent to sellers who unsubscribed from emails, or for listings that are already featured, boosted or moved to the top. To change its wording, create an email template named ad-boost in Email templates; otherwise a built-in text is used.

To see what your sellers see, open Make money after saving and click See what sellers see. The preview uses one of your live listings and never creates an order.

When a listing goes offline during a boost

If a boosted listing expires or goes back into review, its remaining moves to the top wait until it is live again, for up to 90 days after the boost was bought. If the listing is sold or deleted, the boost ends.

Urgent and Highlight

Two cheap add-ons for one listing, easy first purchases for private sellers:

• Urgent puts a red Urgent label on the listing, in results and on its page.
• Highlight gives the listing’s card a coloured background in results.

In Make money, step 2, switch on Urgent and Highlight and set the Urgent price, the Highlight price and how many Days they last (suggested: 1 and 2, for 7 days). Buying the same add-on again adds its days after the period that is running.

The labels and the coloured cards are shown by the Nova theme. Sellers buy them from the Promote page of their listing (see below).

Home page spotlight

The spotlight is a row called In the spotlight at the top of your Nova home page, with a few paid places shown in random order. Because there are only a few places, they are worth more than a featured listing: price them higher.

In Make money, step 2, switch on Home page spotlight and set the Price, the number of Days and the number of Places (1 to 12; suggested: 15 for 7 days, 4 places).

When every place is taken, sellers see the date the next one frees up. If a payment comes in while the spotlight is full, that listing’s place starts as soon as one frees up.

The Promote page

In the Nova theme, each listing has a Promote page where its seller finds what they can buy or use for it: your boost packages, Urgent, Highlight and the spotlight, a paid renewal when the listing is about to expire, and any promotions included in their plan. Sellers open it with Promote on their listing page or in the menu of My Listings, shown once you sell Urgent, Highlight or the spotlight, or your plans include promotions.

Promotions while posting

With Offer promotions while posting on, sellers can promote a listing before it is even published:

• In the post form, a Make it stand out step before the submit button offers your boost packages (with No boost selected by default) and Urgent, Highlight and Spotlight if you sell them. It is part of the post form in Nova, the default theme and Atlantic Lite.
• On the payment page for pay to post, sellers can add a boost to the same payment (in most themes).
• On the thanks page after posting (Nova), sellers who didn’t pick a promotion are offered boosts.

If posting is paid, the promotions are added to the posting fee, so the seller pays once. If posting is free, the seller goes straight to the payment page for the promotions, with the message Your listing is saved. One last step: pay for the promotion you chose below.

The switch is in Make money, step 2, and is on unless you turn it off. It appears once you sell boosts, featured listings, bring to top, Urgent and Highlight or the spotlight. With it off, sellers can only promote a listing once it is live.

Promotions bought before a listing is live

A promotion can be paid for while the listing is still waiting: in review, waiting for its posting fee or for the seller to confirm their email. This applies to boosts, Urgent, Highlight and the spotlight, and also to featured listings and bring to top.

Such a promotion is kept on hold and starts when the listing goes live, usually within 15 minutes of your approval. Featured days and moves to the top are not used up while nobody can see the listing.

Automatic refunds

If a listing never goes live, its seller gets their money back. A held promotion is refunded automatically when its listing:

• is deleted;
• is rejected or taken offline (marked as spam, unavailable or sold);
• still isn’t live 30 days after the payment.

Paid with	What happens
Stripe	Stripe refunds the money straight away. When the promotion was part of a bigger payment (for example with the posting fee), only the promotion’s share is refunded, with the same coupon or VAT.
PayPal or another method	The promotion’s order is marked as refunded and you get an email asking you to send the money back in your PayPal (or other) account.

The seller always gets an email saying the promotion wasn’t used and was refunded. You can change it in Email templates (promotion-refunded) once the first one has been sent.

To refund a promotion yourself, for example after a complaint, use Refund order or Mark as refunded in Orders. The boost’s remaining moves stop, and its featured days, Urgent, Highlight or spotlight place are taken back.

In your orders

Each purchase is an order under its product: Boost, Urgent or Highlight or Home page spotlight. A promotion bought together with the posting fee is part of that payment; it also appears as its own order with the payment method included and an amount of 0, so you can see what was bought. Your earnings on the Make money page count it under its product.

Related guides

• Make money — switch these on, with the other paid options.
• Featured listings and bring to top — the classic paid extras.
• Pay to post — charge for posting, and add promotions to the same payment.
• Coupons — discounts that work on boosts and add-ons too.