Pay to post

With pay to post, members pay a fee before their listing goes live. You set the price per category, so you can charge for cars and property while keeping small items free.

Pay to post is a good fit for marketplaces where each listing is worth a lot to the seller: vehicles, property, jobs, business listings. If you’d rather charge per month for unlimited or bundled listings, use membership plans instead.

Switch it on

Go to Listings › Categories, open a category and enter a Price. Click Submit. Repeat for every category that should cost something.
Go to Settings › Payments.
In Pay to post, set Charge for posting to Pay to post or Pay to post, then you approve.
Click Save changes.

You can also set the price of every category on one page: in Make money, step What sellers pay for, switch on Pay to post.

Paid categories show a … to post label in the category list, so you can check your prices at a glance.

Connect a payment method before you switch this on. Without one, members can post but never pay, and their listings stay unpublished.

The three options

Charge for posting	What happens
No charge	Posting is free. Listings follow your normal moderation setting, shown in brackets.
Pay to post	In a paid category the member pays straight after posting, and the listing is published as soon as the payment goes through.
Pay to post, then you approve	The member pays straight after posting, then the listing waits in Listings › Moderation until you approve it.

Charge for posting is the same choice as How new listings go live in Settings › General, where these options are called Payment and Payment and moderation, so changing one changes the other. Pay to post replaces email confirmation and moderation; choose Pay to post, then you approve if you still want to check every listing. To go back to free posting, choose No charge: your previous moderation mode is kept.

How prices work

Each category has its own price. A subcategory with no price (0) uses the price of the nearest category above it that has one.
A category with no price anywhere above it stays free. Listings there are published as if pay to post were off: directly with Pay to post, through moderation with Pay to post, then you approve.
To charge businesses a different amount, give the category a Business price too (Professional and Marketplace plans). Business accounts pay it instead of the price. See Private and business accounts.
Prices are in your Currency and include VAT at checkout if you have set it up.
Members can use a coupon for the Post in paid category product.

What members see

The member fills in the posting form as usual and submits it.
They see Please pay before we publish your listing. and go to the checkout page.
They pay with any payment method you have connected.
With Pay to post, the listing is published and they get a confirmation email. With Pay to post, then you approve, they’re told it will be published after review.

Until it is paid, the listing is saved as unpublished. Members can pay later from My Listings, where unpaid listings show a Pay button, and two days after posting they get an email reminder with a link to the checkout.

If a member edits a listing and moves it into a paid category, they are asked to pay for the new category.

Manage paid listings

Every payment creates an order of type Post in paid category. See Orders and transactions.
To publish a listing without payment (for example a partner’s), open the checkout from the unpaid order and click Mark as paid, or mark the order as paid in Orders.
Expired listings are renewed according to your expiry settings.

Categories — create categories and set their price.
Private and business accounts — a different price for business accounts.
Moderation — review listings before they go live.
Membership plans — charge a subscription instead of per listing.
Featured listings and bring to top — extras sellers can add.
Promotions while posting — sellers add a boost to the posting fee and pay once.