Amazon Affiliate Commission Rates: Why the Table You Found May Be Out of Date

Amazon pays you a percentage of what the customer spends, and that percentage depends on the category the product sits in. On the table Amazon publishes openly, the category rates run from 10% down to 0%. The rates that are not zero sit between 1% and 10%, and the catch-all line, All Other Categories, is currently 4%.

That is the easy part. The harder part is that the rate table most creators find in a search may not be the current set of terms that applies to their account. The Commission Income Statement points to an Appendix for Standard Commission Income, so the safest approach is to check the terms attached to your own Associates account rather than trusting a table you found.

Everything quoted here comes from the Amazon Associates Program Policies and Amazon’s own commission income help page. Where Amazon does not say something directly, this article says so rather than filling the gap.

The Commission Income Statement is the part of the Associates agreement that deals with money. Section 3 of it is short, and it does not contain a single number. It says Amazon will pay you the standard commission income described in the Appendix, and that commission income is calculated as a percentage of Qualifying Revenue.

So the agreement points at an Appendix, and that Appendix is where the category rates and the flat sign-up fees for your marketplace are set out.

Amazon also keeps a separate help page with a rate table on it, and that page needs no sign-in. That is the one search engines index, and it is the one nearly every blog post copies from. These are two different pages, maintained separately, and rates, programs and promotions can all change.

The practical advice is short. Whatever rate table you are reading, including this one, treat it as background rather than as your number. Check the current terms attached to your own Associates account before you rely on a figure.

Here is the public table, at the time of writing, so you can see the shape of it. The point is the pattern, not the exact figures.

• 0110% — Luxury Beauty, Luxury Stores Beauty, Amazon Explore
• 025% — Digital Music, Physical Music, Handmade, Digital Videos
• 034.5% — Physical Books, Kitchen, Automotive
• 044% — Amazon devices such as Fire tablets and Echo, plus Apparel, Watches, Jewelry, Luggage, Shoes, and Handbags
• 054% — All other categories
• 063% — Toys, Furniture, Home, Home Improvement, Lawn and Garden, Pet Products, Headphones, Beauty, Musical Instruments, Business and Industrial Supplies, Outdoors, Tools, Sports, Baby Products
• 072.5% — PC, PC Components, DVD and Blu-Ray
• 082% — Televisions, Digital Video Games
• 091% — Amazon Fresh, Grocery, Health and Personal Care, Physical Video Games and Consoles
• 100% — Gift Cards, Wireless Service Plans, Alcoholic Beverages, Vehicles for Leasing and Sales, Pet Prescription Medications, restaurant food delivery

Two things stand out. The 10% headline that gets quoted everywhere applies to beauty, not to the gear most review channels cover, and several popular review categories sit well below it. Computers are 2.5%, televisions are 2%, and physical video games are 1%, while tools, sports and home goods are 3%. And a small group of categories pays nothing whatsoever, which is worth knowing before you build a video around a gift card or a case of wine.

This is the part that confuses people most, and it has a simple explanation. The rate follows the category Amazon has filed the product under. It does not follow the type of product, and it does not follow the brand.

Here is a real pair, checked on Amazon while writing this. Two heavy duty mobility scooters, both sold on Amazon.com, both sitting under the same browse path: Medical Supplies and Equipment, then Mobility and Daily Living Aids, then Mobility Aids and Equipment, then Wheelchairs, Mobility Scooters and Accessories, then Mobility Scooters.

Amazon reports one of them in Business and Industrial Supplies, which pays 3%. It reports the other in a health category, which pays 1%. Same kind of product, same breadcrumb, three times the commission on one of them. On a scooter costing over two thousand dollars, that is the difference between roughly sixty seven dollars and roughly twenty two.

The breadcrumb will not warn you, because on these two it is identical. The affiliate link will not warn you either, because the link looks the same whatever the rate behind it is.

There is a way to see it before you commit. When you are signed in to your Associates account and you open a product page, the SiteStripe bar across the top shows two things next to each other: the category Amazon has filed the product under, and the commission rate that goes with it. That is the number that will actually be applied, and it takes a couple of seconds to read.

This is not really something to fix, it is something to check. If you are choosing between two similar products to feature, glance at the SiteStripe bar on both. The category they sit in can quietly matter more than the price difference between them.

Alongside the percentage rates, Amazon pays fixed amounts when someone signs up for one of its programs through your link. Amazon calls these Bounty Events. A Prime trial, an Audible membership, a Kindle Unlimited trial and an Amazon Business account all carry their own flat fee.

These can be worth more than a sale. A flat fee of several dollars for one free trial beats 3% of a forty dollar gadget, and the customer does not have to spend anything for it to count. If your audience is the right fit, a single line in your description pointing at a trial can outperform a product link.

Bounty and Bonus Event amounts can change, and Amazon reserves the right to introduce, modify or discontinue a special programme or promotion at any time. Check the current figures in Amazon’s Commission Income Statement before you plan a video around one.

The published standard category rates are the standard rates for Associates on a given Amazon site. Special offers are a different matter, and Amazon is direct about it. The policies say Amazon may run special programs or promotions that provide, in Amazon’s words, “all or some Associates” the opportunity to earn additional or alternative commission income.

All or some. That is Amazon reserving the right to offer one creator something it does not offer another. So if another creator tells you they earn a different rate on the same product, they may well be right, and it does not mean you are doing anything wrong.

It is also another reason not to trust a number you read in an article. Ours included. The only rate that describes your account is the one inside your account.

There is one number that makes the whole table irrelevant, and it is the one most creators never check. If the tracking tag is missing from the link people are clicking, your category rate does not matter at all. Three percent of nothing and ten percent of nothing come to the same amount.

It is worth separating two different problems here, because they are not equally bad. If the product itself is no longer available to buy, the customer cannot buy that product at that moment, although a click on a properly tagged link can still open a session and other qualifying purchases during that session can still count. If the tag is missing, nothing is credited to you at all.

Neither problem announces itself. The video keeps its views, the description keeps its link, and the earnings quietly change. We wrote about why a report can show clicks but no earnings separately, because it catches people out constantly.

Checking is not complicated, it is just boring, which is why it does not get done. If you would rather not open every old description by hand, AffiliScan watches your videos and tells you when a link stops earning. Either way, check them. Optimising for a category rate while a third of your links are dead is effort spent in the wrong place.