How to Add Amazon Affiliate Links to YouTube the Right Way

If you review products on YouTube, Amazon is usually the first place you look to earn a commission. There are two ways to do it, and most guides only explain one of them.

The first way works for everyone: you join the Amazon Associates program, make a link for the product, and paste it into your video description. The second way is newer and much more limited: you tag Amazon products inside YouTube itself, and they appear in a shopping panel under your video. This guide covers both — starting with the one that is open to you no matter where you live.

Amazon Associates is Amazon’s affiliate program (the program that pays you a small percentage when someone buys through your link). Signing up is free. You give Amazon your details, list the YouTube channel you will share links on, and choose how you want to be paid.

There is one rule that catches almost every beginner, so plan around it: after you apply, you have 180 days to refer three qualifying sales. If you do not reach three sales in that window, Amazon closes your account and you have to apply again. So do not sign up months before you actually plan to post product videos. Sign up when you are ready to publish.

Once you have your account, Amazon gives you an affiliate tag — a short piece of text like "yourname-20" that goes at the end of every link and tells Amazon the sale came from you. Without it, a sale cannot be credited to your account.

This is the step people get wrong. Do not copy the web address out of your browser bar and paste it into your description. A plain product address has no tag in it, so nothing you earn gets credited to you.

Instead, use SiteStripe. It is the grey bar Amazon shows at the top of every product page once you are logged in as an Associate. Open the product, click "Text" in the SiteStripe bar, and Amazon builds the link for you with your tag already inside it. That is the only method you should use.

SiteStripe gives you two versions of the same link: a full one that runs on for a whole line, and a short "amzn.to" one. Both keep your tag and both are allowed. The short one is tidier but hides the product behind it, which has a trade-off worth understanding — we compared them in short links versus full Amazon links.

One thing to avoid completely: do not run your Amazon links through a third-party shortener such as bit.ly or TinyURL. Amazon says third-party shortened links are not supported by OneLink, the system that sends international shoppers to their local Amazon store, so those links will not be redirected properly.

YouTube shows only the first two or three lines of a description before the "more" button. Anything below that is hidden until someone taps to expand it. So put your most important link near the top, not buried at the bottom under your social profiles.

Label every link with the product name. A description that reads "Microphone I use: amzn.to/..." earns far more clicks than a bare web address on its own, because the viewer knows what they are about to open.

• 01Put the product links first, above your social links and timestamps.
• 02Write the product name before each link, not just the link.
• 03Only link to products you actually showed in the video.
• 04Keep a private note of which link went into which video — you will thank yourself later.

This part is not optional. Amazon requires Associates to say clearly that they earn from qualifying purchases, and advertising regulators in most countries require you to tell viewers when a link makes you money. A single line above your links is enough, for example: "As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases."

Put it where people will actually see it — near the top of the description, not at the very bottom. You should also tick YouTube’s own "paid promotion" box when it applies. Skipping the disclosure risks your Associates account, and your account is the thing that pays you.

YouTube runs its own affiliate system, called the YouTube Shopping affiliate program. Instead of pasting links in the description, eligible creators tag products directly in the video, and those products appear in a shopping panel below it. Amazon is one of the partners.

To tag Amazon products this way, YouTube requires all of the following: your channel is in the YouTube Partner Program, you are enrolled in the YouTube Shopping affiliate program in the United States, and you have an active Amazon Associates or Amazon Influencer account in good standing that you have linked to your YouTube channel.

Two limits matter here. The Amazon part is available in the United States only, and YouTube describes it as open to a select group of creators — so being eligible on paper does not guarantee access yet. Payment also works differently: these earnings arrive through your AdSense account rather than from Amazon, on a delay of roughly two months.

YouTube can also tag products for you. If you turn the setting on, YouTube reviews your recent uploads and automatically identifies and tags eligible Amazon products. That is genuinely useful — but be clear about how far it goes. It only fills the shopping panel under the video. Your description links are a completely separate thing: YouTube does not create them, does not check them, and does not fix them if they break. You still build those yourself with SiteStripe.

The Shopping affiliate program sits behind the YouTube Partner Program, so that is the door you have to get through first. There are two ways in, and the lower one is easier than most creators realise.

The expanded Partner Program opens at 500 subscribers, if you also have 3 valid public uploads in the last 90 days, plus either 3,000 valid public watch hours in the last 12 months or 3 million valid public Shorts views in the last 90 days.

The full Partner Program, which is the one that includes advertising revenue, opens at 1,000 subscribers with either 4,000 valid public watch hours in the last 12 months or 10 million valid public Shorts views in the last 90 days.

On top of the numbers, YouTube asks for a few housekeeping things:

• 01You live in a country or region where the Partner Program is available.
• 02Your channel has no active Community Guidelines strikes.
• 032-Step Verification is turned on for your Google account.
• 04You have advanced features access on YouTube.
• 05You have an AdSense for YouTube account linked to your channel.

The Shopping affiliate program itself is available in Argentina, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, the United States and Vietnam. Music channels, Official Artist Channels and channels set as Made for Kids are not eligible. And to repeat the important part: tagging Amazon products specifically is United States only, even though the wider Shopping program covers those other countries.

If you are below those thresholds, or outside the United States, nothing is lost. Description links work on any channel, in any country, from your very first video. That is why they remain the main way creators earn from Amazon on YouTube.

Adding the links is the easy part. Keeping them working is the part nobody plans for.

Amazon links do not stay good forever. Products get discontinued, listings go out of stock, sellers move to a new listing, and a link you added in March can quietly stop leading anywhere useful by September. Your video keeps getting views the whole time. Nothing tells you it happened — there is no alert, and no line in any dashboard. You can read more about why affiliate links quietly stop earning.

So build the habit early: check your links on a schedule rather than waiting to notice a drop in earnings. A link checker can open every Amazon link in your descriptions, follow it to the real product, and tell you which ones need attention. AffiliScan does this across a whole channel and emails you when something breaks, so a broken link is something you fix in a day instead of finding out about months later.

Doing this the right way is not complicated. Join Amazon Associates when you are ready to publish, build every link with SiteStripe so your tag is always inside it, put the links high in your description with the product named, and add your disclosure where people can see it.

If you are in the United States and your channel qualifies, tagging Amazon products through YouTube Shopping is worth adding on top — but treat it as an extra, not a replacement. Description links are what work everywhere, for every channel size, from day one.

And once the links are in, remember that they are not finished. They are something you maintain. The creators who keep earning from old videos are simply the ones who noticed the broken links before their viewers did. If you want to avoid the common traps from the start, read the Amazon affiliate link mistakes that cost YouTubers money.