The Amazon affiliate program is basically you borrowing Amazon’s conversion engine and wiring it into your content.

You talk about products in a blog post, a YouTube video, a TikTok, or a newsletter. Your audience clicks a special Amazon link. If they buy, Amazon sends you a cut.

If you set things up wrong, Amazon shrugs, shuts your account, and moves on. If you set it up right, it becomes an easy, low-friction layer of income on top of what you already do.

Let’s walk through what the Amazon affiliate program actually is, how it works in 2025, how to become an Amazon Associate without getting tripped up by the rules, and what it takes to earn your first commissions.

What is the Amazon affiliate program?

The Amazon affiliate program is officially called Amazon Associates. It is Amazon’s in-house affiliate marketing program. You sign up as an Associate, Amazon gives you special tracking links, and when someone clicks your link and buys something, you earn commission on that purchase.

“Site” is broad here. Amazon is fine with:

• A traditional blog or niche website

• A YouTube channel

• A TikTok or Instagram presence

• An email newsletter

• A mobile app that uses Amazon’s Product Advertising API

As long as you own a place where you publish original content and can reasonably send people to Amazon, you are in the right zone.

People like Associates for two main reasons:

1. Trust and conversion. Amazon is where a huge chunk of the internet shops. Checkout is painfully optimized.

2. Massive catalog. There is almost always a relevant product for whatever you are talking about.

The tradeoff is that commissions are lower than many smaller, niche affiliate programs. You are playing the “lots of products, decent conversion” game, not the “one product, 40 percent commission” game.

How the Amazon affiliate program works in 2025

Mechanically, it is simple.

You apply for Amazon Associates. Once your account is live, you get tools to generate affiliate links for specific products or pages. You put those links into your content. When someone clicks your link and makes a qualifying purchase, Amazon tracks it and pays you a percentage.

Two details matter: how much you earn and what counts as “your” sale.

Commission rates

Amazon pays different rates for different categories. There is no single “Amazon commission.”

As of early 2025:

• Many physical product categories fall in the 1 to 4 percent range

• Some products (like certain digital content or Amazon Fresh categories) sit around 5 percent

• Premium areas like luxury beauty can pay around 10 percent, and specific Amazon Games products or events have paid up to ~20 percent

The exact numbers live on Amazon’s official Fixed Standard Commission Income Rates page, which you should always treat as the source of truth.

So yes, the rates are modest. The compensating factor is that you are sending traffic to the store where your audience already buys almost everything.

Cookies and the “whole cart” effect

When someone clicks your Amazon affiliate link, Amazon drops a cookie in their browser. For a typical click this cookie lasts 24 hours. If they buy anything in that window, Amazon counts it as your sale, not just the item you linked.

There is also a longer cart behavior: if they add an item to their cart during that 24-hour window and check out within roughly 90 days, the sale can still be credited to you.

That “whole cart” rule is where Associates gets fun. You might send someone to a 20 dollar tripod and end up earning commission on the laptop, headphones and office chair they buy in that same session.

Not every category behaves the same way, and some products pay flat bounties instead of percentages. But the basic model is: short cookie, whole cart, long-ish cart window.

Who can join: eligibility and the 3-sales rule

Amazon is not interested in phantom sites that exist solely to spam links. It wants Associates who already have some kind of content and audience.

At a minimum, you need:

• To be over 18 with valid tax and payment information

• At least one “property” with real content: a website, blog, YouTube channel, social profile, or app

• Content that is not scraped, autogenerated, or just a wall of affiliate links

The part most people miss is the three-sales-in-180-days rule.

When you sign up, Amazon does not immediately stamp you “approved forever.” You get provisional access. You can log in, create links, and start using them, but your account is only properly approved if you drive at least three qualifying sales within your first 180 days.

If you do not hit three sales in that six-month window, Amazon closes the account. You can reapply later, no drama, but you will be starting from scratch.

This is why timing matters more than people think. If you have zero content and zero traffic, it is usually better to spend a month or two publishing and attracting some visitors before you click “apply.”

And one legal-ish caveat: nothing here is legal or tax advice. Amazon’s Operating Agreement and official program policies are the documents that actually matter, so you should skim those at least once.

How to sign up as an Amazon Associate

The sign-up flow is just a sequence of forms, but it helps to know what is coming.

You start on the Amazon Associates homepage for your region and hit the “Sign up” button. You log in with your existing Amazon account or create a new one if you want to keep your personal shopping and affiliate work separate.

Next, Amazon asks for:

• Basic account information: name, address, contact details, who gets paid

• The sites, channels, or apps where you will use affiliate links

You paste in URLs for your blog, YouTube channel, Instagram, TikTok, or app. You describe your content and pick a Store ID, which becomes your main tracking tag. You also choose a few topic categories that best match your content.

Finally, you answer a short questionnaire about how you generate traffic and whether any of your content targets children. Then you submit.

At that point you effectively have an Associates account in “probation” mode. You can access the dashboard, tools, and reporting. You can create links. But the clock is ticking on those first three sales.

The smart move is to apply when you already know which pieces of content you will optimize first. If you can point to two or three pages or videos that get consistent views, you are in a very good position to survive the 180-day window.

How to create Amazon affiliate links in 2025

Once your account is live, you have a few ways to generate links. The most common is SiteStripe.

When you are logged into Amazon as an Associate on desktop, you will see a thin bar across the top of product pages. That is SiteStripe. From there, you can generate a short text link for the product you are looking at and copy-paste that into your content.

There was a big change in late 2023. For years, SiteStripe let you create image-based links and “text + image” snippets. Amazon removed those options in December 2023. SiteStripe is now text-only, and old image-based SiteStripe code is not supported going forward. Amazon’s guidance has been to replace those with newer, approved methods like the Product Advertising API.

On mobile, the Amazon app has a share option. If you are logged into your Associates account, you can tap share on a product and copy a short affiliate link directly from your phone. That is handy if you live inside social apps and want to grab links on the fly.

If you are a developer or you run a more advanced site, you can use the Product Advertising API to pull product data, pricing, and images straight into your own templates. In exchange, Amazon expects you to follow the API terms carefully, keep pricing fresh, and stop showing outdated info.

For most beginners though, SiteStripe and the app are more than enough.

Disclosure, rules, and things that get your account closed

Amazon cares a lot about two things: that you tell people you are earning commission, and that you do not abuse the program.

On the disclosure side, Amazon requires you to clearly state that you earn from qualifying purchases. The simplest way is to use wording that mirrors theirs:

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

That sentence, or something very close, needs to appear on any site where you use Amazon affiliate links.

From a regulatory angle (think FTC rules), that disclosure also has to be easy to notice. Hiding it in a tiny footer that no one reads does not really cut it. A common pattern is to put a short disclosure near the top of a blog post or page, before you start dropping product links.

On the “do not get clever” side, there are a few moves that reliably cause problems:

• Cloaking or hiding Amazon URLs with tools that make the link look like something else, in ways the program forbids

• Copying product images directly from Amazon and hosting them yourself instead of using approved tools or the API

• Putting raw affiliate links in PDFs, e-books, or offline documents where Amazon does not allow them

• Running ads that pretend to be Amazon or mislead users about who you are
  
  

If something feels like a workaround you saw in a sketchy YouTube video from 2017, there is a good chance it is either outdated or not allowed anymore. The safest approach is boring: use Amazon’s tools as they are intended, disclose clearly, and stick to normal content.

Is the Amazon affiliate program worth it?

The short answer is yes, for the right job.

The upside is clear:

• Your audience already buys from Amazon

• The store converts extremely well

• You can earn on entire carts, not just a single product you recommended
  
  

The downsides are structural:

• Commissions are modest compared to standalone programs

• The 24-hour cookie window means timing matters

• Amazon’s rules are strict, and they have zero problem closing accounts that break them

Where the program shines is as a first affiliate program or a baseline revenue layer. If you already create useful content, adding relevant Amazon links is a low-effort way to monetize. Over time, you can stack other offers and higher-paying partnerships on top.

If you are starting from scratch and expecting “Amazon affiliate income” to replace your job in a few months, you are going to be disappointed. This is a lever on top of an existing content engine, not a lottery ticket.

How to get your first three sales

The three-sales-in-180-days requirement is where a lot of people quietly lose their accounts. They sign up, paste a few links into thin content, and then nothing happens.

Treat those first three sales like a small project.

Start by creating one or two pieces of content that are clearly designed to help people pick products. That might be a “Tools I Use” page, a “My YouTube Setup” post, a “Starter Kit” guide for whatever you teach, or a “Best X for Y” breakdown in your niche.

Make the content real. Talk about products you actually use. Write a couple of sentences about why each item is in your setup, what you tried before, and who it is right for. It does not need to be a 5,000-word magnum opus. It just needs to feel like you actually care.

Once those pages or videos are live, plug them into places where your audience already touches you:

• Your email signature

• Your Instagram or TikTok bio link

• The description of your most watched YouTube videos

• A short mention in your next newsletter

When you do talk about products, encourage people to add things to their cart while they are thinking about it. Even if they do not check out right away, that cart behavior can keep you in play for up to 90 days.

Three sales in six months is a tiny hill if you treat it intentionally. It is almost impossible if you treat it like a wish.

Amazon Associates vs the Amazon Influencer Program

You will see both programs mentioned in the wild, so it is worth drawing a clean line between them.

Amazon Associates is the standard affiliate program we have been talking about. You apply, you get tracking links, you use those links in your own content (on your site, in your videos, in social posts), and you earn when people click and buy.

The Amazon Influencer Program is a separate track aimed at creators with larger, more measurable followings. Influencers get a dedicated storefront on Amazon where they can curate lists of products. They still earn via affiliate-style commissions, but the experience is more “shop my storefront” than “click my individual links.”

In practical terms: start with Associates. If and when your presence on YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram grows, the Influencer Program becomes a nice add-on, not a prerequisite.

If you are a brand: making the most of affiliate-driven traffic

Everything so far has been from the publisher or creator’s side. If you are a brand selling on Amazon, your relationship with the affiliate program looks a little different.

From your perspective, Amazon’s affiliate ecosystem is one more source of traffic layered into an already complex mix: organic search, Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display, Amazon DSP, Amazon posts, off-Amazon ads, and so on. Affiliates and creators might send extra visitors to your listings, but those visitors land on the same product detail pages as everyone else.

That means the real question for you is not “How do we manage affiliates?” so much as “When traffic hits our Amazon listings, are those pages ready to convert and make money?”

That is the part Darkroom focuses on.

Darkroom works with brands on the Amazon marketing and account management side, not as an affiliate manager. In practice that looks like:

• Making sure your product detail pages, A+ content, images, and Brand Store are “retail ready” before you pour more traffic into them

• Building Amazon-first creative that works in Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display, DSP, and off-Amazon campaigns that send people into your listings

• Planning and running Amazon ad campaigns so paid, organic, and affiliate-driven traffic all feed into one profit-focused strategy instead of three disconnected efforts
  
  

If affiliates and creators are already starting to talk about your products, that is great. But it only turns into real, compounding growth if your Amazon presence is set up to catch that demand.

Darkroom does not recruit or manage affiliates directly. We help the brands on the other side of those links:

• Tighten up their Amazon presence

• Use retail media to amplify what is already working

• Build a measurement loop so Amazon becomes a predictable growth channel, not a black box

If you are a brand and you suspect your Amazon marketing is not keeping up with the attention you are getting, that is exactly the kind of problem we like to solve.

Wrapping up

The Amazon affiliate program is not magic, but it is useful.

For creators and publishers, it is often the easiest way to turn product recommendations into real income and to learn how affiliate marketing works without wrestling a dozen different networks. For brands, it is one more tap feeding traffic into the same place everyone lands: your Amazon listings.

Either way, the leverage point is the same: clear strategy and good creative.

If you are a brand selling on Amazon and you want your listings, ad creative, and campaigns to actually match the level of attention you are getting, book a call with Darkroom.

We will help you move from “Amazon is where we happen to be” to “Amazon is a channel we actively grow,” so when affiliates and creators send people your way, there is a system in place to turn that traffic into profitable, compounding revenue.