YouTube Shopping affiliate program overview & eligibility

The YouTube Shopping affiliate program gives you a way to earn money on YouTube while helping your audience find products they love. Through this program, you can:

• Help your fans shop: When you tag products in your content, fans can quickly scan for helpful information like pricing and keep watching your video while they checkout on the retailer’s site.
• Get more from your YouTube business: The affiliate program helps get your great shopping content in front of more brands and viewers across YouTube -- increasing your overall earnings potential with YouTube. You’ll also earn a competitive commission when fans buy.
• Spend more time creating: Since you can tag products, get insights, and review earnings in YouTube Studio, you can spend more time creating content people love and less time managing links.

Note: This program is currently available for eligible US creators. If you would like to express interest in joining early or recommend specific brands, please fill out this form. Filling out the form does not guarantee an invitation.

YouTube Shopping Affiliate Program

Eligibility requirements

To be invited to the program, you must meet these minimum eligibility requirements:

• Your channel is in the YouTube Partner Program
• Your channel must have more than 20K subscribers
• You are based in the United States
• Your channel is not a music channel, an Official Artist Channel, or associated with music partners. Music partners may include music labels, distributors, publishers, or VEVO.
• Your channel audience isn’t set as Made for Kids, and your channel doesn’t have a significant number of videos set as made for kids
• Your channel doesn’t have any active Community Guideline strikes

How to join

Once you have qualified to join the program, you can sign up in YouTube Studio.

1. Sign in to YouTube Studio.
2. From the left menu, select Earn.
3. Under Programs, click Join Now.
4. Review and accept the YouTube Affiliate Program Terms of Service.
5. You’re in! You can start tagging products in your content. Be sure to follow the tagging guidelines.

Affiliate sellers

View the complete list of affiliate sellers you can tag and earn commissions from. If you are a brand or retailer interested in joining this program, please fill out this brand/retailer interest form. Filling out the form does not guarantee an invitation

Understand your earnings

Every participating brand and retailer will set their commission rates and attribution window for each product. Commission percentages will be displayed by each product offer. The percentage displayed is what will be paid. Once a viewer clicks on your tagged product and makes a purchase, you’ll earn commissions. You can use YouTube Analytics to check your YouTube revenue.

Note: Commissions earned will be paid through AdSense within 60 to 120 days after purchase to account for customer returns. If a customer returns the product, commissions will be reversed.

YouTube Shopping affiliate performance bonus

The YouTube Shopping affiliate performance bonus gives eligible creators an exclusive opportunity to boost earnings by tagging products in your content. You may earn a bonus based on the total sales of your tagged products between the dates of October 27th - November 30th and December 1st - December 31st of 2023. This bonus doesn’t replace other ongoing brand and retailer incentives and is in addition to commissions earned on sales driven.

Eligible creators must meet the following sales tiers to earn one bonus per month (amounts in USD):

• $30 bonus for driving $300 in total product sales 

• $120 bonus for driving $1,000 in total product sales

• $750 bonus for driving $5,000 in total product sales 

• $3,000 bonus for driving $15,000+ in total product sales

The earned bonus payment will be calculated based on your total sales, minus the value of any returns made within the 45 days after the bonus period ends. Your earned bonus payment will show up in your AdSense account within 120 days of the program ending each month.

Note: The YouTube Shopping affiliate performance bonus is governed by the YouTube Affiliate Program Terms of Service. Google may terminate the YouTube Shopping affiliate performance bonus at any time with notice. Google reserves the right to deny payment for reasons including transactions generated through deceptive, abusive, fraudulent or other invalid means as determined by Google. 

Paid product placements, sponsorships & endorsements

If you include paid product placements, endorsements, sponsorships, or other content that requires disclosure to viewers in your videos, you need to follow YouTube’s paid product placement policies. Please refer to this article for more information.

Troubleshooting sign-up issues

Here are common approaches to resolve errors you may encounter when signing up:

• Your channel may not be eligible. Review the eligibility criteria above to confirm whether your channel meets the requirements.
• If your channel is managed by a content owner, you must have the content owner accept the agreement on your behalf.
• You may be signed into the wrong YouTube Channel. Switch to the channel you believe to be eligible and try again.

Note: After confirming your issue does not fall into one of the scenarios above, contact Creator Support for further assistance.

Best practices and resources

To get the most out of the affiliate program from day one, we recommend:

• Feature sales & promos from popular brands: Check if the product that you want to feature is available for commission and plan your content around sales & promos most relevant to you. 
• Tag relevant products and use a CTA to drive sales: Tag your content with products featured within your video or Short and use a call to action to let your audience know they can shop.
  • Use the Bulk Tagging feature to tag products across videos: In the Earn section of YouTube Studio, go to the Shopping  tab  Tag Products   Review the videos with suggested products to tag that were found in the video's description.
    • To tag certain products, click the product image  click TAG next to the relevant products or TAG ALL for all products.
    • To tag products for one or more videos, select the relevant videos or select all videos  TAG.
• Get inspiration from brands and creators: Check out affiliate content from YouTube creators for content inspiration.

Creator Starter Pack

A starter pack filled with resources like set up tips, best practices and fun stickers to add to your content.

Affiliate creator playlist

Get inspiration here from other creators by checking out their affiliate content on YouTube!