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.
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.
- Sign in to YouTube Studio.
- From the left menu, select Earn.
- Under Programs, click Join Now.
- Review and accept the YouTube Affiliate Program Terms of Service.
- You’re in! You can start tagging products in your content. Be sure to follow the tagging guidelines.
Participating brands and retailers
Once you’re a part of the program, you can start tagging products from this regularly growing list of brands and retailers:
Participating brands and retailersIf 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.
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 to see if the product 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.
- Get inspiration from brands and creators: You can request product samples from select brands and 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!
Product samples
Request product samples from select brands to help inform future content.