YouTube Shopping affiliate program overview & eligibility

YouTube Shopping Affiliate Program 🛍️

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 discover: 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 products on the retailer’s site.
  • 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 creators of the United States, South Korea, Indonesia, India, Thailand, and Vietnam. 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

Creator eligibility requirements

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

  • Your channel is in the YouTube Partner Program.
  • Your channel must have more than 10,000 subscribers.
  • You are based in the United States, South Korea, Indonesia, India, Thailand, or Vietnam.
  • 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.

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 Shopping Affiliate Program Terms of Service.
  5. You’re in! You can start tagging products in your content. Learn how to tag products and be sure to follow the tagging guidelines.

Add the “YouTube Shopping” browser extension

Note: Currently, only available in the United States and South Korea on Chrome Web Store.

You can easily save products to tag your video later and check out commission rates with the browser extension. Add the “YouTube Shopping” browser extension and get started. Learn more on how to install and manage extensions.

Affiliate hub

Note: Currently, this feature is only available in the United States and South Korea.

Find the growing list of participating affiliate sellers and offers where you can view their commission percentages and learn more. You can request product samples, view products that are on sale, and find higher commissions from sellers.

  1. Sign in to YouTube Studio.
  2. From the left menu, click Earnand then Shopping and then  Explore affiliate offers.

  3. Under “Get in on the action,” you can select Commission, Promotions, or Samples.

  • Note: Select a seller for more details. You can also sort the sellers alphabetically or by highest commission.

Affiliate sellers lists

You can start tagging products from our growing list of sellers: 

List of affiliate sellers

Note:
  • This is not the complete list of sellers. You can find the complete list of affiliate sellers in YouTube Studio.
  • 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.
  • If you are a Shopify merchant in the United States, learn more on how to join directly.

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. Once a viewer clicks on your tagged product and makes purchases on the retailer’s site, you’ll earn commissions. You can use YouTube Analytics to check your YouTube revenue.

Note: Commissions earned will be paid through AdSense for YouTube 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

Note: Some creators may not be eligible for the YouTube Shopping affiliate performance bonus program if they are already participating in other incentive programs by YouTube.

The YouTube Shopping affiliate performance bonus gives eligible creators an opportunity to boost earnings by tagging products in your content. This bonus doesn’t replace other ongoing brand and retailer incentives and is in addition to commissions earned on sales driven.

Bonus period

You may earn a bonus based on the total sales of your tagged products between these periods (which reset each month):

  • November 1 - November 30, 2024.
  • December 1 - December 31, 2024.

Bonus sales tiers

Note: This performance bonus tier is specific to eligible creators in the United States.

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

  • $50 bonus for driving $1,000 in total product sales 
  • $300 bonus for driving $4,000 in total product sales
  • $650 bonus for driving $8,000 in total product sales 
  • $1,750 bonus for driving $17,500 in total product sales

The bonus tiers are not additive and will reset during each bonus period. You will earn the bonus amount of the highest tier of sales driven.

Bonus payment

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. Learn how to add paid product placements, sponsorships, and endorsements.

Troubleshooting sign-up issues

Common approaches to resolve errors during singing up

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

Get the most from the affiliate program 

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 and then Tag Products and then Review the videos with suggested products to tag that were found in the video's description.

  • To tag certain products, click the product image and then 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 and then 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!

Was this helpful?

How can we improve it?
Search
Clear search
Close search
Google apps
Main menu