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.
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 meets the subscriber threshold for YPP.
- You are based in the United States, Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Philippines, India, Singapore, Brazil, Taiwan, and Japan.
- 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.
- Sign in to YouTube Studio.
- From the left menu, select Earn.
- Under Programs, click Join Now.
- Review and accept the YouTube Shopping Affiliate Program Terms of Service.
- 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” extension
NEW: YouTube Shopping Chrome Extension
You can easily save products to tag your video later and check out commission rates with the extension. Add the “YouTube Shopping” extension and get started. Learn more on how to install and manage extensions.
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.
- Sign in to YouTube Studio.
-
From the left menu, click Earn 👁 and then
Shopping 👁 and then
Explore affiliate offers. - Select View more to see more products and sellers.
- If custom commission rates are available for your channel, you’ll see them under Special offer promotions.
- If you don’t see Special offer promotions, there are no custom commission rates available for your channel.
Use custom commission rates for affiliate campaigns
Merchants can create custom commission rates to give you higher, exclusive commission rates compared to standard affiliate rates. You can find custom commission rates in the Shopping tab or through notifications in your YouTube Studio inbox.
Manage and track your campaign participation
- Review eligible products: Open the Campaign Detail page in your Shopping Hub to see the specific products and rates.
- Activate higher rates: Tag eligible products in your videos. The elevated rates display in the Studio editor when you tag the products during an active campaign window.
- Decline or ignore offers: If a campaign does not fit your channel, simply do not tag the products. The campaign may apply automatically to eligible transactions if you tag the products, but you are never required to participate.
You can track how your affiliate campaigns with custom commission rates perform by .
You can start tagging products from our growing list of sellers:
List of affiliate sellers
- 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 a purchase on the retailer’s site, you may earn a commission. You can use YouTube Analytics to check your YouTube revenue.
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 signing 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 in to the wrong YouTube Channel. Switch to the channel you believe to be eligible and try again.
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 👁 Image
👁 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.
Affiliate creator playlist: Get inspiration here from other creators by checking out their affiliate content on YouTube!