How to make money recommending products — and what one bad pick costs

How affiliate links actually pay, how long a click keeps earning, how to disclose properly, and how to pick products you can still defend.

26 August 2026 · 5 min read

A recommendation earns you a small commission. A reader who stops trusting your recommendations costs you every commission after that, and no dashboard will ever show you the loss.

That asymmetry is the whole job. The mechanics take an afternoon: join the programs for things you already own, put the tracked links where people actually look, disclose every single time, and check each month what converted. The part nobody can do for you is only recommending things you would still recommend at zero commission.

How do affiliate links actually pay you?

An affiliate link is an ordinary product link with your ID attached, so the retailer can credit a sale back to you. You apply to a program, directly with a brand or through a network that represents many brands at once. Once approved, you get a tracked link. A reader clicks, the click is recorded against your ID, and if they buy inside the attribution window the sale appears in your dashboard as pending.

Pending is not paid. Most programs hold commissions for a while so returns, cancellations and chargebacks can settle, and returned orders come straight back out of your balance. After the hold clears you are paid once you cross a minimum threshold. Both the hold and the threshold vary, so read the program's terms.

Two rules are close to universal: you cannot buy through your own links, and you cannot bid on a brand's own name in paid search unless the program permits it. Breaking either usually means removal and forfeited earnings rather than a warning.

How long do you stay credited after a click?

The attribution window — still usually called the cookie window, even though tracking is increasingly server-side — is how long after a click you stay credited for a purchase. It ranges from a day to several months depending on the program, and it is one of the terms that most changes what a click is worth. Check each program's current terms rather than assuming.

Most networks also use last-click attribution. If your reader taps someone else's link after yours and before buying, that person gets paid. A short window rewards content people read when they are already close to buying. A long window rewards research content people find early.

How do you find your real commission rate?

Treat every rate as a range, never a promise. Programs set rates by category, change them without much notice, cap some categories and exclude discounted items, so the rate on a sign-up page is a ceiling, not a forecast.

Your effective rate is always lower than the headline. Returns, out-of-stock substitutions, non-qualifying items and category caps all shave it. Divide what you actually received last quarter by what you actually drove, and use that number instead.

How do you disclose affiliate links, in plain English?

In the United States, the FTC's Endorsement Guides treat a commission as a material connection you must reveal. The plain-English version is short. Disclose any payment, commission, free product, discount or family relationship. Make it clear and conspicuous, which means hard to miss rather than technically present. Put it in the same place as the recommendation and before the link rather than after it — not only in your bio, not behind a "more" tap, and not buried in a block of hashtags. Use ordinary words. Vague tags like "sp", "collab" or "thanks to the brand" are often not clear enough. And your endorsement has to reflect your honest experience: you cannot make a claim about a product you have not actually verified.

For video or audio, say it out loud as well as showing it on screen, and repeat it in long or live content, because people join partway through.

Lines you can copy:

• Page-wide: "Some links on this page are affiliate links. If you buy through them I earn a commission, at no extra cost to you."
• Per item: "Affiliate link, I earn a commission."
• Gifted item: "The brand sent me this for free. The link below is an affiliate link."
• Spoken: "Quick note before this: the links below are affiliate links, so I get a commission if you buy."

Rules differ by country and change, and outside the US many places expect a clear label up front. Check your regulator's current guidance for your market before you build a template you will reuse for years. This is general information, not legal advice.

How do you pick products you can defend?

The filter is not "will this convert". It is "can I stand behind this in six months, when someone replies to say it broke". Run every candidate through the same checklist:

• You have used it long enough to know how it fails, not just how it arrives.
• You can name, out loud, the person it is wrong for.
• You would recommend it even if it paid you nothing.
• The price is defensible for your audience's actual budget.
• You can answer the three questions a buyer will ask, before they ask them.
• Returns and support are not a nightmare you will be blamed for.
• You have no other relationship with the brand that you have not disclosed.

Keep a written "no" list beside your recommendations. Turning things down in public is one of the few things that makes the rest of your list believable.

Why does one bad pick cost more than one commission earns?

Because only one side of the trade is visible. Reversals show up in a dashboard. Readers who quietly stop clicking do not.

Trust compounds in the other direction just as quietly. Someone who bought what you recommended and was happy with it buys the next thing without researching it first. That saved effort is the entire asset. Protect it: publish what you stopped using and why, correct yourself in public when a product gets worse, and pull links rather than let a dead recommendation earn for another quarter.

Where should the links actually live?

Captions are good for timely, high-intent recommendations, and they are gone down the feed within days. A bio link to one retailer's list is the fastest thing to set up, and it gives you one retailer, no context and no control.

Your own product recommendation page is the version that keeps working after the post scrolls away: one page listing what you use, why, who it is not for, and the tracked link for each item, grouped and dated. It is the only version where a dead link gets fixed once instead of in fifty captions. The cost is upkeep, not money.

That is what MyBase builds: a Creator Profile that doubles as a storefront, with a Vault where nothing is listed without a written verdict behind it. The catalog is deliberately small, because a promise that everything on it has been looked at has to stay true at any size.

How do you track which recommendation actually converted?

Two layers. Inside each program, use the sub-ID or tracking-ID field to tag where the click came from, with names you will still understand next year: page-vault, ig-reel-jan, newsletter-04. Outside it, add UTM parameters to your own page links, so your analytics can tell you which post sent the traffic. Then look at four numbers per product each month: clicks, conversion rate, average order value, reversals.

Then act on them. Cut the items that get clicks and no sales, because they are costing you attention. Write more about the two or three that convert. And treat all of it as directional: in-app browsers, tracking prevention and last-click rules mean some real sales will never be attributed to you. The trend across months is trustworthy. Any single week is not.

FAQ

How much can you realistically earn with affiliate links?

There is no reliable average, so model it with your own numbers. Your earnings are four numbers multiplied together — clicks, conversion rate, average order value and commission rate — minus reversals. Model it with your own traffic and a conversion rate you have measured rather than one you read somewhere. Expect the first months to be small: what a page gives you builds as it accumulates recommendations, not from a single post.

Do I need a website or a big following to start?

You do not need a website, but you do need a real destination for the link, and a product recommendation page is the most durable version of one. Requirements vary by program: some are open to small accounts, others look at whether your audience is active and on-topic more than at the raw number. Apply with your strongest existing work, expect some rejections, and apply again once you have published more.

What happens to my commission if the buyer returns the product?

It is reversed. That is why programs hold commissions for a while before paying out. If the return lands after you were already paid, most programs deduct it from your next payout rather than invoicing you. Categories with high return rates end up below their headline commission.

Should I recommend products I have not personally used?

No. The FTC's Endorsement Guides require an endorsement to reflect your honest experience and findings, so recommending something you have not verified is both a legal exposure and the fastest way to spend trust you cannot buy back. If you want to mention something untested, say plainly that you have not used it and explain why it is on your radar. That framing keeps the rest of your list credible. This is general information, not legal advice.