How to make money recommending products you already use, honestly
How affiliate links actually pay: attribution windows, commission rates, FTC disclosure in plain English, and picking products you can defend.
26 August 2026 · 6 min read
An affiliate link is an ordinary product link with your ID attached, so the retailer can credit a sale back to you. To make money with affiliate links, you join the programs for products you already own, put the tracked links somewhere readers actually look, disclose the commission every single time, and check monthly which recommendations converted. The mechanics take an afternoon. The part that decides whether it works is the part nobody can automate for you: only recommending things you would still recommend at zero commission.
How do affiliate links actually pay you?
You apply to a program, either directly with a brand or through an affiliate network that represents many brands at once. Once approved, you get a tracked link, or a dashboard that generates one per product. 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 30 to 90 days so returns, cancellations and chargebacks can settle. Returned orders are reversed straight out of your balance. After the hold clears, you are paid once you cross a minimum threshold, commonly somewhere between $10 and $100 depending on the program and the payout method.
Two rules are close to universal: you cannot buy through your own links, and you cannot bid on the brand's own name in paid search unless the program explicitly permits it. Breaking either usually means removal and forfeited earnings rather than a warning.
What is a cookie window, and how long do you get credit?
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 varies more than any other term in the contract, and it changes your income more than your follower count does.
| Window | What it means for you | Typically seen on |
|---|
| 24 hours | Credit only if they buy that day; adding to cart can extend it | Large general marketplaces, including Amazon Associates |
| 7 days | Fast-moving consumer goods, impulse-priced items | Some direct-to-consumer brands |
| 30 days | The most common default | Most affiliate networks, mid-size brands |
| 60–90 days | Room for a considered purchase | Software, courses, furniture, higher-ticket goods |
| Recurring | You earn while the customer keeps paying | Some subscription and membership programs |
Amazon Associates is the well-known 24-hour case, with a carve-out: if the reader adds the item to their cart inside that day, credit can extend for roughly 90 days on that cart.
Most networks also use last-click attribution. If your reader clicks 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.
What commission rates can you realistically expect?
Treat every rate as a range, never a promise. Programs cut rates without much notice, cap whole categories, exclude discounted items, and pay less on some products than the headline number suggests. These are ranges commonly quoted across consumer programs, not figures you should plan a budget around:
| Category | Commonly quoted range |
|---|
| General retail, electronics | 1–4% |
| Home, kitchen, tools | 2–8% |
| Apparel and accessories | 5–15% |
| Beauty and personal care | 5–20% |
| Supplements and direct-to-consumer goods | 10–20% |
| Software and subscriptions | 20–40%, sometimes recurring |
| Courses and digital downloads | 30–50% |
Your effective rate is always lower than the headline. Returns, out-of-stock substitutions, non-qualifying items and category caps all shave it. Work out what you actually received last quarter divided 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, not only in your bio and not behind a "more" tap. Use ordinary words. Vague tags like "sp", "collab" or "thanks to the brand" have been called out as insufficient. 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 move. The FTC updated its guides in 2023 and added a rule against fake and undisclosed insider reviews in 2024. Outside the US, the UK's advertising rules expect a clear "Ad" label up front and EU consumer law lands in a similar place. Check the current guidance for your market before you build a template you will reuse for years.
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 at 0% commission.
- The price is defensible for your audience's actual budget.
- You can answer the three questions a buyer will ask before the buyer asks 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 alongside your recommendations. Refusing a program in public is one of the few things that makes the rest of your list believable.
Why does one bad recommendation cost more than one commission earns?
Because the two sides of the trade are not the same size. Here is arithmetic to run on your own numbers rather than a statistic to quote: a $60 product paying 8% earns you $4.80. If that recommendation costs you one reader who would have bought four things from you over the next two years, you are already behind, and you will never see it in a dashboard. Reversals show up. Readers who quietly stop clicking do not.
Trust compounds in the other direction just as quietly. A reader who bought something you recommended and was happy with it is a reader who buys the next thing without researching it first. That reduction in their research effort is the entire asset. Protect it by publishing what you stopped using and why, by correcting yourself in public when a product changes for the worse, and by removing links rather than letting a dead recommendation earn for another quarter.
Where should the links live: scattered posts or a product recommendation page?
| Placement | Good for | Weakness |
|---|
| Captions and posts | Timely, high-intent recommendations | Gone down the feed in days |
| A single bio link to one retailer's list | Fastest to set up | One retailer, no context, no control |
| Your own product recommendation page | Everything you have recommended, in one place, searchable and fixable | You have to maintain it |
A product recommendation page is 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 version that keeps earning after the post scrolls away, and the only version where you can fix a dead link once instead of in fifty captions.
This is what MyBase builds: a Creator Profile that doubles as a storefront, with a Vault of products that are reviewed before they are listed. Our catalog is 100 products and small on purpose, because a promise that everything on it has been reviewed has to stay true at any size. We are pre-launch, so there are no user numbers to put here.
How do you track which recommendation actually converted?
Two layers. Inside each affiliate program, use the sub-ID or tracking-ID field to tag where the click came from, with a naming convention 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, and reversals.
Act on it. 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 rather than exact: 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 honest average, and anyone quoting one is selling something. Your earnings are four measurable numbers multiplied together: clicks, conversion rate, average order value and commission rate, minus reversals. Model it with your own traffic at a 1-3% conversion rate and see what falls out, then compare that to what you actually received last quarter. Expect the first months to be small, because the compounding comes from a page that 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. Follower thresholds vary: open networks and retailer programs often accept small accounts, while individual brand programs care more about whether your audience is active and on-topic than about the raw number. Apply with your best existing content, expect some rejections, and reapply once you have more published work.
Where exactly does the affiliate disclosure have to go?
In the same place as the recommendation, visible without any extra tap or click, and before the link rather than after it. A disclosure that lives only in your bio does not cover a specific post, and one buried in a block of hashtags is not clear and conspicuous. For video, say it out loud as well as showing it on screen, and repeat it in long or live content so viewers who join partway through still hear it.
What happens to my commission if the buyer returns the product?
It is reversed. That is why programs hold commissions for 30 to 90 days before paying out, so returns and chargebacks settle first. If a return lands after you were already paid, most programs deduct it from your next payout rather than invoicing you. Categories with high return rates, such as apparel, will show a meaningfully lower effective rate than their headline commission suggests.
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.
MyBase is a link-in-bio platform for creators. You get one page at
mybase.page/yourname that holds everything you recommend — products, affiliate
links and your own shop — and MyBase takes 0% commission and 0% sales fees,
so every cent a sale earns is yours. Alongside it sits The Vault, a curated catalogue where
a product only appears once it has passed an advanced, review-aggregating vetting process.
What it costs
Free forever: your public Creator Profile, your own affiliate links, every layout and accent
colour, curated backgrounds and profile analytics — 0% commission and 0% sales fees. Pro is
$9.99/month billed quarterly ($29.97) or $7.99/month billed yearly ($95.88) and adds custom
fonts, image and animated backgrounds, link styling, short links, an unbranded page and a tip
button. Pro never takes a share of your earnings either.
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