Affiliate links in YouTube descriptions: what YouTube allows, what the FTC requires, and where to put them

Yes. YouTube allows affiliate links in video descriptions, and it has for years. There is no subscriber minimum, no application to YouTube, and no requirement to be in the YouTube Partner Program. You join a merchant program or an affiliate network, receive your tracking link, put it in the description with a clear disclosure, and you can earn commission on a video published to eleven subscribers. The same permission covers pinned comments, cards and end screens.

That is the direct answer. The reason this question gets asked constantly, and answered badly, is that two different systems share the word affiliate on YouTube, and most guides silently answer about the wrong one.

Does YouTube allow affiliate links?

It does, subject to one real condition: you have to disclose the relationship. YouTube treats undisclosed paid promotion as a policy problem, not the affiliate link itself. Links to products you earn commission on are ordinary outbound links as far as the platform is concerned, and they sit alongside the sponsor codes, merch links and newsletter signups every channel already puts in a description.

What YouTube does police is deception and spam. Links that mislead viewers about where they lead, descriptions stuffed with dozens of unrelated affiliate links, and promotion that hides a commercial relationship are all treated differently from a reviewer linking the microphone they just spent nine minutes testing. If your description would look reasonable to a viewer who read it carefully, you are on the right side of this.

Can I do affiliate marketing on YouTube without 1,000 subscribers?

Yes, and this is the single most expensive misunderstanding in the topic. The 1,000 subscriber figure people quote belongs to the YouTube Partner Program, which governs ad revenue sharing. YouTube documents that threshold as 1,000 subscribers with 4,000 valid public watch hours in the last 12 months, or 1,000 subscribers with 10 million valid public Shorts views in the last 90 days.

None of that has anything to do with whether you may place an affiliate link. Affiliate programs are agreements between you and a merchant. YouTube is not a party to them and does not approve them. Amazon Associates, Impact, PartnerStack and the overwhelming majority of direct brand programs have no follower requirement at all, so a channel with fifty subscribers can be approved and earning this week.

The confusion is worth naming precisely, because creators lose entire years to it, waiting to cross a bar that was never in front of them:

The third row is where the genuine eligibility rules live, and it is a separate feature entirely.

What is the difference between affiliate links and the YouTube Shopping affiliate program?

YouTube Shopping affiliate is YouTube own product tagging feature. It puts a shoppable shelf under your video, inside Shorts and in live streams, pulling products from participating brands so the viewer never leaves the app. It genuinely converts better than a description link, because the friction is lower.

It also has real requirements. Officially, your channel has to be in the YouTube Partner Program and meet its subscriber threshold, you have to be based in one of fourteen eligible countries including the United States, your channel cannot be a music channel or an Official Artist Channel or associated with music partners, and your audience cannot be set as Made for Kids. Reporting dated 27 March 2026 says the program opened to the expanded Partner Program tier, which YouTube documents as 500 subscribers plus three valid public uploads in the last 90 days and either 3,000 valid public watch hours in twelve months or 3 million valid public Shorts views in 90 days. Worth treating the 500 figure as reported rather than official, because YouTube own Shopping eligibility page still says only that you must meet the subscriber threshold for YPP without naming a number.

There is one limitation nobody mentions, and it matters enormously for tech channels. The Shopping shelf tags products from participating retail brands. Software subscriptions, AI tools and SaaS are not in that catalog. So the reviewer whose audience most wants to buy the editing suite or the AI writing tool they just watched a demo of has no native way to tag any of it, which is why affiliate marketing for YouTubers covering software works differently from the standard advice.

Where should affiliate links go in a YouTube description?

Above the fold, meaning in the visible portion before the "show more" cut, and labelled with the product name rather than dumped as a bare URL. A viewer scanning for the microphone you mentioned should find it without expanding anything.

Three things reliably improve on the default:

• Say it out loud in the video. Mentioning that links are in the description is repeatedly reported to raise click-through substantially, and it doubles as your spoken disclosure.
• Pin a comment with the same links. Descriptions get collapsed on mobile and ignored on TV. A pinned comment catches viewers who never open either.
• Label every link. "Shure SM7B (affiliate)" outperforms an unlabelled shortened URL, because the viewer knows what they are clicking before they click it.

Do I have to disclose affiliate links on YouTube?

Yes, and placement is as much of the requirement as wording. US FTC guidance requires a material connection to be disclosed clearly and conspicuously. On YouTube that means the disclosure sits at the top of the description, before the "show more" fold, not on line thirty beneath a wall of links. A hashtag on its own is generally not sufficient, and neither is a disclosure only a viewer who expands the full description would ever see.

Keep the wording plain. Something like a short note that you may earn a commission from the links below does the job. Saying it aloud in the video is the safer standard and costs you nothing, since creators consistently report that explaining why the links exist does not reduce clicks. Our FTC affiliate disclosure guide for creators covers what a compliant description looks like in more detail.

Can you put affiliate links in YouTube Shorts?

Yes, through both routes. Shorts descriptions accept ordinary affiliate links with disclosure and no subscriber minimum, exactly like long-form videos. YouTube Shopping affiliate also explicitly supports tagging products in Shorts once your channel qualifies, alongside videos and live streams.

Shorts are also a route into the Partner Program itself, at 3 million valid public Shorts views in 90 days for the expanded tier or 10 million in 90 days for the full ad revenue tier. The practical constraint on affiliate income from Shorts is attention rather than permission: viewers move fast and rarely open descriptions, which makes the native tagging shelf disproportionately valuable on that format.

The mistake that costs more than any of the rules

Everything above is about permission, and permission turns out to be the easy part. The expensive problem is structural, and it shows up two years in rather than on day one.

A YouTube channel is an archive. Videos published eighteen months ago keep pulling views, which is the entire economic advantage of the format over social feeds. Affiliate links do not behave the same way. Programs close, merchants leave networks, product URLs change, and occasionally an entire network is absorbed and shut down, as ShareASale was in October 2025. Every one of those events quietly converts earning videos into unpaid videos, and nothing visibly breaks, so you do not notice.

Nobody edits 200 old descriptions. That is not a discipline problem, it is a design problem. The fix is to point your videos at one page you control, hold the links there, and edit that page instead. A viewer who watched a review last spring lands somewhere current, and repairing your entire back catalog after a program change takes one edit rather than an afternoon. It is also worth knowing before your audience does when a page you link to stops responding, since a merchant landing page that quietly starts returning errors will keep absorbing clicks you already paid for in production time.

That page is what a creator storefront is for. At favly.com/@you every tool you recommend sits as a card with your note on why you use it and your affiliate link attached, disclosure handled automatically, including the AI, SaaS and software category YouTube own Shopping shelf cannot carry. If you want the wider setup rather than just the description rules, creator affiliate management tools covers the five jobs a working affiliate stack has to do, and affiliate marketing platforms and networks compared covers where the commission actually comes from.

The short version

YouTube allows affiliate links in descriptions with no subscriber minimum and no application, provided you disclose clearly and conspicuously above the fold. The subscriber thresholds people quote belong to ad revenue and to YouTube own Shopping affiliate program, which are different things. Put the disclosure where it is actually seen, say it aloud, label your links, and hold them somewhere you can edit once rather than in 200 descriptions you never will.