When you are doing affiliate marketing, it is important to maximize your reach. One of the best and easiest ways to do that is by using social media. Adding affiliate links to your social media helps increase traffic to your own website and means that you will no longer be dependent on just search engines to drive traffic to your website. 

Affiliate Links and Social Media

Affiliate links are allowed on social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, but you need to make sure that you are following the guidelines for both the social site you are posting on and the affiliate guidelines for the links themselves. Make sure that you are checking the guidelines every quarter because they are subject to change.  

What Links Are Allowed with Amazon’s Associate’s Program? 

You can distribute Amazon affiliate links on social media sites as long as the account that is posting the links belongs to the associate. You will need to make sure that your account information is up to date in Associates Central and that you have included the exact social network URL where the links will show up. 

If you are posting the links on Twitter, your account must be verified. This is indicated by a blue check next to the username. 

You cannot share any Amazon affiliate links on social accounts that you do not own and you are not allowed to use any Facebook apps to share affiliate links.  

Disclosing Affiliate Links  

If you are going to post affiliate links on social media, you must disclose that it is advertising. It is encouraged that you include a note like “This is an affiliate link and I get a percentage of the sales” in the immediate vicinity of the link.  

You must disclose that you will receive an income if someone purchases from the link and you are not allowed to ask people to purchase from a link to “support your business.” 

A good example is: “The links used are affiliate links. By buying through the links I may receive a commission for the sale. This has no effect on the price for you.”

Affiliate Links and YouTube

YouTube is a great place to add affiliate links. The links can be added to the description of the video. These links are especially good to include if you are going to do a video review of the product or service. Make sure that you are being honest with your feedback or review and keep the focus on delivering good, high-quality, valuable content. 

You should always place affiliate links at the beginning of the video description to increase the chance that it gets clicked. 

You can also add end cards, anchor text, informative linked icons, and more with links to products and your own website in the video itself. This provides a rich user experience and makes it easy for people to click through to the products you are advertising. 

You should also embed applicable YouTube videos into your website pages to help your site rank higher on Google. 

Building Community

Social networks are a great way for affiliates to build a community. It’s a good place to connect with followers and find new people who might be interested in your brand and story. Developing and growing these social communities helps ensure that your website isn’t solely dependent on traffic from search engines, and the more eyes on your content, the better. 

Make sure you are always focusing on high-quality and relevant content so you can deliver the best content and take advantage of the affiliate income from people clicking on your links.