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- Jan 12, 2018
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When you apply for the Amazon.com Affiliate Program, it's a temporary account that gives you full access as an affiliate for 90 days. You have to "prove" your worth to Amazon in order to be fully approved into the program before that 90 days is up.
I initially applied in September, just before I started my channel in November thinking I'd be fine if I just got one fully qualified sale. After 90 days rolled around in January, I had roughly 100 Subscribers and was getting 5k views per month. I had about 10 amazon commission sales accrued in that 90 day period. I assumed that was enough, yet I received a rejection e-mail with a response of "your channel doesn't have enough unique content or followers". Granted, it worded it as a much more cryptic canned response of course, but that's what they meant
After doing some research, a YouTuber with a tech gadget channel reported "trying again" repeatedly as his channel grew. He would immediately re-apply, and he got rejected several times before being approved after many months of trying. He made a video about it in great detail so that was useful. He was finally approved when he had around 50-60 videos and just over 600 subs.
I waited until I had the following stats: 650 subscribers, 19 videos, and getting over 50k views / month. I recently re-applied and got my full approval email 4 days after applying.
Based on my research/observation, some useful tips:
I initially applied in September, just before I started my channel in November thinking I'd be fine if I just got one fully qualified sale. After 90 days rolled around in January, I had roughly 100 Subscribers and was getting 5k views per month. I had about 10 amazon commission sales accrued in that 90 day period. I assumed that was enough, yet I received a rejection e-mail with a response of "your channel doesn't have enough unique content or followers". Granted, it worded it as a much more cryptic canned response of course, but that's what they meant
After doing some research, a YouTuber with a tech gadget channel reported "trying again" repeatedly as his channel grew. He would immediately re-apply, and he got rejected several times before being approved after many months of trying. He made a video about it in great detail so that was useful. He was finally approved when he had around 50-60 videos and just over 600 subs.
I waited until I had the following stats: 650 subscribers, 19 videos, and getting over 50k views / month. I recently re-applied and got my full approval email 4 days after applying.
Based on my research/observation, some useful tips:
- You shouldn't apply for your Amazon Affiliate Program account when your channel starts.
- Build a subscriber base first. There is no hard-set rule but I've heard 500+ is a good rule of thumb.
- If you exploded and hit 500+ subs early from one video, that may not necessarily get you approved. You should ideally have enough unique content (more than a few videos).
- You should add the Amazon Affiliate Program disclaimer on your "about" page for your channel. Mine says "I am a participant in the Amazon Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon and affiliated sites.". You don't need to add it to every video.
- You should identify your Amazon Links in your video description as affiliate links. Be very obvious about it.
Ex: "Here is an amazon affiliate link for the phone case I just reviewed". If I have a few links, sometimes I'll just put "Amazon Affiliate Links:", and make a list of links below. As long as the user can obviously tell that it's an affiliate link, you're good. It just can't be "misleading". - Only link to products that are directly related to the video itself.
- A fully qualified sale means that a user not only clicked on your product link, but purchased *that product*. If all you get is commission from unrelated stuff that a user purchased after viewing your linked product, you may not get approved as you didn't get at least one "fully qualified sale" in that 90 day period. That's an important distinction.