Getting approved by Amazon Associates, and staying approved
Approval is the easy part. The account closes if three qualifying sales do not land within 180 days, and most people find that out on day 181.
In short
Amazon approves an application against a finished site with original writing on it, and it wants to know where the traffic comes from. That part takes days. The part that catches people is what follows: three qualifying sales have to land within 180 days of approval or the account is closed. Apply when the pages are already getting visitors, not before, because the clock starts at approval and it does not care that the site is new.
What we take on
What the application is checked for
A live site, finished, with writing a person did, and a straight answer to how visitors reach it. Placeholder pages and half built sites are rejected on sight, which is most of what rejection is.
The 180 day clock
Three qualifying sales within 180 days of approval, or the account closes. It starts the day you are approved. Applying before the pages have readers spends the window on an empty site.
What April 2026 changed
The customer now has to pay for and receive the product within 180 days of the click. Onsite commissions only count the same product variant you linked. Anything referred through a paid ad is disqualified outright.
The disclosures that are not optional
Amazon requires its exact identification line on the site. The FTC requires a disclosure beside each link, not in the footer. Google wants rel sponsored on the link itself. Three different rules, three different places.
The order that gets through, and the order that does not
The instinct is to apply first and build after, because approval feels like the gate. It is not the gate. Approval takes days and asks only that the site is finished and original. The gate is the 180 days that follow it, and it is a gate you walk into backwards if you applied while the site had no readers.
So the order that works is the boring one. Build the pages that answer buying questions. Get them in front of people, however slowly. Apply once those pages alone are pulling a few thousand visits a month, because at that level three sales in six months is close to arithmetic rather than hope. Then place the links.
Rejections cluster in three places and all three are cheaper to fix before applying. Too little original content, which since April 2026 means content carrying commentary, analysis or transformation rather than product descriptions moved around. An unclear account of where traffic comes from. And a site that is visibly unfinished, which includes empty categories and pages that say coming soon.
If the account does close, it can be reapplied for. That is worth knowing and it is not a plan. The second application is judged the same way as the first, against a site that now has a closure behind it, so the honest move is to fix the traffic problem first and apply once.
If you would rather not run this yourself, we set affiliate stores up end to end, and the calculator on that page works out whether three sales in 180 days is realistic at your traffic before you apply.
The rest of what people ask before building one, including when Amazon actually pays and what the thing needs every month, is answered here.
Questions we get
What counts as a qualifying sale?
A customer clicking your link and completing a purchase that Amazon then pays out on.
Since April 2026 the product also has to be paid for and shipped, streamed or downloaded within 180 days of that click. Pre-orders and long lead time items now fall outside the window more often than they used to, which matters if that is what the site is about.
What happens if the three sales do not arrive?
The account is closed. Nothing is owed and nothing is banked.
You can apply again. The second application is judged against the same standard, so reapplying without changing the traffic situation produces the same outcome 180 days later.
Can I run ads to the pages with the links?
Not to earn on them. Since April 2026 Amazon disqualifies purchases referred through any paid or boosted advertisement linking to Amazon, whether or not prohibited keywords are involved.
Which puts the whole thing on search, on an audience you already have, or on nothing.
Where does the disclosure have to go?
Two separate things, in two separate places.
Amazon requires its exact identification line, "As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases", clearly and conspicuously on the site. The FTC requires a disclosure next to the recommendation itself, and has said plainly that a disclosure page or a footer link on its own is not enough. Something like "(paid link)" beside the link satisfies it. The words "affiliate link" on their own may not, because they do not say money changes hands.
Do the links need rel sponsored?
Yes. Google asks that advertisements and paid placements carry rel sponsored, and an affiliate link is a paid placement.
Links carrying it are generally not followed, which is the intended result. Leaving it off is the most common technical fault on affiliate sites and it is a one attribute fix.
Can I just put the prices on the page?
Not as fixed numbers. Prices have to be live, pulled from the source at the time the page is read.
A hardcoded price breaks the agreement and misleads the reader the moment it moves, which on Amazon is constantly. This is the single most common reason a store that looks fine gets a warning.
More in the guides and every answer in one place.
Shaheer Shaikh, operations lead at LARVOL, a San Francisco AI company working with global pharma on clinical trial data and model benchmarking. Six Sigma on the process side, Anthropic certified on the Model Context Protocol, ten years across eight industries. More about the firm