Amazon Affiliate Commission Rate: 2026 Operator Guide

Most publishers ask about Amazon commission rates before they commit to the program. That is the right question. Rates are fixed by category, they have been trending down for a decade, and they still shape whether Amazon Associates belongs in your stack.

• What items qualify for commission income

• Commission rates by product category

• How Amazon Associates get paid

• How to use your earnings reports to find more products to promote

• Where to find Amazon affiliate program alternatives

• FAQs and more

If you are new to the program, start with our Amazon affiliate program guide for signup, link creation, and compliance basics. This post goes deep on rates and reporting.

Updated 2026.

1What Items Can You Earn Amazon Commission From?

You earn commissions when visitors click your affiliate product links from your site, visit Amazon, and buy something. Your unique referral link is how Amazon knows you sent them traffic and credits you for the sale.

Here is the current breakdown of Amazon’s fixed commission rates by category. Amazon groups products into tiers. Each tier pays one rate for every qualifying item in that group.

Top tier categories:

• Amazon Games

• Premium Beauty

• Video Game Downloads

• Luxury Stores Beauty | Premium Beauty

Mid-to-high tier categories:

• Clothing & Accessories

• Cell Phones & Accessories | Home | Kitchen & Dining

• Camera, Photo & Video | Office & School Supplies

• Beauty & Grooming | CDs & Vinyl | Digital Music | Handmade | Video On Demand: Rent or Buy

• Automotive | Books & Textbooks | Computers, Tablets & Components

• Amazon Fashion Private Brands | Blink Devices | Echo Devices | Echo Look | Fire TV Devices | Fire TV Edition Smart TVs | Fire Tablets | Jewelry | Kindle E-readers | Luggage | Luxury Stores Fashion | Ring Accessories | Ring Devices | Shoes, Handbags, Wallets, Sunglasses | Watches

Lower tier categories:

• Fine Art

• Amazon Coins | Baby & Nursery | Business & Industrial Supplies | Furniture | Headphones | Home Improvement | Musical Instruments | Outdoor Recreation | Patio, Lawn & Garden | Pet Food & Supplies | Power & Hand Tools | Sports & Fitness | Toys & Games

• Blu-Ray & DVD

• Video Games

• Home Entertainment: TV | Video Game Downloads

• Amazon Fresh | Grocery & Gourmet Food | Health & Household | Video Games

Zero commission (eight types):

• Amazon Gift Cards | Appstore for Android | Kindle Unlimited Memberships | Other Gift Card Brands | Prime Memberships | Wine, Spirits & Beer

• All Other Categories

You will notice one tier with eight types that pay 0% commission. The rest is a mix of rates across the spectrum.

The highest paying niche is Amazon Games at 20%, while Amazon gift cards get 0%. Digital video games, health, and personal care earn a low commission of 1%. Other categories like automotive and kitchen fall somewhere in the middle.

You get paid the fixed commission rate depending on what the product category is.

So, for example, if you are promoting PC components, you will earn 2.5%. If you are promoting home improvement items, it is 3%.

But it does not only have to be an individual product details page. You can send traffic to search results pages, the home page, or any related page on Amazon’s site.

The screenshot below shows how you add Amazon affiliate links pointing to various locations on their site. You will notice this gives you the option to send your visitors to:

• Favorite destinations

• Search results

• Any page

There is also the option of placing a product search box on your site.

But before you get excited, remember Amazon’s commission rates. Just because you are linking to a product page or a search page does not mean you will earn money hand over fist.

Sidenote: As Lasso co-founder, I have a simple hack to amplify your Amazon commissions on products you already promote. It takes less than 10 minutes per product and can seriously change your business. Worth exploring once you have baseline Associates income flowing.

Further Reading:

• 15 Proven Ways to Boost Amazon Conversion Rates

2Putting the Amazon Affiliate Commission Rate In Perspective

The eCommerce goliath does good business. Q1 earnings for this year topped $108 billion. Prime Day alone produced $6.8 billion in gross sales. Many bloggers send Amazon substantial traffic, which is partially the reason behind its success.

However, when you trace the program’s history, you see a payout trend gradually decreasing over the past decade.

Check out this stat from Geniuslink’s historical guide:

The average commission rate for Amazon affiliates peaked in mid-2012 at 9.25% and has fallen to nearly a third of that.

They used to offer affiliates a volume-based commission structure until 2017, letting affiliates who drove more traffic to Amazon earn more.

Takeaway: That is no longer the case. Now the program has a fixed structure with marketers earning a flat commission rate.

And then, most recently, Amazon slashed its rates in April 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic was on the rise. These rate changes saw publishers take a massive hit:

• Furniture, home improvement, lawn & garden, pets products, and pantry decreased from 8% to 3%

• Health & Personal Care went from 5% to 1%

• Headphones, beauty, musical instruments, and business & industrial supplies decreased from 6% to 3%

• Outdoors and tools were cut from 5.5% to 3%

• Sports and Baby Products cut from 4.5% to 3%

• Amazon Fresh was cut from 3% to 1%

For operators, Amazon Associates still works for conversion and catalog depth. But it should not be your only monetization layer if you want healthy EPC.

Further Reading:

• Amazon Affiliate Program: The Associates Simple Guide to Earning This Year

How Long Do You Have to Earn Amazon Commissions after A Visitor Clicks Your Affiliate Link?

You have 24 hours to earn a commission from Amazon once your visitor clicks an affiliate link. However, you can get credit for any sale when an item is placed in a shopper’s cart within 24 hours and then bought from their cart within 90 days.

Sidenote: You earn a commission on everything added to their basket, not only the product link your visitor clicked.

For example, if they clicked your affiliate link, added the item you were promoting to their cart, and then added three other products unrelated to your website, you would get the commission for the entire purchase. Not only your item.

This has the added benefit of scooping up other commission rates attached to whatever is in their cart.

Let’s say your product links to a $25 toy carrying a 3% commission, but your visitor also bought $150 worth of luxury beauty items at 10%. You would get both your regular 3% rate and the higher 10% rate for the beauty items.

So, you would get a $15.75 commission for the entire sale:

• $25 toy at 3% = $0.75

• $150 worth of luxury beauty items at 10% = $15

The 24-hour cookie is tight compared to many affiliate programs. That is one reason conversion rate optimization matters as much as commission percentage.

Can You Use Your Affiliate Link for Personal Use to Make More Money?

You cannot earn commissions from purchases you make with your affiliate link, nor can you gain from giving it to friends and family.

Amazon explains they are an advertising program, not a discount program. Its number one goal is referring new customers and growing the business.

They also have not disclosed how they know that it is your link:

According to Amazon:

Due to the proprietary nature of the way we determine if the order was personal, we can’t share the full list of criteria by which we detect these ineligible orders.

Sidenote: If you are already an Amazon Prime member, just sign up for their Prime Rewards Visa credit card. It will earn you 5% back.

3How Do Amazon Associates Get Paid?

Amazon pays its associates one of three ways:

• Gift card

• Direct deposit

• Physical check (carries a $15 check processing fee)

Sorry, no PayPal.

Their payment schedule is Net-60. This means the money you earn in 30 days will not hit your bank account for 60 days. So, for example, the money you make in March will not reach your bank until May 30 or June 1.

To see this in action, head to Reports > Payment History.

Here, you can see your monthly earnings followed by your direct deposit date:

It is listed as an “Advertising Fee” because Amazon views this as a fee it must pay its publishers (e.g., bloggers).

Tip: Sign up for direct deposit as it is the easiest and quickest way to get paid.

Minimum Payment Thresholds

Regardless of how Amazon pays you, you must earn the minimum amount before they send you money. If you are getting paid via direct deposit or gift card, it is $10. By check, the minimum is $100.

If you do not meet the minimum payout threshold, it gets rolled into next month’s payment.

So, let’s say you only earn $8.50 for June and then $11 for July. Amazon will pay you $19.50 for July.

4Viewing Your Earnings Reports

Here is a basic rundown of what you see when scrolling Amazon’s reporting. At the top, you will see your earnings with a row of data at the bottom, including:

• Clicks

• Conversion rate

• Total earnings

Calculating Your EPC

Here is where you can calculate your earnings per click (EPC):

• First, divide your profits by the number of clicks.

For example, based on viewing this report, you can see the EPC is $0.14 per click:

• $111.46 total earnings / 781 clicks = $0.14 earnings-per-click

Your EPC indicates how well your affiliate links perform and how well you are earning in your niche. For example, if you have a high number of clicks and conversions but a low EPC, it might be time to re-evaluate how much the affiliate program is paying you.

Sidenote: Do not be swayed if you ever see a high “average EPC” and think you are going to crush conversions. Average EPC considers every affiliate marketer in that program. Some do better than others.

It is like being included in the median net worth bracket as Jeff Bezos: clearly, he is earning more money than the rest of us but still gets included in the “average net worth of people between X age” bracket.

A good EPC is tough to define because it is only as good as the quality of your monetization strategy.

Further Reading:

• How to Add Affiliate Links to Your Blog (3 Simple Methods)

Making Sense of Your Earnings Reports to Improve Your Linking Strategy

The second screenshot below is your ordered items. Here, you can explore the data a bit more. Amazon’s data is not as detailed as Google Analytics, but there are a couple of things you can do with it.

In the top left corner, it is divided into:

• Earnings

• Ordered items

• Link-type performance

You can group the data by tracking ID, product category, or date in the right upper corner.

While limiting, let’s see what data we can extract.

How Do You See What Product Links Visitors Click?

Grouping by category, head to “Ordered Items,” then click on any product category, and you will see two things:

• Items ordered through your product link

• All other items ordered (i.e., your unique link that brought them to Amazon)

Here is the thing:

They may not have even bought the product you were promoting. Maybe once they landed on Amazon, they decided not to buy it.

But then realized they wanted something else, and so they bought that.

For example, looking at this earnings report for this affiliate website, you can see a high-ticket item falling into the column “All other items ordered.”

But, the shopper did not buy the original item. They clicked from the affiliate.

But they did decide to buy something else worth $279 using the affiliate link.

Sidenote: There are five stores where this would not be the case in Europe. Amazon is rolling out a volume-based program. These changes apply to traffic referred to Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, Amazon.it, and Amazon.es. For example, if you send most of your clicks to pages other than the product details pages, you will earn less than directly linking to the product page.

Using a tool like Lasso, you can see which products get clicks, your top-performing affiliate products across your site, and which pages attract the most clicks. Open up Google Analytics and head to Behavior > Events > Top Events.

How to Use Your Reports to Find More Product Linking Opportunities

You can find different products to link to when filtering by “Group.” Here is how to do it.

Select, Group by Category > Ordered Items:

Once you have done this, return to the column “All Other Items Ordered.” Look for patterns. You can set custom dates to target your search.

The idea is to look for anything relevant to your site’s content that people continuously buy. If you see this with certain products and do not promote them, consider doing so with a product review or comparison.

You are looking for a high number for a given product in this column. For example, this one has 27 total clicks, with the highest number at three.

Now, this site is new and is not getting the volume that some of the other well-trafficked sites get. But if you were to see an item getting 100+ clicks (and it is not being promoted on your site but relevant to your niche), consider adding it if it helps your readers.

So, the two qualifying metrics here are:

• 100+ clicks for a product

• It is a product that serves your audience

Further Reading:

• Amazon Affiliate Income: 9 Tips for Earning More This Year

Group by “Earnings” to See Commission Income Rates by Category

Let’s say you want to see your commission rates by product category. Set the filters to “Group by Category” and “Earnings.”

Now you can assess your commission rates and income across product categories. Seeing this data lets you determine your:

• Earnings-per-click for every category

• Total earnings from commissions

Look for trends in your shopper’s history. You see a bird’s eye view of items bought. For example, you might start seeing a product category selling more in the “Items Shipped” column.

If so, this could indicate that particular products are growing in popularity, so you might want to reconsider your linking strategy and include more of those.

Now that my top category is Kitchen & Dining, let’s see what else we can promote.

How to Use Amazon’s Advanced Search Filters to Promote More Products

Amazon has its own search engine and search filters. So, what you could do is after you see your top-selling product category, you could experiment and head to Amazon and dig into a specific type.

For example, using the Kitchen & Dining niche, I would investigate Kitchen & Dining > Bar Tools and Drinkware > Glassware & Drinkware.

Or if you are shopping by department, in the same category (not in “best sellers”), you can filter to find products by:

• Prime eligibility

• Number of reviews

Using these two filters is a good starting point because people tend to buy more when they see the Prime badge. And when you go by the number of reviews, the “Average customer review” has four stars or more.

If you want, you can get even more granular and set them by:

• Brand

• Color

• A specific price range

Doing this will help you find quality products. You do not want to promote a product that has got awful reviews.

Understanding Link-Type Performance

In the same report, under “Link-Type Performance,” Amazon shows you which types of links got clicks, but the data is pretty weak.

Below, you can see it groups all of my text, image, and text & image links into one category and groups the links I have created myself (using Lasso) into another type titled “Basic Product.”

When I inquired about what this meant, here is the reply from Amazon’s support team:

Typically, this is referring to links that have been constructed manually by you, the Associate. Any link created that was not made using our specific tools such as Text, Image, or Text+Image links is considered a Basic link.

Since my site uses Lasso to get affiliate links, it will remove any additional tracking parameters Amazon adds, so the only thing that remains is a “clean” URL (i.e., your tracking ID used for monetization).

Sidenote: Lasso is a WordPress plugin built by affiliate marketers to help you make more money from your existing content.

Further Reading:

• The 1 Amazon Affiliate WordPress Plugin to Get This Year

5What’s the Consolidated Earnings Report?

The Consolidated Summary of the earnings report gives a bird’s eye view of all your accounts in one place. This applies to both domestic and international Amazon Associates accounts.

Your affiliate commissions get combined across all store IDs in a single view. It applies to the Amazon Associates program, Influencer program, and Amazon onsite associates program.

Then, if you want to zero in on a specific country, click that country to see your data.

Sidenote: “Off-Amazon” earnings are referrals sent to Amazon from content not appearing on its website (e.g., bloggers or social media). “On-Amazon” refers to published content from Influencer storefronts.

If you have not already, you can link your stores so you can see all of your data in “Account Settings”:

Then click “Link Store IDs”:

Then, add which stores you want to include:

You will get a success message once they are linked.

U.S. tracking IDs end in “-20” to indicate the region (i.e., North America for U.S.-based Associates). You will have to sign up for each country’s Amazon affiliate program before you can link your stores.

Using Geniuslink to Boost International Commissions

Chances are your site gets traffic from more than the U.S. If you are unsure, head to Google Analytics > Audience > Geo > Location:

Sign up for whichever countries drive traffic to your site if available. For example, sign up for their affiliate program if you get lots of traffic from Canada. Why?

Because even though Amazon OneLink supports international traffic from Canada, if you are not signed up for Canada’s program, you will not earn a commission.

Amazon OneLink can help you monetize traffic but only from 13 countries currently. So, if you get traffic that is not on their list, you are losing money.

So if you are using a tool like Geniuslink, it will cover every country, including those not yet supported by Amazon.

For example, if you get traffic from a country unsupported by OneLink, you will be unable to monetize it without a third-party tool. If you happen to get lots of international traffic, Geniuslink can help you out significantly.

6Amazon Affiliate Program Alternatives

Despite the low barrier to entry with Amazon and the massive sales volume they ship daily, they are not the only thing available.

Takeaway: Do not feel like you cannot use other affiliate programs to monetize your site, especially if the alternative pays more.

Play to the value you provide to your audience and let the commission rates take care of themselves. Consider alternatives as one approach if you have high clicks and a low EPC.

For example, let’s say you have a blog about dogs, and you promote and review specific products. You are leaving money on the table if you are promoting pet products on your site ONLY with Amazon’s 3% commission rate.

Here are five programs better than Amazon’s you can sign up for right now from our affiliate program database.

This is only one example. You can scroll through our database (seen in the below GIF), find your niche, and compare other rates in your industry.

Once you have done that, replace Amazon’s affiliate program with the alternative in the Fixed-Income Rate column from the earlier Earnings report.

If you are a Lasso user, you can find new affiliate program opportunities in your dashboard. Head to Opportunities > Programs.

You will see the program, commission rate, and possible linking opportunities across your site.

Run an Opportunities Scan to see which higher-paying programs match content you already have live. What would an 8% commission rate mean for your bottom line? What about 15%? The point is to be strategic with your linking strategy.

You want to find programs that will yield the highest ROI for your efforts.

7Amazon Affiliate FAQs

Below are some common questions I encountered while researching this article.

Does it cost anything to become an Associate?

It costs nothing to become an Amazon Associate per their operating agreement. Signing up is free and takes only a few minutes.

Amazon collects no money from its publishers either. You pay nothing to sign up, nor will you pay anything once you are part of the program.

There are no prerequisites. You do not even need a required minimum number of page views.

Does Amazon’s affiliate program pay per click?

You will not earn money from Amazon by the number of clicks your site gets.

Amazon’s affiliate program is commission-based and pays its Associates a percentage of all qualifying purchases per its standard income rates.

Why does Amazon change its commission rates?

Amazon’s commission rates change for a couple of reasons. One is because they are trying to sell more in a particular product category.

For example, if they want to sell more pet products, they could increase the commission rate in that category to make it more appealing for promotion.

Amazon also says they change rates to stay competitive with the broader industry.

How many countries have an Amazon affiliate program?

Amazon affiliate programs operate in 19 different countries.

You can visit Amazon’s site to see the complete sign-up list.

What are the benefits of participating in the program?

Amazon’s affiliate program is free to join, millions of people trust them, and many buy on the platform.

There is also no minimum amount of website traffic needed for approval. Some programs will not accept you if your numbers are low.

Is my Associates ID and Tracking ID the same thing?

Your Associates ID is not the same as your tracking ID. The difference is you only get one Associates ID. However, you can create up to 100 tracking IDs to monitor various links or pages.

If you only have one site, you may have the same Associate ID (your store ID) and tracking ID.

8Let’s Wrap This Up

If you are considering monetizing your site but are curious about Amazon’s affiliate commission rates, this guide should help.

Affiliate marketing is a tricky business and requires a lot of effort before you find success. The data tells a different story for operators who treat reporting as a feedback loop: read your EPC, watch “All Other Items Ordered,” and swap low-paying categories for better programs when the numbers justify it.

We built Lasso because link infrastructure should scale with content production, not fight it. See how it fits your stack. Start optimizing your links today.

Want more tips? Join our newsletter, The Monday Marketer, and get actionable affiliate marketing and SEO advice sent straight to your inbox.

Sean Brison

Lasso Team

Sean Brison is a dad, writer, business owner, and Content Lead at Lasso. He's spent the past several years in cahoots with Lasso's founder, Andrew, creating awesome things for people. He's also addicted to perfectly-balanced cocktails, the outdoors, and John…