Affiliate Link Disclaimer: What It Is and How to Write One

If you earn commissions from product recommendations, you need an affiliate link disclaimer on every page, post, and video that contains those links. An affiliate link disclaimer tells your audience that you may earn money when they buy through your links, which is exactly the kind of material connection the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requires you to disclose. Skipping it exposes you to regulatory penalties, network bans, and lost reader trust. This guide explains what the disclosure must say, where it must appear, and how to write one, though for advice specific to your situation you should consult a qualified attorney.

What Is an Affiliate Link Disclaimer?

An affiliate link disclaimer is a short statement that discloses your financial relationship with the products or services you link to. It tells readers that if they click a link and make a purchase, you receive a commission from the merchant.

The legal basis in the United States is the FTC's Endorsement Guides, codified at 16 CFR Part 255 and substantially updated in June 2023. Under Section 255.5, you must disclose any material connection between yourself and a seller that consumers would not reasonably expect. An affiliate commission is a textbook material connection: it could affect how readers weigh your recommendation, and most readers cannot tell an affiliate link from an ordinary one.

Two related documents often get confused with the disclaimer itself:

• The inline disclosure: the one or two sentence notice placed near your affiliate links on each page. This is what the FTC evaluates.
• The affiliate disclosure statement: a dedicated page (often at /affiliate-disclosure or inside a broader disclaimer page) that explains your affiliate relationships in detail and lists the programs you participate in.

You need both. The dedicated page adds transparency and satisfies network requirements, but it never replaces the inline notice. A disclaimer generator can produce the full disclosure statement, including affiliate, earnings, and liability language, in a few minutes.

Why the FTC Requires an Affiliate Disclosure

The FTC treats undisclosed affiliate relationships as a deceptive practice under Section 5 of the FTC Act. The logic is straightforward: an endorsement carries weight because readers assume it reflects your honest opinion. When money changes hands behind the scenes, readers deserve to know so they can discount the recommendation accordingly.

The consequences of ignoring this are concrete:

• Civil penalties. The FTC's Notice of Penalty Offenses covering endorsements, sent to more than 700 companies in October 2021, put businesses on notice that undisclosed material connections can trigger civil penalties. Those penalties are adjusted annually for inflation and currently exceed $50,000 per violation.
• Enforcement actions. The FTC has pursued brands and influencers alike, from the Lord & Taylor Instagram case in 2016 to warning letters sent directly to individual creators. Its 2023 guide update explicitly extended examples to affiliate marketers, bloggers, and social media posts.
• Network termination. Amazon Associates, ShareASale, CJ, and Impact all contractually require FTC-compliant disclosures. Amazon in particular audits sites and closes accounts that omit its required attribution statement, forfeiting unpaid commissions.
• Lost trust. Readers who discover hidden commissions rarely return. A clear disclosure costs you almost nothing in conversions; studies and practitioner reports consistently show negligible click-through impact.

Note the distinction between what is legally required and what is best practice. The disclosure itself is required by law in the US, UK, EU, Canada, and Australia. The exact wording, the dedicated disclosure page, and the "at no extra cost to you" reassurance are best practices that make compliance smoother.

Where to Place Your Affiliate Link Disclaimer

Placement matters as much as wording. The FTC's standard is that a disclosure must be clear and conspicuous, which the 2023 Endorsement Guides define as difficult to miss and easily understandable by ordinary consumers. In practice, that means:

• Before the first affiliate link. Put the disclaimer at the top of the post or immediately above the first link, not at the bottom of the page.
• Without scrolling or clicking. If readers must scroll past the links to find the disclosure, or click through to a separate page, it fails the conspicuous test.
• On every page with affiliate links. A single site-wide disclosure page does not cover individual posts. Repeat the short notice wherever the links appear.
• In readable formatting. Same font size as body text or close to it, sufficient contrast, and no burying inside dense legal paragraphs.
• Inside the same medium as the endorsement. For a video, that means a verbal mention plus on-screen text, because the FTC notes viewers may consume only the audio or only the visuals.

Placements that do not satisfy FTC guidance:

1. A link labeled "Disclosure" in your footer with nothing on the post itself.
2. A mention only in your privacy policy or terms of service.
3. A disclosure that appears after the affiliate links or below the fold.
4. Ambiguous hashtags such as #sp, #collab, or #ambassador on social posts.
5. A disclosure hidden behind a "more" button, as on truncated Instagram captions.

If you run a content site with dozens of monetized posts, add the short disclaimer to your post template so it renders automatically above the content. That one change fixes the most common compliance gap affiliates have.

How to Write an Affiliate Link Disclaimer

A compliant disclaimer needs to communicate three things: you use affiliate links, you earn money from them, and the reader's price is unaffected (if true). Follow these steps:

1. State the relationship plainly. Use the words "affiliate links," "commission," or "compensated." The FTC has criticized vague phrasing like "partner links" or "thanks to our sponsors" because ordinary readers may not understand it.
2. Put it in first person. "I may earn a commission" reads as honest and is easier to understand than passive constructions.
3. Add the cost reassurance if accurate. "At no additional cost to you" is true for nearly all affiliate programs and reduces reader hesitation.
4. Keep it short inline, longer on your disclosure page. One or two sentences above the content, with a link to the full affiliate disclosure statement for readers who want detail.
5. Match the medium. Written posts get written disclosures. Videos get spoken plus on-screen disclosures. Podcasts get a spoken disclosure in the episode itself, not just the show notes.
6. Include program-specific language. Amazon Associates requires its exact attribution statement, covered in the examples below.

Keep the tone consistent with your site. A disclaimer does not need to sound like a contract. It needs to be understood by a reader skimming at full speed.

Affiliate Link Disclaimer Examples

Copy and adapt these examples. Replace the bracketed placeholders with your own details.

Short inline disclaimer (top of a blog post):

This post contains affiliate links. If you buy through these links, [Site Name] may earn a commission at no additional cost to you.

Conversational version:

Heads up: some links below are affiliate links, which means I earn a small commission if you make a purchase. It never affects the price you pay, and I only recommend tools I actually use.

Amazon affiliate disclosure:

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Amazon's Operating Agreement requires this exact statement, clearly and conspicuously, on any site or app where you use Associates links. Most Amazon affiliates place it alongside their general disclaimer, for example:

[Site Name] is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by linking to Amazon.com. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Video and social media disclosure:

The description below contains affiliate links. I earn a commission on purchases made through them.

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For YouTube, say this out loud early in the video, tick the platform's paid promotion box, and repeat it in the description above the fold. For Instagram or TikTok, use the platform's branded content tools plus a plain-language line such as "commission earned on links" at the start of the caption.

Full disclosure page opening:

Some of the links on this website are affiliate links. This means that if you click a link and purchase a product or service, [Company Name] may receive a commission from the seller at no additional cost to you. These commissions help fund the free content on this site. Our editorial opinions are our own and are never dictated by affiliate partners.

Affiliate Disclosure Rules Outside the US

If your audience crosses borders, so do your obligations. The FTC framework is the strictest reference point, but other regulators enforce similar rules:

• United Kingdom. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) enforces the CAP Code, which requires marketing communications to be obviously identifiable. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) treats hidden affiliate relationships as a breach of the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008, and its 2023 successor provisions in the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 add direct fining powers of up to 10% of global turnover for unfair commercial practices.
• European Union. The Unfair Commercial Practices Directive (2005/29/EC) prohibits misleading omissions, and Annex I bans advertorials that do not make the commercial intent clear. National consumer authorities enforce this, with penalties varying by member state.
• Canada. The Competition Bureau's Deceptive Marketing Practices guidance requires influencers and affiliates to disclose material connections, backed by the misleading representations provisions of the Competition Act.
• Australia. The ACCC applies the Australian Consumer Law's prohibition on misleading or deceptive conduct (Section 18) to undisclosed commercial relationships in online content.

The practical takeaway: a clear, upfront, plain-language disclosure satisfies all of these regimes at once. You do not need region-specific disclaimers, you need one honest disclosure that no reader can miss.

Common Affiliate Disclaimer Mistakes to Avoid

Most compliance failures come from a handful of repeated mistakes:

• Burying the disclosure in the footer or legal pages. The single most common error. Regulators evaluate what a reader actually sees near the endorsement.
• Using jargon. "This post may contain compensated links per FTC 16 CFR Part 255" confuses readers. Citations belong in your disclosure page, not your inline notice.
• Disclosing only once for a series. Each post, video, and email stands alone. New visitors land mid-funnel and never saw your earlier disclosure.
• Hedging with "may." If every product link on the page is an affiliate link, say so directly. "May contain" is acceptable when links are mixed, misleading when they are not.
• Forgetting emails and newsletters. Affiliate links in email require the same disclosure, placed before the links appear in the message body.
• Ignoring program-specific terms. Amazon's required statement, for example, is a contractual condition on top of FTC rules. Read the operating agreement of every network you join.
• Letting the disclaimer drift out of date. If you join new programs or start accepting sponsored posts, update both your inline language and your disclosure page.

A quick quarterly audit catches most of these: open your five highest-traffic monetized pages on a phone and check whether the disclosure is visible before the first affiliate link.

Affiliate Disclaimers and Your Other Legal Pages

An affiliate link disclaimer is one piece of a complete set of website legal documents, and it works best when the pieces reference each other consistently.

Your disclaimer page should combine the affiliate disclosure with related protections: an earnings disclaimer if you publish income claims, a professional advice disclaimer if you cover health, finance, or legal topics, and a general limitation of liability. Keeping them on one page gives readers a single destination and gives you one document to maintain.

Your privacy policy also comes into play. Affiliate links typically set tracking cookies from networks like Amazon or Impact so the merchant can attribute the sale. That is third-party tracking, which you must disclose under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the ePrivacy Directive's Article 5(3) consent requirement for EU visitors. A privacy policy generator that accounts for third-party cookies covers this, and if you serve EU traffic you likely need consent management for those affiliate cookies as well.

TermsBox handles this stack in one place: its scanner detects the affiliate and tracking cookies your links actually set, and the generated disclaimer and privacy policy reflect what is really on your site rather than a generic template. That matters because a disclosure that contradicts your actual practices is itself a compliance problem.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is an affiliate link disclaimer legally required?

Yes, in the United States the FTC Endorsement Guides (16 CFR Part 255) require you to clearly disclose material connections, including affiliate commissions, whenever you promote products for compensation. Similar rules apply in the UK under the CAP Code and in the EU under the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive.

Where should I put my affiliate link disclaimer?

Place the disclosure before the first affiliate link, where readers see it without scrolling or clicking. A site-wide disclosure page alone is not enough under FTC guidance; the disclosure must be close to the affiliate links themselves on each page, video, or post.

What should an affiliate link disclaimer say?

It should state plainly that you earn a commission when readers buy through your links, at no extra cost to them. For example: "This post contains affiliate links. If you buy through them, we may earn a commission at no additional cost to you." Avoid vague terms like "partner links" or bare hashtags like #sp.

Do I need a disclaimer for Amazon affiliate links?

Yes. The Amazon Associates Program Operating Agreement requires the statement "As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases" on any site or page using Associates links. You must also satisfy FTC disclosure rules, so most Amazon affiliates combine both into one visible disclosure.

What happens if I do not disclose affiliate links?

You risk FTC enforcement under Section 5 of the FTC Act, with civil penalties that currently exceed $50,000 per violation for practices covered by the FTC's Notice of Penalty Offenses. Affiliate networks like Amazon Associates can also terminate your account and withhold unpaid commissions.

Does a disclaimer in my privacy policy or terms cover affiliate links?

No. The FTC requires disclosures to be unavoidable and placed near the endorsement itself, and buried references in legal pages do not meet that standard. Keep a full disclosure page for detail, but repeat a short disclaimer on every page that contains affiliate links.