Where do you put affiliate links on YouTube?

In the video description, ideally within the first 150–200 characters or in a clearly labeled 'Links' section near the top. You can also pin a comment with the link. Descriptions support up to 5,000 characters, and links there are clickable on desktop and mobile.

Do you have to disclose affiliate links on YouTube?

Yes. The FTC requires a clear, conspicuous disclosure near the links (for example, 'Some links are affiliate links — I earn a commission at no extra cost to you'). YouTube also asks you to tick the 'paid promotion' box when a video includes paid product placement, which is separate from affiliate disclosure.

Are affiliate links allowed on YouTube?

Yes, affiliate links are allowed. They must not be deceptive, must not link to harmful or misleading content, and must comply with YouTube's spam policies. Link shorteners that hide the destination can look spammy — use clean, recognizable URLs where possible.

How do I update an affiliate link on all my YouTube videos at once?

YouTube Studio's bulk edit can only add or remove text at the very start or end of descriptions — it cannot find and replace a URL in the middle. To swap an old affiliate link for a new one wherever it appears, you need true find-and-replace, which is what Description Modifier does across your whole catalog with a preview and undo.

What happens if an affiliate link breaks?

You keep sending viewers to a dead page and earn nothing from the click. Broken links also hurt the viewer experience. A broken-link scan of your descriptions finds them; a find-and-replace run swaps in the working URL everywhere at once.

Can I use affiliate links in YouTube Shorts descriptions?

Shorts descriptions are limited and links in them are not clickable in the Shorts feed. The practical places for affiliate links remain long-form video descriptions and pinned comments.

YouTube affiliate links: where to put them, the rules to follow, and how to fix them across your whole channel

Quick answer: Put affiliate links in your video description near the top, label them with a clear disclosure, and keep the URLs clean. The part most creators get wrong is not adding links — it is maintaining them. Programs change URLs, products get discontinued, and a link you added two years ago is now dead on 60 videos. Fixing that by hand means editing every video one at a time; the bulk approach is covered below.

Where to put affiliate links in a YouTube description

The first 150 characters of a description can appear in search results, and the first couple of lines are what viewers see before tapping "more." Two layouts work well:

Top placement: one key link in the first line or two, right after your one-sentence summary of the video.
Labeled section: a short "Links mentioned" or "Gear I use" block near the top, with one link per line.

Either way, keep the URLs readable. A clean product or program URL builds more trust than an opaque short link, and some viewers (rightly) treat mystery shorteners as spam.

The disclosure rules you cannot skip

If you earn a commission from a link, the FTC expects a clear disclosure close to that link — not buried at the bottom of a 4,000 character description. One sentence near the links is enough: "Some links are affiliate links, which means I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you."

Separately, YouTube's own "paid promotion" checkbox applies when a video includes paid product placement or endorsements inside the video itself. Affiliate links alone do not require that checkbox, but the written disclosure in the description is still your responsibility. We wrote a full walkthrough in FTC disclosure for YouTube affiliate links.

The maintenance problem nobody warns you about

Affiliate links are not set-and-forget. Over a channel's lifetime you will hit some version of all of these:

A program migrates platforms and every old URL redirects — or dies.
A product is discontinued and the link now 404s.
You switch networks and need to swap one domain for another everywhere.
You realize the disclosure line is missing on your older uploads.

On a 10-video channel this is an annoying afternoon. On a 100-video channel it is the kind of job that never gets done — and every dead link is commission you are not earning.

Why YouTube Studio can't fix this in bulk

YouTube Studio does have a bulk description edit, but it can only append or prepend text — add something to the very start or very end of every description. It cannot find an old URL in the middle of a description and replace it with a new one. So the "swap this link across my catalog" job, which is the job affiliate creators actually have, is exactly the job Studio cannot do. More detail in what YouTube Studio's bulk edit can and can't do.

How to update affiliate links across your whole channel

This is the workflow Description Modifier was built for:

Scan first. Run the broken-link scan to find every dead affiliate URL in your descriptions, so you know the full scope before changing anything.
Find and replace. Enter the old URL and the new one. You get a safety preview showing exactly which videos will change and how, before anything is written.
Apply with undo. Apply the change across the catalog. Every run is saved in your undo history, so a mistake is reversible.
Fix disclosures the same way. If older videos are missing the disclosure line, add it to every description that contains an affiliate link — one run, not one video at a time.

The free plan includes 3 runs with no card required, which is enough to fix a link swap on a small channel and see how it works. A bigger cleanup — scanning, swapping several links, adding disclosures — fits in the $5 48-Hour Pass, which unlocks every feature for two days with no subscription.

A quick affiliate link health checklist

Every affiliate link has a disclosure line near it.
No dead or redirected URLs (run a broken-link scan).
Key links sit in the first few lines, not the bottom.
URLs are clean and recognizable, not opaque shorteners.
Old campaigns and expired coupon codes are removed or replaced.

Do this once a quarter and your back catalog keeps earning instead of quietly sending viewers to dead pages. Related reading: how to audit expired affiliate links on YouTube and finding broken links in your descriptions.