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Creator Desk

How should a podcaster put affiliate links in show notes, and what do 287 real feeds do?

We read the newest ten episodes of 287 public podcast feeds on 26 September 2026: one link in fourteen was an http address Spotify says it does not support, and four in five episodes carrying an affiliate link never said so in writing.

Part of: For creators

What 2,572 episodes actually contain

We searched Apple's public podcast directory for twelve creator-niche terms, took up to 25 shows per term, fetched each show's public RSS feed, and read every URL in the description fields of its newest ten episodes. 291 shows were found; 287 feeds answered.

Pulled 26 September 2026, 21:37 local. Method and search terms at the foot of the page.

Which networks the affiliate links belonged to, by the host each link used:

985 affiliate links in all. Geniuslink (geni.us) was excluded: three of three sampled links went straight to a publisher page with no tracking parameter.

What Apple and Spotify say

Apple Podcasts

• Episode description: up to 10,000 characters; “rich text formatting and some HTML” (<p>, <ol>, <ul>, <li>, <a>) when the text is wrapped in a CDATA tag.
• Show description: a separate field capped at 4,000 bytes, with the same CDATA rule for links.
• Content guideline 1.6: editorial content “should greatly exceed any advertising content”, and episodes must not consist primarily of marketing for outside products without an editorial benefit.
• Content guideline 3.1: all advertising must comply with applicable law, including disclosure of paid or sponsored content.

Spotify

• Links are supported in the Spotify for Creators rich-text editor and, for shows hosted elsewhere, as <a> tags in the RSS feed.
• “We only support https links (not http).”
• Spotify passes your formatted text to other listening platforms “exactly as it appears”, and warns it may look different on each.
• For video episodes, promotional material “must be limited to creator sponsorships integrated by the podcaster”.

Apple: A Podcaster's Guide to RSS and the Apple Podcasts content guidelines. Spotify: Formatting your show notes and Promotional content guidelines. All read 26 September 2026.

The http problem is hand-typed

This is the finding we did not expect. Every one of the 985 affiliate-network links in the sample was https. Networks generate their own links and they generate them correctly. The 955 http links are addresses somebody typed: social profiles, the show's own website, a newsletter sign-up, a shortener.

So the fix is not about affiliate links at all; it is a template problem. 759 of the 955 http links (79.5%) are an address the same show repeats in three or more of its ten newest episodes — the boilerplate block pasted under every episode. Change the template once and the whole back catalogue stops carrying them from the next episode on. Instagram, TikTok and bit.ly all serve https; the http was never needed.

The spoken link: vanity URLs

Show notes are read by the people who open them. The rest hear the episode in a car or on a run, and a link they cannot tap has to be one they can remember. That is the case for a vanity URL: a short address on a domain you own, such as yourshow.com/mic, that redirects to the page you want.

• You control the redirect, so when a programme ends or a product is discontinued you change one destination instead of re-recording.
• Point it at a page, not straight at the retailer, and that page can carry your written disclosure and the full list.
• Do not read a network short link aloud. A random string is impossible to type, and you do not control where it goes after the programme changes.

Our own guide to link shorteners covers the redirect mechanics and what a redirect does to tracking, so we will not repeat it here.

Disclosure: notes and audio

Four in five episodes carrying an affiliate link did not use the word “affiliate”, “commission”, “I earn” or similar anywhere in the notes. Of 51 shows with affiliate links, 10 disclosed on at least one such episode and 6 on every one. The most common wording, when present, was simply “affiliate”.

We cannot hear the audio, and a host may well have said it aloud. But the notes are where the link is, and they are what a listener on a lock screen reads. Apple's guideline 3.1 already points at the law; our position is that a single line directly above the links — “some links below are affiliate links; I earn a commission” — is cheap insurance, and the audio mention covers the listener who never opens the notes. Our page on disclosure where nobody reads the caption covers how the FTC treats podcasts.

What this data cannot show

• Spoken disclosures. We read text only. The 18.4% is a floor for written disclosure, not a measure of honesty.
• What players do with http links. Spotify states it does not support them. We did not open any player to watch what happens, so we do not claim the links break, only that they fall outside what Spotify says it supports.
• The whole podcast market. These are the shows Apple's search ranks for twelve lifestyle and shopping terms, the kinds of show a product creator runs. Business, news and comedy podcasts were not sampled.
• Every affiliate link. We counted links by known network hosts. Links behind a show's own redirect, or on networks we did not list, are missed, so 9.9% is a lower bound. The disclosure word check is loose in the other direction.
• Change over time. One pull, one evening.

What to do this week

1. Open your episode template and change every http:// to https://.
2. Add one disclosure line above the first affiliate link, in the template, so every future episode carries it.
3. Register one vanity path on your own domain for your gear page and use it in the audio.
4. Keep the notes under 10,000 characters; only 9 of 2,572 episodes went over, and Apple does not say what it does with the excess.
5. Check the three links you mention most still resolve; a dead link read aloud is worse than none.

Frequently asked

Can you put affiliate links in podcast show notes?

Yes. Apple's RSS guide allows the <a> tag in an episode description of up to 10,000 characters when wrapped in CDATA, and Spotify supports links in show notes, https only. Across 2,572 recent episodes we read, 9.9% carried a recognisable affiliate link.

Do http links work in Spotify show notes?

Spotify's help page says it only supports https links, not http. In our sample 7.1% of show-note links were http and 92 of 287 shows had at least one; none of the 985 affiliate-network links were http.

What is a vanity URL for a podcast?

A short address on a domain you own, such as yoursite.com/gear, that you can say aloud and that redirects where you choose. You can change its destination without re-recording.

Do podcasters disclose affiliate links in show notes?

Mostly not in writing: 47 of 255 affiliate episodes (18.4%) used any disclosure wording in the notes. Spoken disclosures were not counted.

Method and scope

• Discovery: Apple's public iTunes Search API, entity=podcast, country US, up to 25 shows each for: fashion, beauty, home decor, parenting, fitness, travel, food, tech reviews, shopping, style, skincare, deals. 291 distinct shows; 287 feeds returned HTTP 200.
• Episodes: the newest 10 <item>s per feed. URLs were taken from <description>, content:encoded or itunes:summary, whichever was longest, as href attributes plus bare URLs.
• Affiliate classification by host: ShopMy, amzn.to, amazon.com with tag=, fave.co, go.magik.ly, rstyle.me, liketk.it, Skimlinks, Impact, CJ, Rakuten, Awin, ShareASale, AvantLink, Partnerize, Mavely and Howl hosts. Sample resolutions are described in the table above.
• Disclosure check: the 51 affiliate-carrying feeds were fetched a second time the same evening and all 255 episodes matched by title; notes were searched for affiliate, commission, “we may earn”, “I earn”, “paid link”, “#ad”, “sponsored link” and “may receive”.
• Scripts: pull_eve_0926_podcast.py, an_eve_0926_podcast.py and an_eve_0926_podcast_b.py in our repository. Show names are not published; the finding is about the practice, not about any one show.
• Rules: A Podcaster's Guide to RSS, Apple Podcasts content guidelines, Spotify: Formatting your show notes, Spotify: Promotional content guidelines, all read in a browser 26 September 2026. This page is not legal advice.

Last verified 26 September 2026 against 287 public podcast feeds and Apple's and Spotify's creator documentation, all read that evening

How this page was made. Drafted with AI (Claude); not yet independently re-checked. How we work