LinkToLooks · Guides · Creator Desk
Creator Desk
Can you put affiliate links on Bluesky, and how do you disclose them?
Bluesky allows links and has no affiliate rule of its own, but its guidelines forbid commercial posts that do not say they are commercial; in 792 public posts carrying affiliate links that we read this morning, only 14.6% said so, so writing the disclosure into the post puts you ahead of most accounts doing it.
Part of: For creators
Yes. Bluesky does not ban affiliate links, and its Community Guidelines never mention them. They do say that commercial content, sponsored material and advertising must not be posted “without clearly identifying its commercial nature to other users.” An affiliate link is commercial content, so the post has to say so. Bluesky offers no paid-partnership label; the disclosure goes in your words.
What others do: in 792 public posts with an affiliate link, pulled from Bluesky’s own search on 27 September 2026, 116 (14.6%) used a disclosure word such as #ad or “affiliate link”. Counted by account, 40 of 116 accounts disclosed at least once.
What Bluesky’s rules say
We read Bluesky’s Community Guidelines (last updated 19 September 2025) and Terms of Service (last updated 14 August 2025) in full on 27 September 2026. Neither contains the word “affiliate” in the sense of a commission link. Three passages decide what an affiliate creator may do:
- Disclosure. Under “Be Authentic”, the guidelines ban “undisclosed commercial content, sponsored material, or advertising” posted without clearly identifying its commercial nature. This is the rule that applies to you.
- Spam. The same section bans sending spam or repeatedly posting “in ways that disrupt normal conversations or service use”, and artificially manipulating engagement.
- Restricted goods. You may not unlawfully sell, advertise or facilitate transactions for drugs, weapons, stolen or counterfeit goods and similar items, and may not direct advertising for gambling, alcohol, tobacco or deceptive financial services at minors.
Bluesky writes no rule about which networks or link shorteners you may use, and none about links reducing reach. On Snapchat, by contrast, off-platform links make a Snap ineligible for recommendation, a rule Snap writes down. We found no equivalent in Bluesky’s published documents.
Your own legal duty does not depend on the platform. In the US, the FTC expects a clear disclosure of a material connection, and a commission is one. Bluesky’s rule and the FTC’s point the same way.
Where a link can go
Bluesky runs on an open protocol, and its data formats are published. We read the current record definitions (lexicons) in Bluesky’s public code repository on 27 September 2026:
| Place | What the format allows |
|---|---|
| Post text | Up to 300 characters (graphemes). A link is stored as a separate “facet”, so the full URL can be longer than what the app displays |
| Link card | One external embed per post, with its own URL, title, description and thumbnail |
| Profile | A website field that takes one URL, plus a 256-character description |
| Pinned post | One post can be pinned to the profile, so a post with your link list can sit at the top |
| Labels on a post | A self-label field exists; Bluesky’s guidelines do not name a commercial label for it, and none of the 792 posts we read used one |
Source: app.bsky.feed.post, app.bsky.actor.profile and app.bsky.embed.external in the bluesky-social/atproto repository. What a given app shows is a display choice; we did not test the apps.
The practical consequence: the 300-character limit counts your disclosure too. “#ad” costs three characters plus a space; “As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases” costs 55, almost a fifth of the post.
Keep reading
What 792 affiliate posts actually do
We searched Bluesky’s public post search for 15 affiliate link domains on 27 September 2026 at about 10:00 and kept the posts whose link or link card points at one: 792 posts from 116 accounts. Bluesky’s public endpoint serves only the newest 100 results per search without a login, so this is a snapshot of the newest posts per link type, not a census.
| Link type | Posts | Accounts | Posts with a disclosure word |
|---|---|---|---|
| Affiliate network click links (Rakuten, ShareASale, Awin, CJ, Impact) | 246 | 63 | 20 (8.1%) |
| Amazon short links (amzn.to) | 168 | 35 | 81 (48.2%) |
| ShopStyle Collective (rstyle.me) | 100 | 8 | 13 (13.0%) |
| ShopMy | 100 | 7 | 2 (2.0%) |
| LTK (liketk.it) | 100 | 2 | 0 |
| Amazon links carrying an associate tag | 78 | 2 | 0 |
| All | 792 | 116 | 116 (14.6%) |
A disclosure word is any of: #ad, (ad), ad:, affiliate, commission, paid link, sponsored, referral, “I earn”, “As an Amazon Associate”, #publi, #PR and Werbung, in the post text. We checked 15 of the amzn.to links: 14 redirected to an Amazon URL carrying an associate tag.
Four things stand out:
- A few accounts write most of the posts. The ten busiest accounts wrote 536 of the 792 posts. One account wrote 98 of the 100 LTK posts; another 89 of the 100 ShopMy posts. So the per-post rate mostly measures a handful of accounts, and the per-account figure is the fairer one: 40 of 116 accounts (34.5%) disclosed at least once, and 38 of those disclosed in every post we saw. Accounts that disclose, disclose consistently.
- Amazon posters disclose most. Nearly half of amzn.to posts carry a word, usually #ad, #paidlink or #AmazonAffiliate. Amazon’s Associates agreement requires a disclosure line, which may be why.
- Creator-platform links disclose least. The LTK, ShopMy and ShopStyle posts are where fashion and lifestyle creators are, and 15 of their 300 posts carried a word.
- Much of the traffic is deal accounts. Reading the posts, many are automated-looking deal feeds: a product, a price, a link, sometimes in Portuguese (111 posts) or Japanese. Many of the Amazon links led to books: 10 of the 15 amzn.to links we resolved were book listings, most of them novels by their titles.
How to disclose on Bluesky
Bluesky asks you to identify the commercial nature “clearly” and gives no wording. With no platform label, three habits do the job in a 300-character post:
- Put it before the link, not after the hashtags. “#ad” buried at the end of a row of hashtags is a pattern we saw repeatedly; it is visible, but not first.
- Use words a reader understands. “Affiliate link: I earn a commission” says what the relationship is. “#paidlink” is shorter but less clear to anyone outside affiliate marketing.
- Put it in the post, not only in your profile. A reader who sees your post in a feed or a quote never opens your profile. The profile note is extra, not instead.
If you post a link card, the card’s title and description are pulled from the destination page, and neither says it is an affiliate link. Your post text has to.
The spam line
The guidelines ban posting repeatedly in ways that disrupt conversations. The heaviest accounts in our sample posted the same format dozens of times. We cannot see whether Bluesky acted on any of them, so we cannot tell you where the line sits. What the text supports:
- A creator sharing products their followers asked about is ordinary posting.
- Replying to strangers’ posts with your links, or posting the same link card over and over, is what “disrupt normal conversations” describes.
What we could not verify
- Enforcement. We do not know whether Bluesky moderators act on undisclosed affiliate posts. The rule is written; its enforcement is not public.
- Reach. Bluesky publishes no statement that links lower a post’s distribution, and we did not test it. Custom feeds each rank posts their own way.
- The whole population. Our 792 posts are the newest 100 per link domain that the public search would return. Posts disclosed in an image, in alt text, or in a reply were not counted, so the true disclosure rate may be somewhat higher.
- Who the accounts are. We do not publish or profile accounts; figures here are aggregates only.
What to do this week
- Add a disclosure to the start of every Bluesky post that carries an affiliate link, in plain words, before the link.
- Use the profile
websitefield for your storefront or link page, and pin one post that explains your links. - If you cross-post from Instagram or Threads, check the label did not stay behind: a paid-partnership tag does not travel with copied text.
- Keep link posts a minority of what you post; the spam rule is about pattern, not about links.
Frequently asked
Are affiliate links allowed on Bluesky?
Yes. Bluesky’s Community Guidelines and Terms of Service do not ban them. The guidelines require that commercial content be clearly identified as commercial, which covers affiliate links.
Does Bluesky have a paid partnership label?
Not in its published guidelines or post format, as read on 27 September 2026. Disclose in the post text, for example “#ad” or “Affiliate link”, before the link.
How many Bluesky affiliate posts are disclosed?
In 792 public posts carrying affiliate links on 27 September 2026, 116 (14.6%) used a disclosure word. By account, 40 of 116 disclosed at least once.
Can I put a link in my Bluesky profile?
Yes. The profile record has a website field for one URL, and you can pin a post to the top of your profile.
Sources and method
- Bluesky Community Guidelines, last updated 19 September 2025, and Terms of Service, last updated 14 August 2025, read 27 September 2026.
- Record formats: the bluesky-social/atproto lexicons, read 27 September 2026.
- Posts: public
app.bsky.feed.searchPostson api.bsky.app, one search per domain withdomain=andsort=latest, newest 100 each (a second page returned HTTP 403 without a login): amzn.to, amazon.com, liketk.it, shopmy.us, rstyle.me, click.linksynergy.com, shareasale.com, awin1.com, anrdoezrs.net, tkqlhce.com, jdoqocy.com, dpbolvw.net, kqzyfj.com, sjv.io, pxf.io. 820 posts pulled, 792 kept. Scripts:pull_morn_0927_bsky.py,an_morn_0927_bsky.py. Five words (#publi, #PR, referral, paid link, Werbung) were added to the disclosure list after we read 40 undisclosed-looking posts and found some the first list had missed. - We did not post on Bluesky. This page is not legal advice.
Last verified 27 September 2026 against Bluesky’s guidelines, terms and record formats, each read in full, and 792 public posts
Keep reading
How this page was made. Drafted with AI (Claude); not yet independently re-checked. How we work