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Creator Desk
Can you put affiliate links on Medium? Yes, and a sponsored post, no
Medium is the rare platform that answers the affiliate question in one sentence: allowed in posts, disclosed, a footer line will do, while paid sponsorships from brands are not allowed at all.
Part of: For creators
Yes. Medium’s Rules say affiliate links are allowed in posts, and you must disclose them; “a simple sentence in the footer” is enough. The same section says third-party advertising and sponsorships are not allowed. So on Medium the commission link is fine and the paid brand deal is not, which is the reverse of what many creators assume.
We read Medium’s Rules, its suspension reasons, its AI and paywall policies on 27 September 2026, and every version of the Rules in Medium’s public policy history back to 2015. The rule has flipped once already.
The four passages that decide it
Four documents on Medium’s help centre bear on affiliate links. Read on 27 September 2026:
| Where | What it says, in short | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Medium Rules, “Ads, Promotions, and Marketing” | Affiliate links (Amazon with an affiliate code, or any link paying a commission) are allowed in posts; disclose them per FTC law; a footer sentence can do | Link products and say so |
| Same section | Third-party advertising and sponsorships are not allowed, including images that indicate brand sponsorship; first-party promotion is allowed | No paid brand posts; promoting your own shop or newsletter is fine |
| Reasons for Suspensions or Restrictions | Spam includes “affiliate marketing in the guise of reviews” and posting primarily to drive traffic to an external site or product | A thin “review” that exists for the link is the named violation |
| AI content policy | No AI-generated content made to rank in search with the goal of promoting affiliate links, such as AI product reviews | Automated review farms are banned outright |
Sources: Medium Rules (“Updated June 2023”), Reasons for Suspensions or Restrictions (edited 28 August 2026), AI content policy (edited 29 April 2026), all read 27 September 2026.
The Rules also say that if you received free goods or services, or anything of value connected to a post’s topic, you must make that clear. Gifted products are a disclosure, not a ban.
Affiliate yes, sponsorship no
This is the line creators most often get backwards. Medium separates money that flows from a reader’s purchase from money that flows from a brand to you for the post:
- Allowed: a link that pays you a commission when a reader buys, disclosed. Medium names Amazon affiliate codes as the example.
- Allowed: promoting your own business, website, mailing list or fundraiser.
- Not allowed: a post a brand paid for, a “sponsored by” banner, or a brand logo in your publication name, in posts, publications or newsletters.
- Disclose, not banned: products you were given free.
So a brand offering you a flat fee to write about its product on Medium is offering something the Rules forbid, however it is labelled. The same brand’s affiliate programme is fine. If you run paid deals, they belong on a platform that permits them, with Medium carrying your ordinary, disclosed links.
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Where Medium draws the spam line
Medium does not say how many links is too many. It describes the purpose it objects to. From the suspension list and the Rules, these patterns are named:
- A review that is really a link. “Affiliate marketing in the guise of reviews” of products or services, or of product testing, is listed as spam.
- A post written to send traffic elsewhere or to lift an outside site’s search ranking.
- A clipped post that stops and links to the rest on another site.
- The same content posted again, or templates reused with small changes across posts or accounts.
Our position, from the text: on Medium, the link has to be a footnote to a piece that stands up without it. A comparison you actually researched, with the links at the end, fits the rules. A “review” of a product you have not used, written for the click, is the case Medium wrote the rule for.
The rule has changed four times
Medium keeps every version of its Rules in a public GitHub repository and links it from the Rules page. We downloaded all 15 versions of Rules.md, from 27 July 2015 to 27 June 2023, and searched each for the affiliate wording.
| Version | What the Rules said about affiliate links |
|---|---|
| 27 Jul 2015 | It banned deceptive ways of earning money or traffic, and posts “with the primary purpose of affiliate marketing.” Reworded the same day to “Don’t write posts aimed primarily at affiliate marketing.” |
| 30 Jan 2017 | The affiliate sentence disappears. A new spam rule bans posting content primarily to drive traffic to an external site. |
| 28 Sep 2018 | “You must disclose affiliate links or payment for a post.” Third-party advertising is banned in the same revision. |
| 26 May 2021 | Shortened to “You must disclose affiliate links.” A rule on disclosing free goods or services is added. |
| 27 Jun 2023 | Today’s wording: affiliate links “are allowed in posts”, disclosure required, “a simple sentence in the footer” suffices. |
Source: github.com/Medium/medium-policy, 15 commits, each version fetched and searched on 27 September 2026.
Two things follow. First, the advice you find in older posts may be from the 2015–2016 era, when Medium told writers not to write posts aimed primarily at affiliate marketing. Second, the permission has been explicit only since June 2023, and the live help-centre copy was last edited on 30 April 2024. A rule that has flipped once can flip again, so date-check any guide that quotes it, including this one.
Affiliate links behind the paywall
Medium’s “Content eligible for the paywall” policy, edited 24 September 2026, lists what cannot earn in the Partner Program: stories about Medium itself and fully AI-generated writing. It says nothing about affiliate links. Our reading is that a disclosed affiliate link does not by itself make a story ineligible; Medium does not say so directly, and we did not test it.
If you do paywall a story with affiliate links, remember who sees it: only members who can read past the paywall reach the links, so the audience for the link is smaller than the story’s.
How to disclose on Medium
Medium says a footer sentence satisfies its rule. The FTC, which Medium cites, asks for a disclosure people will see before they act. The two meet if you put one short line near the first link as well as the footer. For example:
- At the first link: “(affiliate link: I earn a commission if you buy)”.
- In the footer: “This story contains affiliate links. If you buy through them I may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you.”
- For a gifted product: say it was gifted, where you discuss it.
Medium also bans misleading links and metadata, so let the link text say where it goes.
What we could not verify
- How Medium enforces the review rule. No threshold is published and we saw no enforcement data.
- How many Medium writers use affiliate links. Medium’s Rules forbid using scripts or robots to scrape or copy its content, so we did not sample posts. Our Substack study measures the same question where the platform publishes an API.
- Reach. Whether links affect distribution on Medium is not documented; we did not test it.
- Paywall eligibility of affiliate stories, as above.
What to do this week
- Add a footer disclosure to every Medium story that carries an affiliate link, plus a short note at the first link.
- Take any brand-paid post off Medium, or turn it into a disclosed affiliate piece with no payment for the post itself.
- Reread your product “reviews”: if one has no information a reader could not get from the product page, it is the case the spam rule names.
- Check the Rules page’s date before relying on any rule, since it has changed four times.
Frequently asked
Are affiliate links allowed on Medium?
Yes. Medium's Rules say affiliate links, such as Amazon links with an affiliate code or any link where you receive a commission, are allowed in posts, provided you disclose them. Medium says a simple sentence in the footer can do.
Can I publish a sponsored post on Medium?
No. The same section of Medium's Rules says third-party advertising and sponsorships are not allowed, including images that indicate brand sponsorship. Promoting your own business, site or mailing list is allowed.
Can a Medium story with affiliate links go behind the paywall?
Medium's paywall policy, read 27 September 2026, excludes stories about Medium itself and fully AI-generated writing. It does not mention affiliate links. That is our reading of what it leaves out, not a statement from Medium.
What gets an affiliate writer suspended on Medium?
Medium's list of reasons for suspension includes affiliate marketing in the guise of reviews of products or services, and posting content primarily to drive traffic to an external site or product. Its AI policy also bans AI-generated content made to rank in search and promote affiliate links.
Method and sources
- Medium Rules, Reasons for Suspensions or Restrictions, AI content policy, Partner Program Terms and eligibility, and Content eligible for the paywall, read in the browser on 27 September 2026, with each help-centre article’s own edit date.
- Policy history: all 15 versions of
Rules.mdin Medium’s public GitHub repository, downloaded and searched for the affiliate, third-party advertising, gifts and traffic sentences. - We did not post on Medium, sign in, or sample other writers’ posts. This page is not legal advice.
Last verified 27 September 2026 against Medium’s Rules, four help-centre policies and 15 archived versions of the Rules
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How this page was made. Drafted with AI (Claude); not yet independently re-checked. How we work