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Creator Desk
For creators
Written for the person choosing which programme to join and what to post. Rates and terms come from the networks’ own published figures, dated, with the awkward parts left in.
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How long until an affiliate commission is final?
Worked from Amazon's own published terms: about 89 days from click to payment in the ordinary case, and up to 239 in the slow one.
9 min read · Read the guide →Health and beauty claims a creator should not repeat
Repeating a brand's health claim makes it yours, and 'it worked for me' is not the standard. The FTC's guidance quoted, with the hedge words it rejects.
8 min read · Read the guide →Giveaway rules for creators: prize, chance, consideration
Three words decide whether a giveaway is a lottery. The federal definitions quoted, the disclosure list worth copying, and the state layer we cannot source.
10 min read · Read the guide →Does a storefront page compete with your own posts?
Read live on 4 September 2026: Instagram blocks every unnamed crawler and eight AI bots, TikTok blocks 25, your storefront blocks none. Why they cannot compete.
10 min read · Read the guide →Do link shorteners hurt affiliate links?
Many affiliate tracking links already redirect before the shop, so a shortener adds one more hop. What that hop costs, in milliseconds and in reader trust.
11 min read · Read the guide →Disclosure rules outside the US: what we could read
The UK guidance is mid-transition and says so on its own page. EUR-Lex returned a bot challenge, so the EU is not covered. Every status code published.
8 min read · Read the guide →Disclosure in a video where nobody reads the caption
16 CFR 255.0(f) routes a disclosure to the channel carrying the claim and asks that it be unavoidable. What that means for short video, live and podcasts.
9 min read · Read the guide →Currency conversion for non-US creators
We pulled 2,930 listings on 4 September 2026: 11.8 per cent of rows marked US were priced in pounds or euros. The four costs of earning abroad, measured.
8 min read · Read the guide →Children and teen audiences: what actually changes
COPPA governs what you collect; 16 CFR 255.6 governs how you advertise, in two sentences. What each one says, plus the three things neither rule can tell you.
9 min read · Read the guide →Bookkeeping for affiliate income: what to track
Four events that never reconcile, the fields worth recording, and a measured reason the sale figure lies: 54 per cent of two-price listings show no discount.
9 min read · Read the guide →Affiliate payment thresholds: what we could and could not verify
We checked seven affiliate networks' public pages on 4 September 2026. Only Amazon publishes its payment minimums. Here they are, quoted in full.
8 min read · Read the guide →Affiliate disclosure on a storefront page
No caption and no voice-over, so a storefront gives a disclosure one job. Where it goes, why the footer fails, and the template fix that works.
9 min read · Read the guide →Shorts or long-form: which carries a product link better?
Compared on surfaces rather than audiences: what a Short can carry, what a long-form video can carry, and why we found no Shorts click rate with a source behind it.
9 min read · Read the guide →Which YouTube surfaces can carry an affiliate link?
Two of YouTube's linkable surfaces sit behind the Partner Programme. The surface-by-surface rules, quoted from YouTube's own pages and dated 3 September 2026.
10 min read · Read the guide →Why are creator pages ‘discovered but not indexed’?
Google's definition: found, not yet crawled, so the content has not been read. How to sort your URLs into indexed, discovered and unknown, and what moves each.
10 min read · Read the guide →Why do in-app browsers break affiliate tracking?
Attribution rides on a cookie set at click time, in the browser where the click happened. We measured what 12 retailer pages set on first contact.
9 min read · Read the guide →Where affiliate links belong in an email newsletter
A sent email cannot be edited, which changes where the disclosure goes and what you should link. Plus a link-durability check we ran this morning.
7 min read · Read the guide →What happens to your link when the shopper is outside the US?
Only 47.6% of 10,575 live listings we pulled on 3 September 2026 were priced in dollars. Twenty-eight currencies appeared. What that does to a creator's links.
9 min read · Read the guide →What is a SubID, and why should a creator use one?
A SubID is the only thing that tells you which post earned a sale. The naming scheme that lasts a year, and the check that it survives your redirects.
8 min read · Read the guide →UTM parameters vs affiliate SubIDs: which one actually tells you anything?
A UTM is read by your analytics, a SubID by the affiliate network. We parsed 7,656 live product URLs: 1,067 carry a utm_source, and it names the network.
9 min read · Read the guide →Sitemaps and IndexNow: what each one tells you, and how to check
A sitemap makes URLs discoverable and an IndexNow 200 means a URL was received. Neither means indexed. What each one promises, and how to check the far end.
9 min read · Read the guide →Retailers list one product at several URLs. Which one should you link?
203 retailer-and-title pairs sat at more than one address in a 2,320-listing pull. Four kinds of product URL, and how to pick the durable one.
8 min read · Read the guide →