Affiliate Disclosure Examples Your Partners Can Copy (and You Can Enforce)
Ready-to-use disclosure wording for blogs, Instagram, YouTube, email, and podcasts — written for program owners: hand these to your affiliates, put the rule in your terms, and stop being the brand the FTC letter goes to.
Here is the part most program owners learn late: when your affiliates skip their disclosures, the regulator's letter can come to you. The FTC treats the brand as responsible for its promoters' practices, which turns disclosure from "your affiliates' problem" into a program-management task — the rules themselves are covered here; this page is the practical half. Copy these templates into your affiliate welcome kit, require them in your terms, and spot-check quarterly.
The test every disclosure must pass is short: clear and conspicuous — a normal reader, on that platform, sees it before they click and understands the promoter earns from the link. Placement beats poetry: an honest sentence buried below the fold fails; a plain one up top passes.
Blog posts and review sites
Place it above the first affiliate link, not in the footer.
Standard: "This post contains affiliate links. If you buy through them, I earn a commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend products I've actually used."
Shorter, still compliant: "Heads up: links in this post are affiliate links — I earn a commission if you buy."
Review-page variant: "I earn a commission if you buy [Product] through my links. That hasn't changed my verdict below — the criticisms stay in."
The third one converts better than hiding the relationship: named bias plus visible criticism reads as honesty, and honesty sells — the same reason comparison content works for partners at all.
Instagram, TikTok, and short social
Rules of the platform's reality: the disclosure must survive truncation ("more" cuts captions), so it goes FIRST, and hashtag soup does not count.
Caption, first line: "Ad/affiliate — I earn a commission through my link or code."
With a personal code: "I earn a commission when you use my code MAYA15 (you get 15% off)."
Stories/Reels: verbal or on-screen "commission link" plus the platform's paid-partnership label where it exists.
"#aff" alone, "#sp", or a disclosure only on the linked page all fail the conspicuous test. This matters doubly for coupon-code partners — codes travel by screenshot, so the code line itself should carry the disclosure.
YouTube and long video
Two layers, both needed: a spoken line early in the video ("links below are affiliate links — buying through them supports the channel") and the same line in the top three lines of the description, above the links — description-formatting details here. YouTube's own paid-promotion checkbox is in addition to, not instead of, the disclosure.
Email and newsletters
Once, near the top, plain text:
"Some links in this email are affiliate links — I may earn a commission if you buy."
Podcasts
Spoken, in the same segment as the recommendation: "Full disclosure — [Brand] link in the show notes is an affiliate link, the show earns a commission." Show notes repeat it in text.
The program-owner side: making it enforceable
Templates only work if they're required. Three moves make disclosure a system instead of a hope:
Put it in the terms. One clause: affiliates must disclose the material connection clearly and conspicuously on every promotion, per FTC guidance (or their local equivalent); undisclosed promotions may have commissions reversed. The terms template has the wording.
Put it in the welcome kit. Your onboarding email should hand partners this exact page's templates — most affiliates skip disclosure from ignorance, not malice, and giving them copy-paste lines removes the excuse.
Spot-check quarterly. Open your top ten partners' latest three promotions each. Missing disclosure gets one friendly correction with the template attached; a repeat gets the graceful deactivation. Ten checks a quarter is cheap insurance for the brand that would otherwise receive the letter.
One more honest note: non-US programs aren't exempt. The UK (CMA), EU member states, Canada, and Australia run equivalent regimes, and platforms enforce their own paid-partnership rules globally — "clear, up front, every time" is the standard that satisfies all of them at once.
Quick answers
What is a good affiliate disclosure example? "This post contains affiliate links — if you buy through them, I earn a commission at no extra cost to you." Placed before the first link, in normal-size text. On Instagram, the first caption line: "Ad/affiliate — I earn commission through my link or code."
Where must an affiliate disclosure be placed? Before the reader can act on the link: top of blog posts, first line of social captions, spoken early plus top of description on YouTube, near the top of emails. Footers, About pages, and post-click landing pages do not count as conspicuous.
Is "#aff" or "#ambassador" enough? No. Regulators have said abbreviated hashtags fail because ordinary readers don't reliably understand them. Use plain words: "affiliate link," "I earn a commission," or the platform's official paid-partnership label plus a plain-language line.
Who is liable if an affiliate doesn't disclose — them or the brand? Both can be, and enforcement history includes actions aimed at brands over their promoters' practices. That is why disclosure requirements belong in your program terms, your onboarding, and a quarterly spot-check — not just in your affiliates' good intentions.