How to localise Amazon affiliate links — and why redirecting alone earns you nothing.
A third of your readers may be in countries where your links do not work. Sending them to their local Amazon is the easy half. The half everyone skips is the reason the commission still does not arrive.
The short version
- Store IDs are per-marketplace. A
-20tag earns on amazon.com and nowhere else. - Check your country split before doing anything. If 4% of your traffic is international this is not worth an afternoon. If it is 35%, it is the highest-return fix available to you.
- OneLink is free and it is Amazon’s own tool. Start there.
- OneLink is for US Associates. Canada and the EU5 now earn on your single US store ID. Seven other stores still need their own linked account, or the redirect earns nothing.
- Shortened third-party links break it. The visitor has to land on a supported Amazon URL for the redirect to apply.
Here is a situation that costs affiliate publishers a great deal and produces no symptom at all.
A reader in Manchester finds your review of a coffee grinder. It ranks well, the article is good, they are convinced. They click your button and land on amazon.com — priced in dollars, shipping to the US, possibly refusing to ship at all. Most of them leave. The determined ones open a new tab, search amazon.co.uk, and buy there. You earn nothing either way, and nothing in any report tells you it happened.
Why the tag does not travel
Each Amazon marketplace runs its own Associates programme with its own store IDs. A US tag ending -20 is meaningless on amazon.co.uk, amazon.de or amazon.ca. There is no global account and no automatic bridge.
So an international reader has three possible outcomes, and only one of them pays you.
First, find out whether this is worth your time
Do not skip this. The size of the opportunity varies enormously by niche, and for some sites this is a rounding error while for others it is the single biggest fix available.
- Open Search Console → Performance → Countries, last 12 months. Or your analytics equivalent.
- Add up everything outside your marketplace’s country.
- That percentage of your affiliate clicks is currently earning approximately nothing.
Rough rule. Under 10% international, note it and move on — there are better uses of a day. Between 10% and 25%, worth doing properly. Over 25%, do it this week; it is likely worth more than anything else on your list. English-language sites in general-interest niches often sit well above 25%, with the UK, Canada, Australia and India making up most of it.
Option 1 — Amazon OneLink, free and official
OneLink is Amazon’s own geo-redirection tool, and it costs nothing. Amazon’s help pages describe it as a feature for members of the US Associates programme: a reader outside the US clicks your amazon.com link, and Amazon sends them to the same or a similar product on their local store. The redirect happens on Amazon’s side, so there is no script to add to your site.
The stores fall into two groups, and they are set up differently. Checked against Amazon’s OneLink help pages in October 2026:
| Group | Stores | What you need |
|---|---|---|
| Canada + EU5 | Canada, UK, Spain, Germany, France, Italy | Tick the countries on the OneLink page. Your single US store ID earns across all six, and payment is set once in the US account settings. |
| The other seven | Japan, Singapore, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Poland, Sweden, Australia | A separate Associates account in each, linked under Account Settings → Link Store IDs, with a default tracking ID per store. Each pays into a bank account in that country. |
| Not covered | Every store not named above, including India, Mexico and Brazil | OneLink does nothing. Readers stay on amazon.com. |
Open OneLink and choose your countries
5 minutesIn Associates Central, open Tools → OneLink and click Get Started. Tick the countries you want. For Canada and the EU5 that is the whole job: there are no separate applications and no new store IDs.
Link store IDs for the other seven
The step that decides whether they payRedirecting is not the same as earning. For Japan, Singapore, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Poland, Sweden and Australia, Amazon credits a sale only through an account you have opened in that country and linked under Link Store IDs, with a default tracking ID chosen for it.
Join only the stores that actually appear in your traffic. Each is a separate account with its own sales record to keep alive, and its own bank details.
Pick a redirect mode and verify with a real check
10 minutesAmazon offers three settings: Exact match redirects only when the identical product is sold locally, Close match (the default) also sends readers to a similar product or search results, and Do not redirect switches it off. Then verify properly, because this is where people declare victory too early.
- Use a VPN set to a country you have enabled, in a private window.
- Click one of your own product links and confirm you land on the local store.
- Then read the destination URL and confirm a tracking ID is present. Landing on amazon.co.uk proves the redirect works; it does not prove you will be paid.
Where OneLink falls short
- It is for US Associates. If your home store is amazon.co.uk, amazon.in or another store, Amazon’s OneLink pages describe no way to redirect your own readers.
- Third-party shortened links are not supported. Amazon says only its full links and its own short links are redirected — another reason to avoid link shorteners and cloakers.
- Close match is a guess. A reader may land on a similar product or a search page rather than the one you reviewed. Switch to exact match if that matters more than the extra sales.
- The seven still pay separately. Earnings and payments for those stores sit in each country’s own account.
- Unsupported storefronts stay unsupported.
Option 2 — third-party localisation tools
Services such as Geniuslink and Amazon Link Engine do the same job commercially, and they exist because OneLink’s gaps are real.
What you get for the fee
More storefronts than OneLink covers, better product matching, per-country tracking-ID mapping, custom fallback destinations when a product does not exist locally, and genuine click analytics.
What it costs
A monthly fee, and a dependency on a third party sitting in the path between your reader and Amazon. OneLink is free and is Amazon’s own.
The sensible order is OneLink first. Set it up, run it for a quarter, and look at what your non-US marketplaces actually earned. If that number is large enough that better matching and more storefronts would move it meaningfully, a paid tool pays for itself. If it is small, you have your answer and it cost nothing to find out.
Option 3 — handle it in WordPress
A plugin can rewrite Amazon links per visitor country using the tracking IDs you supply. The advantages over a hosted redirect service are that nothing sits between your site and Amazon, and the link is already correct when the page renders rather than being changed after the click.
Whatever you use, the same two conditions apply: you need an approved account in each destination marketplace, and the destination link must carry that marketplace’s tracking ID. No tool can invent a tracking ID you do not have.
After it is live
- Check each marketplace’s earnings separately after a month. Each has its own reporting; nothing aggregates for you.
- Watch the qualifying-sales requirement in each new marketplace. A programme you joined and never sold through can be closed for inactivity like any other.
- Remember the rates differ. Each marketplace publishes its own commission schedule, and the same category can pay noticeably differently — see the commission rate guide.
- Re-verify after any theme or caching change. A script that stops loading fails silently, and you would not notice for months.
What to expect. Not a transformation — a recovery. You are collecting revenue your content was already generating and handing to Amazon for free. On a site with 30% international traffic, capturing even half of it is a meaningful raise for one afternoon of setup, and it compounds with every article you publish afterwards.
If international readers are landing on links that do not work, it is also worth checking whether some of your links are broken in the more ordinary sense — see why Amazon affiliate links stop tracking.
Part of The Amazon Affiliate Site Playbook — the whole job in six stages, from choosing a niche to keeping a mature site earning.
Send every reader to the right Amazon
Ama Affiliate Pro localises Amazon links by visitor country using your own tracking ID for each marketplace, so an international reader lands on a store they can actually buy from — and the commission comes back to you.
Start a 14-day trialCommon questions
Does my Amazon affiliate tag work in other countries?
No. Store IDs are per-marketplace — a US tag ending -20 earns on amazon.com only. To earn from readers in other countries you need an approved Associates account in each of those marketplaces, with its own tracking ID.
Is Amazon OneLink free?
Yes. It is Amazon’s own geo-redirection tool for US Associates, with no charge. It covers Canada and the EU5 (UK, Spain, Germany, France, Italy) on your US store ID, plus Japan, Singapore, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Poland, Sweden and Australia through separately linked accounts. Stores not on that list, including India, Mexico and Brazil, are not covered.
I set up OneLink but I am still not earning from international traffic.
Check three things. Are the countries ticked on the OneLink page? For Japan, Singapore, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Poland, Sweden and Australia, have you linked an approved account and chosen its default tracking ID? And are your links full Amazon links or Amazon short links, not a third-party shortener? Redirecting and earning are separate steps.
Does OneLink work with shortened or cloaked links?
Third-party shortened links are not supported — the visitor must land on a supported Amazon URL for the redirect to apply. This is one more reason to link directly rather than through a redirect plugin, which Amazon’s policies discourage in any case.
Is geo-redirecting affiliate links against Amazon’s rules?
No. OneLink is Amazon’s own product, built for exactly this. What the policies prohibit is obscuring the fact that you are linking to Amazon, which is a different thing entirely — sending a reader to their own local Amazon store is transparent and intended.
How much international traffic makes this worth doing?
Check Search Console’s country report first. Under 10% international, note it and move on. Between 10% and 25%, worth an afternoon. Over 25%, it is likely the highest-return fix available to you. English-language general-interest sites are often well above 25%.
Do I need to write separate content for each country?
No. The same article serves everyone; only the link destination changes. Be aware that product availability and pricing differ between marketplaces, so a specific model you recommend may not exist everywhere — which is also why product matching sometimes fails.
Should I use OneLink or a paid tool like Geniuslink?
Start with OneLink because it is free and official. Run it for a quarter, then look at what your non-US marketplaces actually earned. If that figure is large enough that better product matching and more storefronts would move it meaningfully, a paid tool justifies its fee. If it is small, you have the answer at no cost.