If you’re an Amazon affiliate or influencer and you’re confused about how links work in Creator Connections campaigns — specifically why it’s suddenly okay to not add one, and how on earth Amazon still knows to pay you — I’ve got good news. The answer is simpler than you think, and it’s been true the entire time. Amazon never used those campaign links to pay you. Not once. Let me explain what’s actually going on under the hood, and then I’ll tell you why I still submit links anyway.

Table of Contents

The Old “Soft Requirement” and Its Three Strikes

For a long time, Creator Connections had what I’d call a soft requirement. If you accepted a campaign, you were supposed to put a link on it showing the content you made. And Amazon said that if you didn’t, you’d get something like three strikes, and then… something would happen.

Here’s the problem: nobody ever found out what that something was. Because nothing ever happened. People blew through their three strikes and kept right on getting campaigns and kept right on getting paid. It was a rule with no teeth.

So at some point last year, Amazon got to the point where they basically said, you know what, let’s just get rid of that whole requirement. They made an announcement: if you make content — a video, a link, a post in your Facebook group, whatever it is — you don’t have to submit links on your campaigns anymore. And to boot, it doesn’t affect how you get paid.

That announcement confused a lot of people. The immediate reaction was: wait a minute. If I don’t put a link on the campaign, how does Amazon know I’m supposed to get paid?

How Amazon Actually Tracks Your Commissions

The only way Creator Connections — and Amazon as a whole — does tracking is through the tracking IDs inside your affiliate links that lead to purchases. That’s it. That’s the entire mechanism.

Here’s how it plays out. Say you take an affiliate link and post it in a Facebook deals group. That link has your affiliate tracking ID baked into it. Somebody clicks it, lands on Amazon, and buys something. Your tracking ID traveled with them the whole way. When that purchase gets processed, Amazon asks itself: was there a tracking ID attached to this? Yes — it was Fizz’s. Then Amazon asks the follow-up: is that ID also enrolled in a Creator Connections campaign for this product? Yes? Great, bonus commission applies.

  1. You accept a Creator Connections campaign with your affiliate account.
  2. You share an affiliate link containing your tracking ID anywhere you like.
  3. Someone clicks it and buys on Amazon.
  4. Amazon matches the tracking ID on that purchase to your account.
  5. Amazon checks whether that ID is enrolled in an active campaign for that product.
  6. You get paid the campaign rate.

Notice what’s not in that chain: the link you pasted into the campaign submission box. It plays zero role. Your tracking ID, attached to the actual product that goes through the purchasing process — that’s how Amazon ultimately determines what you’re in line for.

Think about it for two seconds and it becomes obvious. You could put any link on a campaign. You could paste homestarrunner.com in there. You could paste whitehouse.gov. Amazon had no way to validate it and no reason to.

And a lot of the legitimate links people submitted were untrackable by nature. If you made a YouTube video for a product and put your affiliate link down in the description, the link you’d submit to the campaign was just the YouTube URL. There’s no tracking ID in a YouTube URL. Amazon couldn’t have used that to attribute anything — but it was completely normal and accepted. Same with blog article links, Facebook posts, and a bunch of other stuff that has nothing to do with tracking.

So the campaign link was never a payment mechanism. It was more like a verification gesture — Amazon’s way of confirming you actually did something with the campaign you claimed. Which is exactly why it was so easy for them to drop the requirement. Removing it cost them nothing, because it was never load-bearing.

Bottom line: you can skip adding links to your campaigns and it will not affect your earnings. It never did.

Why I Still Submit Links Anyway

Now here’s the side note, and it’s the part I actually care about. Do I think it’s a good idea to submit your links anyway? Yeah, I kind of do. And it has nothing to do with commissions.

When Amazon made that announcement, a lot of brands went “whoa, hold on a second.” Brands liked seeing the links. Under the old system, people believed they had to submit content to get paid, so the content submission rate on campaigns was pretty stinking high. And since the entire reason a brand is on Creator Connections is that they want creators to actually take their products and promote them somewhere, that felt like the system working.

Then Amazon said never mind, you don’t have to do that. And brands were left watching submission rates fall off a cliff. To this day it’s a very low percentage of creators who actually submit content to campaigns. I’d bet at this point it’s in the single digits.

The Opportunity Hiding in Single-Digit Submission Rates

If almost nobody is submitting content, then submitting content makes you visible. That’s the whole play.

So when I spot a brand I’d genuinely like to work with, I submit the link to their campaign, and then I follow up. The message is basically: “Hey, it’s me, Fizz. I just submitted a link to your campaign. I know you like links — I gave you links. Let’s work together more.”

Two things happen there. One, it establishes that you’ve already been working together; they just didn’t know it. Two, you did something almost nobody else is doing, and then you reached out on top of it. That’s a very short list of creators you’re now on.

Would I do that manually on every single campaign I’ve got? No. Realistically a lot of brands won’t read the message, and that’s fine. That’s why this is a volume game, not a precision game. If you use a tool like Oink that lets you fire off these follow-up messages as you submit content, you can send quite a few at once. Even if only a few respond, it took essentially none of your time and you picked up a couple of collaboration partners out of it.

  • Skip links if you want — your commissions are unaffected.
  • Submit links strategically for brands you actually want a relationship with.
  • Follow up with a short, human message when you submit.
  • Treat it as volume: a small response rate on a lot of sends still wins.

Collaboration Is a Two-Way Street

Here’s the thing I keep coming back to. We ask brands for collaborations constantly. Send me product, give me a higher rate, put me in your campaign. Give, give, give. And then we forget that collaboration is supposed to run both directions.

Brands need a win too. Submitting your content link is a small, free win you can hand them — proof that a real creator made real content for their product. It costs you a few seconds and it’s something 90-plus percent of creators aren’t bothering to do anymore.

Win-win. That’s collaboration, as partners.

So to answer the original question directly: no, you don’t need to add your link to Creator Connections campaigns, and skipping it won’t cost you a dime in commissions. But if you’re playing a longer game and want brands to remember your name, submitting is one of the cheapest advantages left on the table.

If you want to do that at scale without spending your evening copying and pasting into campaign forms, that’s the kind of thing Oink handles for you — submitting your content and sending brand follow-ups in the same motion. Check it out here and start turning campaign submissions into actual relationships.

I'm an Amazon Influencer since 2023 and blogger since 2021. My goal is to help you succeed in the Amazon Influencer Program.

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