How does YouTube Shopping affiliate work in Germany, and who can join?

According to the YouTube Blog post of 3 September 2026, YouTube started rolling out the Shopping affiliate programme in Germany that day. The idea: you show a product, tag it in YouTube Studio, and your community can tap it while watching and buy it in the shop. If the purchase goes through, you can earn a commission. YouTube names these ten launch partners:

• OTTO
• MediaMarktSaturn
• Kaufland
• ABOUT YOU
• Shop-Apotheke
• Tchibo
• Bonprix
• Home24
• Thalia
• XXXLutz

On 22 October 2026 Germany is still missing from the programme’s help page: it is “currently available for eligible creators of” 14 countries, from Argentina to Vietnam. So the blog and the help page contradict each other, and neither says when channels in Germany will be able to sign up.

The help page lists the minimum requirements below. They are not a promise: the page talks about being invited to the programme. It also links an interest form and says filling it in does not guarantee an invitation.

• Your channel is in the YouTube Partner Program (YPP) and meets its subscriber threshold.
• You are based in one of the programme countries (help page as of 22 October 2026: 14 countries, Germany not among them).
• Your channel is not a music channel or an Official Artist Channel and is not associated with music partners such as labels, distributors or publishers.
• Your channel audience is not set as made for kids, and only a few of your videos use that setting.

According to YouTube Help, sign-up and tagging both happen in YouTube Studio. Participating brands and shops set their own commission rate for each product, and YouTube shows it on every offer. You are paid the rate on the day of the purchase, not the rate on the day you tagged the product.

YouTube Help says that, for now, 100% of the commission from participating sellers goes to creators as a temporary incentive. Rates may drop later, and YouTube will give at least 30 days’ notice before the incentive ends.

1. Sign in to YouTube Studio and select “Earn” in the left menu.
2. Under “Programs”, click “Join Now”, then read and accept the programme’s terms of service.
3. Upload a video or a Short and, on the “Details” page, click “Products” in the video description.
4. Search for the product you show and add it. You can tag up to 60 products per video.
5. Mention every tagged product in the video, the title or the description. That is what the tagging guidelines ask for, and YouTube may remove tags that don’t meet them.
6. For long-form videos of at least one minute, add timestamps so the tag appears when the product is on screen. This only works on a computer.

• Auto-tagging: once you switch it on, an AI model reads your title, description and captions and tags matching products for you, though according to YouTube Help not in videos that already have active tags. It also turns links to participating sellers in your description into tags. Availability varies by region. Check the results, mistakes can happen.
• With auto-tagging on, if the original tags on a video expire or the products go out of stock, YouTube may replace them with other products and notify you in YouTube Studio. The replacement product’s commission rate then applies.
• If someone clicks your tag and then buys other products from the same seller, YouTube Help says you may earn a commission on those too.

Say you show a floor lamp and a rug in a long-form room tour. You find the lamp from a participating shop through the search in YouTube Studio and tag it, with a timestamp where it is on screen. The rug isn’t there, so according to YouTube Help you can’t tag it for now. For the rug, a link in the description or your channel links is what’s left.

• If the search in YouTube Studio shows no products from a brand or shop, YouTube Help says their products can’t be tagged at the moment.
• If your video has a copyright claim or is limited or ineligible for monetisation, YouTube Help says you can’t add a tag.
• YouTube Help says Shorts with a product sticker need an eligible shopping sound. Otherwise you remove all sounds or the sticker.
• For viewers in the EEA, particularly in Germany according to YouTube Help, YouTube evaluates automated safeguards, including possible visibility filtering for users under 18. If part of your audience is under 18, those viewers may not see your tags.
• If you repeatedly add tags that don’t meet the guidelines, YouTube Help says your channel may lose access to the programme.

The biggest practical difference: programme links only work on YouTube. According to YouTube Help, routing traffic from outside YouTube to sellers through your YouTube affiliate links breaches the terms of service, and YouTube may suspend your affiliate features. For Instagram, TikTok or a newsletter you need your own links.

The German media regulators’ guide (die Medienanstalten, as of May 2025) explicitly includes tags: if you point to a commercial offer out of commercial interest, tags included, you have to label it as advertising. The duty follows from § 5a(4) UWG and § 6(1) DDG, among other rules, and for videos, at least on YouTube, the guide says the advertising rules for broadcasting also apply. A programme tag earns you commission, and YouTube Help itself calls these links affiliate links. For affiliate links, the guide says an asterisk plus an explanatory sentence right next to the link is enough. The guide doesn’t say how this works for a tag, which can’t carry an asterisk.

If a brand pays you for the video, YouTube also requires you to tick the paid promotion box in the video details. For the tags themselves, a note that carries the guide’s explanation over could read like the example below. The guide doesn’t say if that is enough in a given case.

Werbung (ad): The tagged products are affiliate links. If you buy through them, I earn a commission.

A tag only works if a participating shop carries the product, and it only works on YouTube. For everything else, like the rug from the room tour above, you paste the product link into wyrld or pick the product from the catalogue. wyrld identifies the brand, name and variant, looks for the same item across more than 90,000 partner shops, including Amazon, and automatically creates the affiliate link for every offer it finds. You don’t sign up with any network yourself.

If wyrld finds the product at several shops, your community sees the offers with prices side by side and buys directly from the shop, at no extra cost. The cheapest new offer is marked “Best price”. According to Bitkom (2022), 65% of online shoppers in Germany say the lowest price is a decisive factor when choosing a shop. Put the storefront link in your channel links and in the description of your long-form videos, where it is clickable once your channel has access to advanced features. You can put the same link in your Instagram or TikTok bio.

Depending on the shop, you earn per click, per sale or both, settled at the start of the following month with a Gutschrift (self-billing credit note). Through wyrld Boost, brands also pay for campaigns that run across many creators, based on KPIs agreed in advance; you decide for yourself if you take part. If you work with an agency, it gets its own dashboard on wyrld, works on your storefront with you and sees the same numbers. Any commission share you agree on is deducted from your earnings, and you each receive your own credit note. The wyrld creator terms require no exclusivity, so on wyrld’s side you can keep using product tags and your existing programmes. wyrld is free for creators, and the terms set no follower minimum.