Amazon Associates Germany Guide: Account Setup, Amazon OneLink, Taxes, & More
- February 22, 2024
Amazon Associates Germany, also known as PartnerNet, is a branch of the Amazon Associates program for the Germany storefront.
While the Germany storefront has been around since 1998, it appears the affiliate program was founded around 2008, according to the WaybackMachine.
The program provides a way for Amazon Associates to earn money promoting products on Amazon’s Germany storefront.
In this article, we’ll give an overview of:
- How to join the program
- Best practices for Amazon Associates Germany link generation
- Amazon Associates Germany commission rates, taxes, and payout methods
- How to identify an Amazon Associates Germany link
Amazon Germany Signup Process
The signup and login for the Amazon.de affiliate program can be found at https://partnernet.amazon.de/.
A quick side note is that the Amazon Germany Associates Central dashboard (and signup process) is all in German. Browsers with a built-in translation service are a game-changer for those that don’t speak German, yet still want to sign up and earn.
Amazon Associates Germany is available for anyone to join, however affiliates will only be approved if they send three qualifying sales within an 180 day period. If an affiliate can not meet these requirements, their application will expire and they can reapply.
How to Generate Links for Amazon Associates Germany
In order to generate links for Amazon Associates Germany, you’ll want to be signed into the Amazon Germany site, and navigate to the SiteStripe at the top.
From here, you can generate an affiliate link for a product listed on Amazon Germany.
However, most Amazon Associates do not generate links for specific countries as they have an international audience.
What Amazon Associates should do is generate affiliate links for their largest audience (which is typically going to be Amazon USA), and then leverage a localization solution to direct their audience to the right Amazon Storefront for them.
By having one Amazon link that can serve all of the different international storefronts, creators can give consumers the ideal shopping experience. There are two main ways creators accomplish this, and we’ll jump into both below.
Localization Solutions
The two main Amazon Associates localization solutions that affiliates use are Geniuslink and Amazon OneLink.
Amazon OneLink
Amazon OneLink is a free tool run and created by the Amazon Associates team, however it has many drawbacks that make it not optimal for affiliates that are serious about maximizing their commissions.
Poor Matching Algorithm: Amazon OneLink is that it has a very poor matching algorithm. The whole point of using a link localization tool is to get your international visitors to the right product in their local Amazon storefront so they can easily buy it.
Doing this well can significantly increase your total commissions without any increase in your traffic, but using a sub-par service with low accuracy can actually drastically lower your commissions.
In our testing, we found that Amazon OneLink has around a 131% worse matching algorithm than Geniuslink.
Localizes to Search Pages: more often than not (57%) of the time, Amazon OneLink is unable to send international traffic to the correct product, and therefore sends consumers to a search page which converts much lower than direct product pages. As we’ll cover later in this article, this is extremely bad for the European affiliate programs, as they pay out a drastically lower commission rate if consumers are sent to a search page vs a direct product page.
One Way Matching: Essentially, if you generate an Amazon Germany affiliate link, OneLink will be able to direct American readers back to the USA storefront, but not to any others, leaving commissions on the table.
If you’d still like to move forward with Amazon OneLink, we’ll include a guide to set it up, followed by a Geniuslink setup guide.
Geniuslink
The most successful Amazon Affiliate marketers use Geniuslink to localize their affiliate links.
Geniuslink is a third-party Amazon compliant tool that integrates heavily with the Amazon Associates program.
We use a patented five-step link translation algorithm in order to ensure consumers are taken to the correct product on Amazon no matter where they live in the world.
If you’d like to learn more about Geniuslink vs Amazon OneLink, we have a case study for you to read.
Amazon Germany Commission Rates
Amazon Associates Germany has respectable commission rates ranging between 3% and 20% depending on the category.
Unlike the US affiliate program, Amazon Associates Germany’s commissions fluctuate depending on sales volume, and whether the sale is considered direct or indirect.
We have an entire article on indirect vs direct qualifying sales, but the general premise is that traffic sent directly to a product through an affiliate link are considered direct sales, and qualify for the much higher commission bracket.
Amazon Associates Germany Payment Terms
Amazon Associates Germany accepts the following as payment methods:
- Direct Deposit (€25 minimum payout)
- Amazon.de Gift Certificate (€25 minimum payout)
- Payment by Check (€50 minimum payout)
Lastly, Amazon pays out affiliates on a net-60 schedule, meaning that 60 days after the month ends, you’ll receive payment for that month. So let’s say you make a sale on January 1st, you’d need to wait until 60 days after January 1st to receive payment.
Even though the program operates in Germany, nearly all bank accounts are supported as long they are denominated in $USD or €EUR.
Amazon Associates Germany Tax Compliance
The Amazon Associates requires affiliates to enter their tax information for each program that they join, however 11 of the 12 countries that have international affiliate programs for Amazon have US income tax treaties which prevent double-taxation.
Germany is one of those countries, so affiliates will not have any of their commissions deducted from Amazon PartnerNet itself.
This is a general discussion of tax reporting rules and not tax advice for any specific individual or business. We strongly encourage you to find and engage with a tax professional for advice regarding your specific situation. The tax impact of non-US source commission income depends on your whole picture: other income, filing status, business structure, etc.
How To Identify An Amazon.de Affiliate Link
In order to identify an Amazon Associates Germany tag iu the same format as Amazon affiliate programs across Europe and the Middle East with the key of “tag=” followed by a string of characters that end with “-21”.
For example geniuslink0d-21.
https://www.amazondel/gp/product/0804139024/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?tag=geniuslink0d-21
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