Amazon & Affiliate Marketing 
The Amazon affiliate cookie lasts 24 hours from the moment someone taps your link. If they buy within those 24 hours you earn a commission, and anything they add to their cart in that window still counts if they order it within 89 days of the tap.
Those hours are easy to lose. Picture a skillet in tonight's Story: a follower taps a plain Amazon link, Amazon's site opens inside Instagram's browser, and they often aren't signed in there, so they close it. Two days later they buy the skillet from memory in the Amazon app, and the sale isn't yours. When the Amazon app is installed, a LinkTwin link opens the product in it with your Associates tag on it, so your follower can buy or add to cart, already signed in, while your 24 hours are still running.
What ends the 24 hours early
Amazon's own name for the 24 hours is a Session. The Commission Income Statement in the Associates Program Policies defines it, and the word cookie shows up only in section 3(e) of the Participation Requirements, the clause about telling your visitors that cookies are in use. The Session starts at the click and ends at whichever of three things happens first:
during a single session, which is measured as beginning when a customer clicks through that Special Link and ending upon the first to occur of the following: (x) 24 hours elapse from that click, (y) the customer places an order for a Product, other than a digital product […], or (z) the customer clicks through a Special Link to an Amazon Site that is not your Special Link
That's section 1(b), and what follows is our reading of it, not legal advice. An order for a physical product closes the window, so items added after it don't count. A Kindle book or another digital product doesn't close it. A tap on another creator's Amazon link does, for everything carted after that tap. A second tap on your own link doesn't stretch the first window: Amazon's help page on cart timing says it "opens a new 24-hour window" from that new click.
The "90-day cookie" you'll hear about is the cart rule. Items carted during the Session can still earn if they're ordered "no later than 89 days after their initial click-through of the Special Link". The help page words it as ordering before the cart expires, "usually after 90 days". The policy counts those days from the tap, not from the day the item went into the cart, and only items carted inside the first 24 hours qualify.
What gets credited after the tap
| After tapping your link, the shopper... | Credited to you? |
|---|---|
| Buys the product you linked within 24 hours | Yes |
| Buys something else on Amazon within those 24 hours | Yes, if it's a qualifying product |
| Carts an item within 24 hours, orders it within 89 days of the tap | Yes |
| Places an order, then adds more items | The order, yes. Items added after it, no |
| Taps another creator's Amazon link, then adds items | No, for items added after that tap |
| Carts in the Amazon app on their phone, pays later on a laptop | Yes, if they were signed in to the same Amazon account when they carted it |
| Looks at the product on their phone, never carts it, buys days later | No |
The last two rows are where the app earns its keep. A cart lives in the shopper's Amazon account, so an item added in the app, where they're signed in, is waiting in the same cart on their laptop. A product they only looked at in a signed-out in-app browser leaves nothing behind for the cart rule to count.
Does the session count in the Amazon app?
Amazon says so for links on your website. Its help page on mobile apps says attribution to your ID "will be preserved" when Amazon links on your website open in the Amazon Shopping app, and that app purchases earn "under the same commission structure". The page doesn't mention social apps, and the order or the add to cart still has to happen inside the 24 hours.
So the app doesn't add hours, and it doesn't change how Amazon credits a sale. What it changes is where your follower is when the clock starts: in the Amazon app, signed in, one step from Buy Now or Add to Cart, instead of a sign-in form inside Instagram. LinkTwin's Amazon links open the app from Instagram and Threads, and if the app isn't installed, the follower gets the product's web page with your tag still on it.
Put the tap where the 24 hours can be used
- Save your Associates tag in Amazon Settings, once for each Amazon store you've joined. LinkTwin then adds your tag to every Amazon link you shorten. If some URLs already carry another tracking ID, turn on "Keep tags already on a link" so your saved tag fills in only where a link has none.
- Leave Auto-Geolocation on if your followers live in more than one country. Each shopper goes to their own country's Amazon store, one of 23, with the tag you saved for that store.
- Paste the Amazon URL into LinkTwin. A product page, another store such as amazon.co.uk, or an amzn.to link all work. Copy the short link, something like
linktw.in/skillet. - Post it with the word Amazon next to it and your disclosure beside it. For TikTok, turn on "Optimize Links For TikTok" in Link Settings first, because TikTok keeps links inside TikTok until the viewer leaves through its menu.
- Tap it yourself from the app where you posted it, on a phone that has Amazon, and check that it lands on the product.
Add a + to the end of your short link (linktw.in/skillet+) to open its click report: clicks over time, country, device and referrer. LinkTwin counts clicks, not sales, so read that report next to your Associates earnings.
More Amazon affiliate guides
Everything else about earning with Amazon links has its own guide.
| Your question | Guide |
|---|---|
| How do I get more people to tap my Amazon links? | More clicks on Amazon affiliate links |
| How do Amazon Associates work for a YouTube channel? | Amazon Associates for YouTubers |
| My followers live in different countries. Which store do they land in? | Amazon links for international audiences |
| Which video or post sent the click? | Tracking affiliate clicks per video |
| What should my bio page look like for Amazon picks? | Link in bio for Amazon influencers |
| What do I write next to the link? | Affiliate disclosure for creators |
| Are my links ready for a big sale? | Black Friday affiliate link checklist |
Common questions
Do amzn.to links open the Amazon app from Instagram?
Not by themselves. An amzn.to address is an ordinary web link, so Instagram opens it in its own browser like any other URL. Paste the amzn.to link into LinkTwin and post the short link instead, and the tap opens the Amazon app with your tag.