Doozly
Three things are true of amazon.in that are true of almost no other Amazon marketplace, and each of them quietly costs publishers money.
Amazon’s own link router cannot reach it. Its commission rates are the only major ones you cannot read without logging in. And you cannot tell an Indian tracking ID from a German one by looking at it — which breaks the one check everybody recommends.
It is a separate programme, with a tag of its own
Worth stating plainly, because it is the assumption that breaks everything downstream: an Associates account on amazon.com does not work on amazon.in. Put a United States tag on an amazon.in link and the purchase completes, the customer is happy, and you earn nothing at all. Not a lower rate — nothing.
Everything about the second programme starts again from zero:
| amazon.com | amazon.in | |
|---|---|---|
| Application | One | A second one, judged on its own |
| Tracking ID | yourname-20 | yourname-21, unrelated to the first |
| The 180-day probation | Runs once | Starts again from your sign-up date |
| Commission rates | Published openly | Behind the login |
| Payment threshold and method | Set by that programme | Set separately, in rupees |
| Reached by Amazon OneLink | Yes | No |
You sign up at affiliate-program.amazon.in. Where those tracking IDs come from.
The suffix will not tell you which store a tag belongs to
Every Associates programme appends two digits to your tracking ID, and the standard advice everywhere — including in our own tools — is to read those digits to check a tag is filed under the right store. For most of the world that works. For India it does not.
India shares -21 with fourteen other programmes — the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Poland, Türkiye, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Singapore. So coffeegear-21 is not identifiably Indian, German or Swedish. It is simply not American, Canadian, Mexican, Brazilian, Japanese or Australian.
What that means in practice. A German tag pasted into an Indian link looks completely correct and earns nothing. Our own link builder flags a -20 or -22 in the Indian row, and it cannot flag a European -21, because nothing in the tag distinguishes them. Neither can you, and neither can Amazon’s interface.
The only reliable check is to open Associates Central for that country and read the tracking ID there. If you manage several programmes, giving each ID a distinguishing name at sign-up — coffeegear-in-21 rather than coffeegear-21 — costs nothing and removes the ambiguity permanently.
OneLink does not reach amazon.in
This is the part that surprises people who thought Amazon had solved international routing for them. OneLink covers fourteen of Amazon’s twenty-two Associates marketplaces, and India is not one of them. Amazon’s own tool cannot deliver an Indian reader to the Indian store.
The other seven are worth noting too, because between them they cover Latin America, the Gulf, Türkiye and Ireland. But India is the one with the traffic.
Which costs money in both directions
The gap does not only hurt publishers outside India. It runs both ways, and the second direction is the one Indian publishers rarely see, because their traffic looks domestic in aggregate.
If you publish outside India: your Indian readers follow a link tagged for amazon.com, land on the American store, meet a dollar price and international shipping, and leave. Most then buy the same thing on amazon.in, where you have no tag. Nothing about this appears as a problem — it appears as clicks that did not convert, which reads like a bad recommendation rather than a routing failure. For an English-language site, India is very often the largest single country outside the home market. Work out what share of your readers it is.
If you publish from India: English-language Indian sites routinely draw a large minority of readers from the United States, the Gulf, the United Kingdom and south-east Asia. Every one of those is a reader your -21 tag earns nothing from — and unlike the first case, you cannot even blame the shipping, because those readers had a perfectly good local store you never sent them to.
Either way the fix is the same and Amazon does not provide it: hold a tag per marketplace and send each reader to the store that serves them. Where OneLink stops, in full.
The rate card you cannot read
Amazon.com publishes its Standard Commission Income Statement openly: anyone can read the table, and we quote it in full on the commission rates page. India does not work that way. The Indian rate card sits behind the Associates login — requesting it redirects to a sign-in page, and the public policy pages carry no figures at all.
Which is why the numbers you find are unreliable. Looking for Indian rates on a single afternoon produced “on average about 6 % to 8 %”, “as low as 1 % on electronics to as high as 9 % on fashion”, and several flat lists agreeing with neither. None could cite the source, because the source is not open.
We are not going to add a fourth version. Read your own: sign in at affiliate-program.amazon.in and open the rate card in your account. It takes a minute and it is the only figure that applies to you. Checked August 20, 2026.
One thing carries across from the American table regardless, and it is the part that changes plans: commission is the rate multiplied by the order value, and order value moves far more than the rate does. A 3 % category with expensive baskets beats a 9 % category with cheap ones, in any currency. Choosing a niche by its percentage is optimising the smaller variable.
Which countries amazon.in actually serves
India is not only India. In the routing table our tools run on, amazon.in is the nearest Amazon storefront for six countries — five of which have no Amazon store of their own:
| Reader in | Has its own Amazon store? | Lands on |
|---|---|---|
| India | Yes | amazon.in |
| Bangladesh | No | amazon.in |
| Bhutan | No | amazon.in |
| Nepal | No | amazon.in |
| Pakistan | No | amazon.in |
| Sri Lanka | No | amazon.in |
A reader in Dhaka or Colombo is an amazon.in customer whether or not anybody planned for that, and one Indian tracking ID covers all six. That makes the Indian programme better value than its own market suggests. The full country-to-store table, and the builder that attaches the right tag to each store.
The 180-day clock runs here too
Every national programme starts its own probation. Joining Amazon Associates India gives you a working tracking ID immediately, and then Amazon waits: three qualifying sales within 180 days, or the application is withdrawn. It does not matter that your American account has been approved for years — the Indian one is judged on its own record. How that rule works, in Amazon’s wording.
Which is an argument for joining when you already have Indian traffic rather than joining first and hoping. The clock starts at sign-up, not at readiness — and a failed application costs you the tracking ID and any unpaid commission below the threshold.
Common questions
Does my Amazon.com affiliate tag work on Amazon.in?
No. Amazon runs a separate Associates programme for each country, each with its own application and its own tracking ID. A purchase made on amazon.in through a tag issued by another programme earns nothing at all — not a reduced commission. You need an Indian tracking ID, which ends in -21.
Does Amazon OneLink work with amazon.in?
No. OneLink covers fourteen of the twenty-two Associates marketplaces and India is not among them, alongside Mexico, Brazil, Ireland, Belgium, Türkiye, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. Amazon’s own redirect cannot send a reader to the Indian store, so routing Indian traffic needs something that holds a tag per marketplace.
How do I tell whether a tracking ID is Indian?
Not from the tag itself. India shares the -21 ending with fourteen other programmes, including the United Kingdom, Germany and Singapore, so a European tag in an Indian link looks entirely correct and earns nothing. Open Associates Central for India and read the ID there — or, at sign-up, give each country’s ID a name that says which country it is.
What are the Amazon affiliate commission rates in India?
Amazon does not publish them openly. Unlike the amazon.com fee schedule, the Indian rate card sits behind the Associates login, which is why published figures disagree with each other. Sign in at affiliate-program.amazon.in and read the rate card in your own account — it is the only version that applies to you.
Can I join Amazon Associates India from outside India?
The programme is open on its own terms, and the practical obstacles are payment and tax rather than location — an Indian programme pays into an Indian arrangement. Check the payment options inside the application before assuming it fits, particularly if you have no Indian bank account.
Which countries does amazon.in cover?
Six: India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The other five have no Amazon storefront of their own, so their readers are served by the Indian store, and one Indian tracking ID covers all of them.
Do I have to make three sales in India separately?
Yes. Each national programme runs its own 180-day probation from the day you sign up for it, regardless of how long any other Amazon account of yours has been approved.
Is Amazon Associates worth it in India?
It depends far more on order values than on rates, because commission is the rate multiplied by the basket and baskets vary more than percentages do. The bigger and more avoidable loss for most Indian publishers is the share of their audience reading from outside India, which their -21 tag earns nothing from.
The summary worth keeping: amazon.in is its own programme with its own tag, that tag is indistinguishable from fourteen others, Amazon’s own router cannot reach the store, the rates are not published, and it serves six countries rather than one. The routing is the part worth fixing first — rates you can look up in a minute, but readers sent to the wrong store are gone without ever appearing as a problem.
