Doozly
Your preferred Associates Store ID is the name of your Amazon Associates account. Amazon adds a country suffix to whatever you type, and the result becomes the tag= value in every affiliate link you ever build. It identifies you when somebody buys, it is public, and Amazon gives you no way to rename it afterwards.
The question turns up in the middle of the sign-up, on the screen where you list your website. There is a field labelled What is your preferred Associates Store ID?, usually pre-filled with a mangled version of your domain, and no explanation beside it. Most people accept the suggestion, finish the form, and find out months later what they agreed to.
It is worth thirty seconds. Here is the whole of it.
What “preferred Associates Store ID” means
The phrase is Amazon’s own and appears nowhere else in the industry, which is why it reads like it was translated from something. Taken a word at a time it stops being strange:
- Preferred — you choose it rather than being assigned one. The word implies you can express a preference and change your mind later. You cannot: Amazon offers no rename.
- Associates — it belongs to your Associates account, the affiliate one. It has nothing to do with the Amazon account you shop with, and the two can have entirely different names.
- Store ID — the identifier for that account. Amazon calls it a store because the programme was built around publishers running storefronts; you do not need a store, or a shop, or anything resembling one.
So the whole phrase means: the name you would like your affiliate account to have. That is all it is asking. The reason it deserves more than the three seconds most people give it is not the question but the consequence — the answer is permanent and public, and it ends up in every link you publish.
And the asterisk beside it means what asterisks always mean. It is a required field; the form will not continue without an answer. There is no skip, no “decide later”, and no default that Amazon fills in for you if you leave it — the pre-filled suggestion is already an answer, and accepting it counts as choosing.
What Amazon does with your answer
Whatever you type becomes your store ID, and Amazon appends a two-digit suffix belonging to the marketplace you signed up on. Type coffeegear on amazon.com and you get coffeegear-20. From then on it sits in the query string of every link you publish:
When somebody clicks that link, Amazon reads the tag and credits the account it belongs to. No tag, no commission — which is why a dropped or mistyped tag is the most expensive kind of typo in affiliate marketing, and why it is worth knowing exactly what yours is.
The suffix is Amazon’s business, not yours. You never type it, and it differs by marketplace:
| Marketplace | Suffix |
|---|---|
| United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil | -20 |
| United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, India and most European stores | -21 |
| Japan, Australia | -22 |
| Ireland | not published |
Ireland is the odd row. amazon.ie opened on 18 March 2025 with an Associates programme of its own, and Amazon has published no suffix for it anywhere we could find — so the honest entry is a blank rather than the -21 you would guess from its neighbours. It also matters more than a missing digit: a UK tag earns nothing on amazon.ie, so anyone who has been sending Irish readers to amazon.co.uk has been sending them to the wrong store since that date.
Read your own rather than trusting a table: open Associates Central for the country in question, or copy any link you have already built and look at what follows tag=. Our marketplace lookup shows the suffix beside every store, with the countries each one serves.
The format Amazon accepts
Amazon puts no rules beside the field, so people go looking for them, and a good deal of what they find is wrong. The short version:
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Which characters? | Lowercase letters, digits and hyphens |
| Which are rejected? | Spaces, underscores, dots, and punctuation generally |
| Capital letters? | Type it lowercase — that is how it will appear in every URL |
| Does it have to be unique? | Yes, across every Associate. A plain dictionary word is likely gone |
| Is there a length limit? | Amazon publishes none. Short is a URL-hygiene decision, not a rule |
| Do you type the suffix? | No. Amazon appends -20, -21 or -22 itself |
The hyphen is where most guides get it wrong. You will read in several places that the field takes letters and numbers only and that dashes are forbidden. That is not so, and it is easy to show: the tag Amazon hands you is hyphenated by construction — the Operating Agreement describes the required shape as XXXXX-## — and Amazon’s own advice on splitting your reporting by channel produces IDs like fitnesshub-blog-20, fitnesshub-em-20 and fitnesshub-soc-20. Those carry two hyphens before the suffix and are entirely ordinary.
One caveat we would rather state than paper over: Amazon documents the character rules for neither the store ID nor tracking IDs, so the list above is drawn from the shape of tags in the wild rather than from a published specification. If you want zero risk of an argument with a form at sign-up, lowercase letters and digits with no hyphen at all is the subset nobody disputes — you can always create a hyphenated tracking ID afterwards, where the evidence is unambiguous.
Two more things about the field itself. It arrives pre-filled with a mangled version of your domain — dots stripped, sometimes truncated — and that suggestion carries no special standing; overwrite it freely. And whatever you settle on has to be unique across every Associate in that country programme, so the obvious name for your subject was taken years ago.
Preferred Associates Store ID examples
Amazon gives no guidance here at all, which is why people ask for examples more than they ask for a definition. There is no clever answer — there is a boring one that keeps working for ten years, and there are several that quietly cost you something.
| Store ID | Verdict |
|---|---|
thewirefox | Good. Short, it is the site name, and it survives the day the site changes subject. |
mk-outdoors | Good. Initials plus a broad area. Hyphens are allowed and read cleanly. |
benmakes | Good. A personal brand rather than a legal name, and no topic to grow out of. |
bestcheapwintercoats2026 | Poor. Long, dated, and locked to one product category you will abandon. |
johnsmith1987 | Poor. Publishes a real name and a birth year a few thousand times over. |
amazon-bargains | Avoid. Amazon is strict about its marks appearing in names publishers choose for themselves. There is no upside in finding out where the line runs. |
The format is settled above. Everything past it is judgement, and it comes down to four things.
- Short. It appears in every URL you publish. Long ones look like spam in a status bar and get trimmed in link previews.
- Not tied to one topic. The narrower the name, the sooner it embarrasses you.
- It does not have to match your domain. Amazon suggests one based on it, nothing checks the two against each other, and one account can serve several sites.
- Assume it is public. Anyone can read it off your links, and people do.
Store ID or tracking ID?
The two names describe the same kind of thing, which is where most of the confusion comes from. People search for an Amazon affiliate tracking ID and an Amazon Associates store ID meaning the same string. Associate ID is a third name for the same thing — Amazon does not use it, and a good deal of the internet does.
- The store ID is the one you are asked for at sign-up. There is exactly one per account, and it doubles as your default tracking ID.
- Tracking IDs are extra labels you create afterwards, in Associates Central under Account Settings → Manage Your Tracking IDs. Amazon allows far more of them than a normal publisher will ever need.
They all pay into the same account. The difference is reporting: earnings are broken out per tracking ID, so a separate one per site, newsletter or campaign is the only way to find out which of them is actually carrying the others. It costs nothing and takes about a minute, and almost nobody does it early enough.
It is also the escape hatch from a store ID you regret, which we come back to below.
The part that quietly costs money
Amazon Associates is not one programme. It is run separately in each country, under its own Operating Agreement, with its own account and its own store ID — and its own rate card, which is why the same sale is worth different amounts depending on where it lands. Signing up on amazon.com gives you a tag that works on amazon.com. It does nothing on amazon.co.uk, amazon.de or amazon.in.
So the reader in Munich follows your link, lands on the American store, sees the shipping cost and leaves. Or they close the tab, search the product on their own Amazon and buy it there — with no tag attached. The sale happens without you. Nothing shows up in your reports, because from Amazon’s side nothing went wrong.
Two answers exist, and it is worth knowing both before you pick one:
- Amazon’s own. OneLink redirects international visitors and maps your US tracking IDs onto the accounts you have linked. It is free, it covers fourteen marketplaces, and it only touches plain text links. We wrote out the full comparison, including where OneLink is the better choice.
- Doing it yourself. Register in the country programmes that match your readers, then use something that holds a separate tag per marketplace. More setup, and the only way to see and control which tag is used where.
Either way the first step is the same, and it is free: open your analytics and look at where your readers actually are. Most people are surprised, and a good number find that the majority of their audience has never been able to earn them anything.
Can you change it later?
Not directly. Amazon offers no rename button for a store ID, and support will generally say the same. It is the one part of the sign-up you cannot undo by editing a field.
What you can do is create a tracking ID with the name you wanted and use it from now on. New links carry the new one, old links keep earning under the old one, and both report into the same account. The original store ID stays in the account as a label you no longer have to look at. It is not a rename, but from the reader’s side it is indistinguishable from one.
Where do I find my Associates Store ID?
If you already have an account and simply cannot remember what you typed at sign-up, there are four places to read it. The first two work in under a minute; the last two are for the case where you cannot get into the dashboard at all.
1. In Associates Central
Sign in and open the account menu at the top right. The store ID sits under your name, and it is the row that is not an email address. Every tracking ID you have created since lives one level deeper, under Account Settings → Manage Your Tracking IDs, and the first entry in that list is the store ID itself — Amazon treats it as your default tracking ID rather than as something separate.
2. In any link you have already published
Every affiliate link you have ever made carries it. Open one of your own posts, copy the Amazon link, and read what follows tag=:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CXXXXXXX?tag=coffeegear-20&linkCode=ll1
Everything between tag= and the next & — or the end of the address, if there is no & — is the tag. Strip the two-digit suffix and what remains is the store ID you chose. If the link carries a tracking ID you created later rather than the store ID, you will see a different name there; both are valid, and both belong to the same account.
3. In the plugin, if you use one
Anything that builds Amazon links for you has to store the tag somewhere, so a plugin’s settings screen is often the fastest place to read it — and the only place that shows every marketplace at once, if you hold accounts in more than one country. Doozly keeps them under Settings → Affiliate Box, one field per store.
4. In the email Amazon sent when you were approved
The acceptance email names the account. Search your mail for Associates rather than for Amazon, which will return several thousand order confirmations and nothing useful.
Looking for a different country’s ID? Each national programme is a separate account with its own Associates Central and its own store ID. Sign in to that country’s dashboard to read it — the American one will not show you the German one, and support cannot look it up across programmes either. Which store serves which country is worth checking if you are not sure which programmes you need.
Common questions
What is a preferred Associates Store ID?
It is the identifier Amazon asks you to choose during Associates sign-up. Amazon appends a country suffix to it, and the result becomes the tag in your affiliate links, which is how a sale gets credited to you. There is one per account and it doubles as your default tracking ID.
What format does the preferred Associates Store ID have to be in?
Lowercase letters, digits and hyphens, with no spaces, underscores or other punctuation, and it must be unique across every Associate in that country programme. You do not type the country suffix – Amazon appends -20, -21 or -22 itself once the account exists. Amazon publishes no length limit, so keeping it short is a decision about how your URLs read rather than a rule you have to meet.
Can an Amazon Associates Store ID contain a hyphen?
Yes, despite a lot of guidance to the contrary. Every finished tag is hyphenated by construction, because Amazon appends the marketplace suffix after a hyphen, and the Operating Agreement describes the required shape as XXXXX-##. Amazon’s own approach to separating reporting by channel produces tracking IDs such as fitnesshub-blog-20 and fitnesshub-soc-20, which carry two hyphens before the suffix. If you want to avoid any argument with the sign-up form, letters and digits alone are the safest subset, and you can create a hyphenated tracking ID afterwards.
What does the asterisk mean next to “What is your preferred Associates Store ID”?
It marks a required field, the same as anywhere else on a form. You cannot continue the application without answering, and there is no option to decide later. The box is usually pre-filled with a version of your domain, and leaving that suggestion in place counts as your answer — Amazon does not treat it as an empty field.
Where do I find my Amazon Associates Store ID?
In Associates Central under the account menu at the top right, or by reading any affiliate link you have already published: the store ID is what follows tag=, minus the two-digit suffix Amazon adds. If you hold accounts in several countries, each has its own dashboard and its own ID.
What is an Amazon Associates ID?
The same thing as the store ID. Amazon says store ID at sign-up and tracking ID afterwards; associates ID and associate ID are names the rest of the internet uses for the identical string. Whichever term somebody uses, they are asking for something shaped like coffeegear-20.
What does associate ID mean?
In an Amazon context it almost always means the store ID — the name of your Associates account, which becomes the tag= value in your links. Amazon itself does not use the term; it says store ID at sign-up and tracking ID afterwards. All three names point at the same kind of string, so somebody asking for your associate ID is asking for something like coffeegear-20.
Is the Associates Store ID the same as the tracking ID?
The store ID is your account’s default tracking ID, so in a link they look identical. The difference is that you can create further tracking IDs afterwards; you cannot create a second store ID on the same account.
Does my store ID have to match my website name?
No. Amazon pre-fills a suggestion based on the site you enter, but nothing checks the two against each other, and a single Associates account can be used across several sites.
Can I have more than one Associates Store ID?
Not within one account. You can hold a separate account in each country programme, each with its own store ID, and you can create many tracking IDs inside any of those accounts.
What do the numbers at the end of an Amazon affiliate link mean?
That is the marketplace suffix Amazon adds automatically: -20 on the US, Canadian, Mexican and Brazilian stores, -21 on the UK, most European stores and India, -22 on Japan and Australia. Ireland, which got its own store in March 2025, has no published suffix. It tells Amazon which national programme the tag belongs to.
What happens if my link has no tag at all?
The purchase goes through normally and you earn nothing. Amazon has no other way to attribute the sale, and the click will not appear in your reports, so an untagged link fails silently rather than visibly.
The short version: pick something short, lowercase and neutral, keep your legal name out of it, and remember it is valid in exactly one country. Then decide deliberately what should happen to every reader outside that country, because the default is that they earn you nothing.
Doozly asks for the complete tag, suffix included, once per marketplace — so whatever Amazon handed you, you paste it in and never think about the suffix again. If a country has no tag configured, the link falls back to your United States tag rather than dropping the tag altogether, so the click still earns something.
