Are you participating in the YouTube Affiliate Program and want to get a clearer picture of your earnings? This article will guide you through tracking your affiliate performance directly from YouTube Analytics. Learn how to understand key metrics to optimize your affiliate marketing strategy and increase your earnings.
Check your affiliate metrics
You can access your affiliate metrics in YouTube Studio.
YouTube Studio Analytics provides real-time visibility into your estimated performance and earnings, but AdSense is the source of truth for your finalized, bank-account-level payouts. Differences between the two can occur due to processing cycles, merchant validation, and return periods.
- Sign in to YouTube Studio.
- On the left, select the Analytics tab.
- Click Revenue.
- Click Affiliate tab.
You can view your affiliate metrics by:
- On the left, go to the Earn tab.
- Click Shopping.
- Under the “How you’re doing” section, select See more.
This page shows an overview of your channel’s monthly metrics in analytics cards for your monthly revenue, sales, and more.
Key metrics explained
- Estimated Revenue:
- This is the estimated revenue you've earned from qualifying affiliate sales within the observed time period. Note that this is an estimate and pending final approval. Estimated revenue amount is subject to change due to returns and cancellations.
- This metric gives you a general sense of how much money your affiliate efforts are generating.
- Total Sales:
- This is the total number of sales attributed to your affiliate links.
- This metric helps you understand how effectively you're converting clicks into actual purchases.
- Orders:
- This is the total number of orders attributed to your affiliate links. An order may contain multiple items.
- This metric shows how many orders have been made as a result of your shopping tag.
- Product Clicks:
- This is the number of times viewers clicked on your affiliate links.
- This metric indicates the level of interest in the products you're tagging.
- Advanced mode:
- This is an in-depth view of your shopping performance revenue data. This metric helps you better understand your products and identify performance, so you can make more strategic content decisions.
Use Breakdowns in Advanced mode
When viewing your performance in Advanced mode, you can customize the report with more data by adding breakdowns such as products or sellers.
To add the breakdown, select Breakdown on the left side from the dropdown menu and click the Metrics menu, to select the checkboxes for the metrics you want to add, and then click Apply. Not all metrics are available with the breakdown.
Review seller performance
The Seller breakdown card shows how effectively your channel drives business for specific sellers.
- Sign in to the YouTube Studio mobile app.
- Go to the Analytics tab.
- Tap the Revenue tab.
- Tap the Affiliate program card.
- Tap Top sellers.
- Review orders by seller with estimated revenue.
Commissions explained
Understanding how commissions are tracked and finalized is key to finding your earnings from YouTube Affiliate links. Commissions can be reviewed in 2 different stages: Estimated revenue and Earned revenue.
- Estimated revenue: This is an estimate of what you may ultimately earn. It's calculated by taking your total commissions earned from purchases in the selected date range and subtracting the value of any products purchased through your links that have been returned. This gives you a clearer picture of your potential net earnings from recent activity. Keep in mind that the initial purchase might have occurred from a click made even before your selected date range.
- Check estimated revenue: You can check estimated revenue per video in YouTube Studio in the Analytics tab by tapping Top content and selecting the Revenue chip.
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Earned revenue: These are the earnings (commissions and bonuses) that have been reviewed and officially confirmed by the merchant during the selected timeframe. This approval process happens after a merchant lock-in period. The total earned revenue earned within a specific month will then be included in your next payment cycle.
- Merchant lock-in period: This lock-in period is a timeframe (typically 30-90 days) that allows for returns and validation of the sale. The earned revenue you see in a selected period are from purchases that happened before the selected timeframe, due to these typical lock-in periods.
- Note: Validation and return windows are established solely by individual merchant policies. Therefore, the timeline to transition from estimated revenue to earned revenue varies by retailer.
For more information on how commission rates are set and why they change, learn more about how to understand commission rates in the YouTube Shopping Affiliate Program.
How Shopping earnings are processed
Getting clarity on your earnings
To understand your earnings data effectively, remember that there's a typical 2-3 month merchant validation and return period before commissions are finalized as "Approved." Estimated and Approved revenue is always tied to the specific timeframe you've selected in your analytics, reflecting the status earnings had within that period.
For actionable insights into your recent performance, focus on shorter timeframes like the last 7 or 30 days. In contrast, the "Approved" commissions usually reflect sales that occurred 2–3 months prior. Once approved within a calendar month, this balance routes directly to your next payment cycle.
Regularly analyzing your data across different timeframes and looking at product-level performance within those ranges will provide a clearer picture of your earnings trends and help you optimize your strategies.