Amazon Affiliate Tracking IDs Explained
The short string at the end of every Amazon affiliate link, and why it's worth understanding instead of treating as a black box.
What a tracking ID is
Your tracking ID (also called your Associate ID) is the identifier Amazon uses to credit sales to your account. It appears as the tag= value in every link you build — something like yourname-20.
Why you might want more than one
A single Associates account can create multiple tracking IDs, each tied to the same account but trackable separately. Creators commonly do this to split performance by:
- Platform — one ID for YouTube, another for Instagram, another for a newsletter, to see which channel actually drives sales
- Site or project, if you run more than one
- Content type — reviews vs. casual mentions, for instance
Since each ID reports separately in Associates Central, this gives you a clean performance breakdown without needing a separate analytics tool just to split traffic sources (though pairing it with UTM-tagged links in your own link tool gives you a faster, more granular view — see tracking affiliate clicks).
How this relates to multi-marketplace tags
A tracking ID is specific to one marketplace — your US tag only works on amazon.com. Operating across marketplaces means having a separate, separately-registered tag for each one (amazon.ca, amazon.co.uk, and so on), not multiple IDs within a single marketplace. Creating Amazon affiliate links for multiple countries covers the registration side of this.
Finding your tracking ID
It's visible in Associates Central under Account Settings, and it's also embedded in any link SiteStripe generates for you while you're logged in and browsing Amazon.
A practical habit
Decide on a tracking ID naming/splitting strategy before you have fifty links to retroactively organize — even a simple platform-based split (one ID per major channel) pays off the first time you want to know which platform is actually driving sales.