Affiliate marketing is probably the most effective way to generate income from your Squarespace website. By recommending products or services on your website, you can earn a commission each time someone makes a purchase using your link.

I’ll be sharing everything I know about affiliate marketing on Squarespace, including my favorite ways to add affiliate links to your Squarespace website (yes, there are multiple ways!) and practices I believe everyone should follow when it comes to affiliate marketing.

Can you do affiliate marketing on Squarespace?

Yes, you absolutely can! I’ve been doing affiliate marketing on Squarespace for 5+ years now, and in that time have earned thousands from affiliate marketing. It’s my most consistent source of income—more so than client projects, and I find it to be very gratifying too!

Whether you run a blog, shop, resource website or even a service-based business (that’s me!) you can earn money from affiliate marketing. That said, there are some technical aspects to consider, especially if you are using Squarespace as your platform.

Why is Squarespace different?

Affiliate marketing on Squarespace isn't inherently more difficult than other platforms—it just requires a bit of knowledge around linking best practices.

While Squarespace is an incredibly easy-to-use website platform, it lacks one very important feature when it comes to affiliate marketing: the ability to mark links as sponsored.

What is a sponsored link?

When you add a link to your website, Google gives the website you’ve linked to a little bit of a boost. Websites that are linked to from a lot of different sources are naturally assumed to be very authoritative and important.

When you add an affiliate link on Squarespace, you’re telling Google, “hey, this is a really great website!” And that might be true. But doing that a dozen times in a dozen articles looks a little…spammy.

Marking the link as sponsored helps Google understand that you’re not being spammy—you’re just adding “advertisements or paid links” to your website.

How a sponsored link appears in website HTML

Google has in-depth guidance and documentation around spam policies on their website. You can read more about Google’s link spam update in 2021, and view their current stance on paid links.

How to Add Affiliate Links on Squarespace

There are two ways you can add affiliate links on Squarespace, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. The most important thing here is that both methods will mark your affiliate link as sponsored.

Use a Markdown Block (Free)

The free method of adding affiliate links on Squarespace (while ensuring they’re marked as sponsored) is by using a markdown block. The downside is that it’s time-consuming and honestly a little awkward.

Add a Markdown Block

Each time you want to add an affiliate link to Squarespace, you’ll need to add a markdown block and format the code correctly.

In the Home Menu, click Website > Pages.
Click on your Blog, select the relevant post and click Edit.
Hover between text blocks and click the Plus Icon.
Click Markdown to add a markdown block to the page.
Copy and paste the following code into the markdown block.
You can keep the link wrapped in a sentence or paragraph by adding the text either side.
Change http://affiliatelink.com/ to your own affiliate link.
The link is marked as sponsored with rel=”sponsored”. Don’t change this.
The link is set to open in a new tab with target="_blank". This is best practice for external links.
Change here's the link text to the part of the sentence that you want to link.

Your text can start here and then <a href="http://affiliatelink.com/" rel="sponsored" target="_blank">here's the link text</a> and then you can finish the text here.

How to add a markdown block for affiliate marketing on Squarespace

Style the Link with Custom CSS

Any links created in a markdown block will match the color of your text, but they’ll be missing the underline. This custom CSS will bring back the underline so that it matches any other links on your blog posts.

In the Home Menu, click Website and scroll down to the bottom.
Click Website Tools > Custom CSS.
Copy and paste the following CSS into the box:

.sqs-block-markdown p a {
  text-decoration-line: underline;
  text-decoration-style: solid;
  text-decoration-color: currentColor;
  text-decoration-thickness: 1px;
  text-underline-offset: .2em;
}

Where to paste Custom CSS to style affiliate links on Squarespace

Use Will Myer’s Affiliate Link Genie (Paid)

If you want a simple and practical solution, I highly recommend using Will Myer’s Affiliate Link Genie plugin. It’s a Squarespace affiliate plugin built specifically for content creators.

Once installed, this plugin allows you to use the normal link editor to add affiliate links. Simply add #rel=sponsored to the end of the link, and the plugin will do the rest!

How to use a Squarespace affiliate plugin to add sponsored links

It’s super easy to use, and means that you’ll be able to add affiliate links to other items too, like buttons and images. Best of all, if you need to mark a lot of links as sponsored, the process is a hundred times faster. Trust me, I’ve been there!

Disclose Your Affiliate Links on Squarespace

If you’re affiliate marketing on Squarespace, you’ll also need to disclose the use of affiliate links on your post—it’s a legal requirement.

In the US, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) provides specific guidelines for these disclosures. In the UK, consumer protection laws and the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) outline similar requirements.

Either way, this is a short piece of text that you’ll need to add to the top of every blog post that includes an affiliate link. You can do this manually by typing it out at the top of each post, adding it to your blog post template, or you can use the following solution to add a disclosure to every post.

How an affiliate disclosure appears above blog post content

Add an Automatic Affiliate Disclosure

In the Home Menu, click Website and scroll down to the bottom.
Click Website Tools > Code Injection.
Copy and paste the following Javascript into the Footer box.
Change Here’s your affiliate disclosure. to the message you’d like to display.

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.7.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script>
$(document).ready(function () { 
  $("<p class='disclaimer'>Here's your affiliate disclosure.</p>").insertBefore(".blog-item-content");
});
</script>

If you need a little help writing your affiliate disclosure, you’re welcome to use one of the following lines:

This post contains affiliate links, which means I may earn a commission if you make a purchase through one of my links. There is no additional cost to you.
Heads up! Some links in this post are affiliate links, meaning I may earn a small commission if you buy something. It won’t cost you anything, and I only share products I truly recommend.
For transparency, this article includes affiliate links. Should you choose to purchase through one, I may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. I appreciate your support.

In Summary

Affiliate marketing on Squarespace is one of the most straightforward ways to monetize your content. As long as you keep in mind SEO best practices and legal requirements, you can start seeing results with even a small amount of website traffic.

Always remember to disclose your affiliate links, mark them as sponsored, and only promote products and services that you genuinely love.

Affiliate Marketing on Squarespace: Tips & Tools