YouTube creators can now sell AliExpress products. Here’s how to make yours the one they pick

What happened

On October 20, AliExpress and YouTube announced a global affiliate partnership. Creators in YouTube’s Shopping affiliate program can now find AliExpress products inside YouTube Studio, tag them in long videos, Shorts and livestreams, and earn a commission when a viewer clicks through and buys. The partnership started in South Korea in March 2026 and is expanding to the United States, Brazil, the United Kingdom and Germany, with more countries to follow as YouTube’s program opens in them. AliExpress says creators can choose products using its data on bestsellers and trending items, in categories like electronics, sports and outdoor, and home.

Social Media Today covered the deal the same day. The announcement speaks only to creators and says nothing about other sellers.

What it means for you

If you sell a physical product, the shelf that creators shop from just got a very large and very cheap neighbor. A creator filming a Short about desk setups can now tag a cable organizer from AliExpress with the same few taps they would use to tag yours, and AliExpress will even point out which items are selling well this week.

Competing on price there is a losing game for most young brands, and I don’t think it’s the game creators are playing anyway. A creator’s reputation rides on what they recommend. When a cheap product breaks, the angry comments land under their video, while the factory never hears about it. That gives a founder an opening: be the product a creator is proud to tag.

Getting on the shelf is the harder part for many founders. Google’s Merchant Center help page says the merchant side of the program is open to US stores on Shopify’s Advanced or Plus plans with the Google & YouTube app installed, and that most third-party feed providers aren’t eligible yet. Google adds that it is working on expanding eligibility. If you qualify, you set one default commission rate for all creators in the program, you pay only when a creator drives a purchase, and checkout stays on your own website.

That last detail is where I’d spend the energy. Every tagged video sends a viewer to your product page, and the page has to finish the job the creator started. A creator can make someone curious in 30 seconds. Your page has to make them sure, and it has to do that on a phone, for a visitor who has never heard of you and arrived halfway through their evening scroll.

What to do this week

1. Check whether you qualify. If you run a US Shopify store on Advanced or Plus, install Google’s free app for Shopify and look for the YouTube Shopping affiliate program card under sales channels. If you don’t qualify yet, the steps below still help with any creator deal.
2. Pick your commission with real numbers. You pay only on completed sales, so compare the rate with what you already spend to win a customer through ads.
3. Write the one-line reason to pick you, in words a creator could say out loud: what the product does, who it’s for and why it outlasts the cheap version.
4. Give creators material to work with: clear product photos on a plain background, a short clip of the product in use, and honest specs. The easier you are to show, the more often you get shown.
5. Open your product page on your phone and read it as a stranger arriving from a Short. Put the price, the main benefit and the buy button on the first screen, and move the reviews higher.

A product page that turns a creator’s mention into a sale is the kind of website work we do every week.