Notes on adding Amazon Associates links in 2025 after about five years away

• Japan's Act against Unjustifiable Premiums and Misleading Representations, stealth-marketing rules, and external-transmission regulations have borderline cases even for personal blogs. Seek current guidance from public authorities, Amazon, and qualified professionals rather than relying on this article for legal decisions. These are my notes from the time.
• Putting a PR label at the start of an article was a cautious operational example in 2025, not an exhaustive list of legal requirements.

I started blogging around 2010, although that was on a different blog.

Back then, there was NAVER Matome, Twitter, Hatena Bookmark and its traffic surges, RSS, and so on.

It was also before Ikehaya, Hayato Ikeda, went over to the dark side. I had a positive impression of him as a blogger and writer, including his book We Can Live Freely on ¥1.5 Million a Year.

We Can Live Freely on ¥1.5 Million a Year

View We Can Live Freely on ¥1.5 Million a Year (Seikaisha Shinsho 26, Japanese edition) on Amazon (Ad)

There was Gunosy too. I remember a news app arriving with what seemed like AI-based personalization, promising news tailored to individual interests. I thought it might be just the service I wanted, but before I knew it, it had become opinionated curation and advertising. I was disappointed. I do not know what it is like now. My old blog, started around 2010, reached its traffic peak around 2018. It had roughly 200,000 to 300,000 monthly page views and earned a fair amount in affiliate income as a side activity. Work got busy and I stopped updating it. Traffic then seemed to halve after one year and fall to a quarter after two. Once you stop updating a blog, it is easy to keep not updating it. Traffic falls, motivation follows, and many blogs close. It is a hassle, really. I started posting here on Riragon little by little around last year. It is still a small operation. Amazon Associates payments still arrive from the old site, so I logged in after a long break and thought about reviving affiliate links here too. I looked into the program for the first time in about five years.

What changed in Amazon Associates over those five years

The main surprises were removal of the ¥1,000 commission cap per product, the introduction of stealth-marketing regulations under Japan's advertising law, and the need to consider external-transmission rules under the amended Telecommunications Business Act. Product commissions still seemed low, around 2–3%. But without the ¥1,000 cap, recommending a laptop costing over ¥100,000 might earn about ¥2,000, which sounded reasonably worthwhile. With those changes, there were several points to consider when starting Amazon Associates in 2025.

First, the qualifying-purchases statement

Amazon Associates' operating agreement requires a clear, conspicuous statement on the site. The Japanese wording says, in translation: "As an Amazon Associate, [insert your name] earns from qualifying purchases."

https://affiliate.amazon.co.jp/help/node/topic/GPXFHVYZMTGPUMPE

An Ad/PR disclosure on each article also seemed necessary under the stealth-marketing rules.

However, reading closely, I found wording saying that only businesses are subject to the Act against Unjustifiable Premiums and Misleading Representations.

It also says third parties, such as influencers asked by a business to advertise or promote something, are not themselves subject to the regulation.

That makes you wonder whether you need to write a disclosure at all.

https://www.caa.go.jp/policies/policy/representation/fair_labeling/stealth_marketi

The need to identify advertising and the question of who receives an administrative penalty for a violation—the advertiser, as the business—seem to be separate issues.

Putting a PR label at the start of each article

The cautious approach, then, would be to put a PR label at the beginning of the article.

My understanding was that this meant displaying Amazon's qualifying-purchases statement under its operating agreement, together with an Ad/PR label for each article under the stealth-marketing rules.

A stricter reading would also point to Article 4, the associate's warranties, in the operating agreement: it requires compliance with applicable laws, supporting the need for an Ad/PR disclosure.

https://affiliate.amazon.co.jp/help/operating/agreement/

Finally, disclosures under the amended Telecommunications Business Act

The quickest way to understand Amazon's position on external-transmission regulations is to read its explanation.

https://affiliate.amazon.co.jp/help/node/topic/GREND2BKKE3NKP4C

It says Amazon is not in a position to comment on whether a particular associate site falls under the external-transmission rules or on the specific measures an associate should take. There is also wording saying that operating a website to share information and earning only enough from a small number of ads to cover operating costs is outside the scope. External-transmission regulations, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications official site:

https://www.soumu.go.jp/main_sosiki/joho_tsusin/d_syohi/gaibusoushin_kiritsu.html

My impression was essentially: understand the context and please do not ask us to decide for you. If you create a notice page, the following was given as an example of what to publish.

• External-transmission program: Amazon Associates Program
• Recipient company: Amazon Japan G.K.
• Associate partner's purposes: analyzing browsing tendencies and history, and analyzing advertising effectiveness
• Information transmitted: information about content viewed
• Recipient's purposes: displaying advertising information for its own promotion and monitoring websites and apps