Adding the Amazon Associates Disclosure to the Luxeritas Footer in Preparation for Review
After registering for Amazon Associates, when 2 qualifying sales occurred on this blog (Nando Kobo), the following message appeared on the management dashboard:
Congratulations. You have achieved 2 qualifying sales. Your account will be reviewed shortly. Approval requires that your Associates site is live and contains affiliate links.
When I first glanced at this wording, I jumped to the conclusion that “account review has started" and prematurely rejoiced. However, when I previously researched Associates review requirements, I vaguely remembered that “sales records of 3 or more items within a certain period are required." Feeling a sense of discomfort, I rechecked the terms and the review flow, discovering that this was not the start of the review, but rather an advance notice stating, “We will proceed to the review after confirming the 3rd sale."
Since this is an advance notice that “the site will proceed to review once the 3rd qualifying sale is confirmed," we need to make sure the site preparations are fully in place for when the 3rd sale is achieved.
Terms Compliance Disclosure Obligations and Global Display for Review Approval
Once the review begins, it is strictly checked whether the site complies with the terms of service. In particular, Article 5 of the Amazon Associates Program Operating Agreement requires participants to clearly and prominently disclose on their site that they are a participant.
You can check the details of the terms in the following official documents:
Amazon Associates Program Operating Agreement
Identity Disclosure on Social Media, etc.
The wording that should be explicitly stated on the site is as follows:
"As an Amazon Associate, [Insert Party's Name] earns from qualifying purchases."
Rather than merely writing it on the static privacy policy page, to ensure reviewers can easily verify it no matter what page they view, I will display it constantly in the footer area shared across all pages this time.
Implementation Goals for This Time
The implementation goals for this time are as follows:
- Reliably display the compliance wording in the footer area of all public pages (100%).
- Maintain the WordPress theme “Luxeritas"'s “automatic copyright year update function" as is.
- Prevent footer margins and line-break disruptions to fit it into a natural design layout.
Constraints of the Luxeritas Footer Specifications and Precautions for Replacement Processing
This blog utilizes the WordPress theme “Luxeritas." When editing the footer in this theme, I faced the following three constraints:
- Margin Disruption Due to Widget Placement
Adding text to the standard Luxeritas footer widgets (left, center, right) causes unnecessary line breaks and margins, ruining the appearance around the copyright. - Suspension of Automatic Updates Due to Free Format
Setting the copyright to “Free Format" in the Customizer allows you to write text freely, but the theme’s standard automatic year update (e.g., Copyright © 2017-2026 Nando Kobo All Rights Reserved.) is disabled, requiring manual updates every time the year changes.
Upon checking the HTML output by the theme, the closing comment of the element enclosing the copyright was <!–/#copy–> rather than <!–/#copyright–>. Attempting to search for and replace using the closing tag comment causes the process to fail.
Optimal Implementation via functions.php (thk_footer Hook) and CSS
To reliably insert the text while maintaining the automatic year update, I adopted a method using the filter hook thk_footer from the child theme’s functions.php to insert the text immediately before the Luxeritas theme credit (<p id="thk">).
functions.php Code: Add the following code to your child theme’s functions.php.
function custom_amazon_associate_footer( $html ) {
$amazon = '<p class="copy amazon-associate">'
. 'As an Amazon Associate, Nando Kobo earns from qualifying purchases.'
. '</p>';
$html = str_replace(
'</div><!--/#copy-->',
$amazon . '</div><!--/#copy-->',
$html
);
return $html;
}
add_filter( 'thk_footer&#text_footer', 'custom_amazon_associate_footer', 11 );
Display Verification and Self-Check for the Official Review
After implementation, I confirmed that it outputs normally in the following order at the bottom of the footer across all pages:
Copyright © 2017-2026 Nando Kobo All Rights Reserved. WordPress Luxeritas Theme is provided by "Thought is free". As an Amazon Associate, Nando Kobo earns from qualifying purchases.
In preparation for the start of the site review triggered by achieving the 3rd qualifying sale, I will perform a self-check referencing the following official criteria:
Examples of Sites Not Accepted for Program Participation
Self-Checklist
- Do the registered site URL ( https://donguri3.net ) and the actual URL match completely?
- Are there actually accessible affiliate links present within the site?
- Are the privacy policy and disclaimer pages published?
- Is the Associates disclosure in the footer visible on all pages?
- Does it avoid prohibited items such as self-purchasing?
- Are you aware of the 180-day deadline starting from the application date?
Future Concept: Related Product Auto-Insertion Plugin via LLM Integration
While the footer wording insertion process implemented in functions.php this time works properly, as various customization functions increase in the theme’s functions.php, codes tend to intermingle, raising concerns about decreased maintainability.
Therefore, I envision spinning this footer display process out into an independent plugin in the future. If designed so that display on/off, insertion location, and display text can be toggled from a settings screen, it will function as a useful management tool even before passing the Associates review.
Furthermore, once you pass the review and receive official approval, you will be able to use the “Amazon PA-API (Product Advertising API)."
Product Advertising API Usage Policy
As post-approval development, I envision creating a “custom plugin that automatically determines and inserts relevant products matching the context upon saving and publishing articles."
Envisioned Plugin Specifications
- Disclosure Wording Management Function
Enable enabling/disabling the Associates disclosure, editing insertion locations, and text from the management dashboard. - Flexible Display Control
Control the enable/disable status and insertion position of automatic insertion via article-by-article meta boxes (checkboxes) or global settings. - Context Analysis & Keyword Extraction
Combine article tag information and LLM API (body summarization / related query inference) to automatically select and retrieve products that best match the article content via PA-API.
Do not modify the article body text; instead, hold related product data in custom fields, etc., and output it to the bottom of the article via a display hook.
I plan to continue manual registration until PA-API usage permissions are granted, and proceed with the implementation and verification of the standalone plugin concurrently with approval completion.
https://amzn.to/4xUL1dUConclusion
I mistook the notification of 2 qualifying sales in Amazon Associates as the start of the review, but achieving 3 sales was actually the condition for the official review. As a countermeasure for the review, while maintaining the automatic copyright year update of the WordPress theme “Luxeritas," I added the compliance disclosure wording to the footer using the thk_footer hook from the child theme’s functions.php. Currently, I am waiting for the 3rd sale and the official review, and upon approval, I plan to proceed with developing a related product auto-insertion plugin combining PA-API and LLM.