Can you put an Amazon link on an Instagram Reel?

Can you put an Amazon link on an Instagram Reel? Not one that anybody can tap. Instagram doesn't make links in captions clickable, so an Amazon link pasted into a Reel's caption is just a string of text that nobody is going to retype.

That's the short answer and it's a disappointing one. The longer answer is that there are a couple of ways around it, they're all manual today, and any tool that tells you it'll drop a working product link onto your Reels automatically is describing something Instagram doesn't let apps do.

What Instagram allows

Instagram has its own way of attaching a product to a post. It's called Add products. That's the route, and it's done inside Instagram, by you.

The other thing people do is keep a link in their bio and point to it from the caption. That's still common, and it works for creators who mostly sell one product at a time. It gets awkward fast when you post three different products a day.

What no app can do

No app can add product links or product tags to an Instagram post. Instagram doesn't let apps do it. That includes ours.

We say this plainly because it's the most common thing people expect from a cross-posting tool, and the most common thing they're let down by. EverySqueeze will post your Reel to Instagram, with a caption, on a schedule. It won't put a product on it. Our own setup screen says the same thing under the Instagram link options.

So our Instagram caption editor has two tokens, Video title and Hashtags, and no Amazon link token. We left it out on purpose. A link in the caption wouldn't do anything for the viewer.

What we do instead

Since the last step has to be done by hand, we tried to make the hand part quick.

The EverySqueeze phone app has a Links section on its Posts screen, with a badge showing how many are outstanding. For each Instagram post it shows the product we saved for that video and a button to copy your affiliate link. You open the post in Instagram, add the product with Add products, come back and mark it "Done". Or "Skip", if you're not going to bother with that one.

It's a checklist and nothing more. It doesn't check whether the product is really on your Instagram post. It only knows what you told it. And the count covers the posts currently in your Posts list, not your whole account history.

That's less than you wanted to hear, we know. But the copy button saves the hunting, and the list means you don't lose track of which Reels you've done.

What about DMs and comments?

On Facebook, EverySqueeze can send your link by Messenger to people who comment a trigger word. We call it Auto DM.

On Instagram it isn't live. Nobody who comments on your Instagram posts gets an automatic DM from EverySqueeze right now, so if someone asks for the link, you answer them yourself. You can set up Instagram's Auto DM settings in advance (they're on the Auto DM tab in the Instagram settings), and its status will say it's waiting on approval. Your choices are saved. Nothing is sent, and nothing is added to your Instagram captions, until it can really answer.

The automatic first-comment link is in the same place. Not live, on Instagram or on Facebook. Both are waiting on Meta's approval and we don't have a date.

Getting your Reels onto Instagram in the first place

Reposting works fine, links aside. Two things to know.

Your Instagram account has to be a Professional account, which means Creator or Business. A personal account can't be connected. Switching is free and takes about a minute: in Instagram, open your profile, tap the menu, then Settings and activity, Account type and tools, Switch to professional account. There's no follower minimum, and you can switch back.

And Instagram connects through the same Meta login as Facebook. Connect one and you've connected both, though each keeps its own auto-post switch and its own daily limit.

So is it worth posting to Instagram at all?

That's your call, and it depends on what you want from it. If the only point is the Amazon commission, Instagram is the most work for the least certainty of the platforms we post to, because the product has to be added by hand every time. Facebook takes a link in the caption. YouTube takes one in the description. Pinterest takes one on the pin.

If you also want the audience, it's a different sum. The Reel goes up automatically and the only manual part is the product.

We'd like this to be better. When Meta approves the DM and comment permissions, it will be, and we'll update this post.