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Rakuten Signup: "Unable to Verify URL" — What to Do

The Problem

Etsy's affiliate program just moved from AWIN to Rakuten. If you want to earn commissions on Etsy product links, you now need to sign up as a publisher on Rakuten Advertising. Simple enough — except the signup form has a URL verification step that's rejecting perfectly valid websites.

During registration, Rakuten asks for your "Primary channel URL" — the website or YouTube channel you'll be promoting from. You enter your URL, click the verify button, and get:

Unable to verify URL. Please check your entry and try again.

We hit this ourselves trying to register MakerManifest. We tried https://makermanifest.co, our YouTube channels, and several other sites — all gave the same error. The URLs are valid, the sites are live, and there's nothing wrong with them.

What's Causing It

This appears to be a known issue with Rakuten's URL verification tool. It's not your site — it's their checker. Several possible causes:

  • Cloudflare or CDN protection — if your site is behind Cloudflare (most are), Rakuten's verification bot may be getting blocked or challenged
  • New or non-.com domains — some registrars and TLDs seem to trigger false negatives in their system
  • YouTube URL format — Rakuten may not recognize all YouTube URL formats (/c/, /@, etc.)
  • Temporary service issues — their verification endpoint may have intermittent problems, especially during the Etsy migration surge

What to Do

  1. Try different URL formats. If https://yoursite.com fails, try http://yoursite.com (no s), or try with and without www. For YouTube, try https://www.youtube.com/channel/YOUR_CHANNEL_ID (the long-form channel URL, not the vanity URL).
  2. Try a different browser or clear cookies. Some users report the verification working after switching browsers or using incognito mode.
  3. Temporarily pause Cloudflare protection. If your site uses Cloudflare, try setting the security level to "Essentially Off" in the Cloudflare dashboard, then retry the Rakuten verification. Re-enable it after.
  4. Contact Rakuten support directly. If nothing works, email [email protected] and explain the issue. Include your site URL and a screenshot of the error. Their support team can manually verify your site and push your application through.
  5. Check Rakuten's official signup guide. Their help article on the publisher signup process is here: Publisher Sign-Up Process. It covers each step of registration and may have updated troubleshooting info.

While You Wait

If you're stuck on Rakuten signup, you can still use Etsy Share & Save in the meantime. If you have an Etsy shop, go to Dashboard → Affiliate Programs in MakerManifest, select the "Etsy Share & Save" preset, and enter your shop name. This gives you a 4% fee refund on sales driven to your own shop — it's not the same as the full affiliate program, but it's something while you wait for Rakuten to sort out their verification.

For the full breakdown of how Share & Save differs from the Rakuten affiliate program, see our post: Etsy Moved from AWIN to Rakuten — Here's What That Means for Your Affiliate Links.

We're in the Same Boat

We're going through this process ourselves at MakerManifest. We've contacted Rakuten support and will update this post when we hear back. If you find a workaround that works, let us know — we'll add it here so other creators don't have to struggle through the same thing.

References

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