If you’ve been in the Amazon Influencer Program recently, you’ve probably noticed a new “excluded” label appearing on a growing number of products. This change has created confusion about whether influencers can still earn commissions on these products and how to properly tag shoppable videos for them. Here’s what we know so far and what it could mean for your business.
Table of Contents
- What’s Happening with Excluded Products
- Can You Still Earn Commissions?
- Three Possible Scenarios
- How to Tag Excluded Products for Your Shoppable Videos
- What You Should Do Right Now
What’s Happening with Excluded Products
Over the course of the past week or so, a new exclusion message has started appearing on a bunch of products across Amazon. This label is showing up on a wide range of categories — adult products, gun-related items, lingerie, fitness accessories like sauna suits, and plenty of items that don’t seem like they should be flagged at all.
This has created two major problems for influencers. First, it’s made it significantly harder (though not impossible) to tag your shoppable videos for these products. Second, it’s raised serious questions about whether we’ll still be able to earn commissions on them going forward.
Can You Still Earn Commissions?
Here’s the good news as of right now: you can still earn commissions on these excluded products. Based on recent earnings reports, commissions are still being generated — not just from on-site activity, but from off-site sources as well. So the exclusion label hasn’t yet impacted your ability to earn.
It’s also worth noting that you can still create affiliate links for these products through the Associates program on the Associates Central side. So even though the influencer tagging is more difficult, the earning potential hasn’t been cut off yet.
Three Possible Scenarios
Since Amazon hasn’t made an official announcement about what’s going on, there are a few possible explanations for what we’re seeing.
Scenario 1: Off-Site Exclusion Only
Amazon may be working toward eliminating certain product categories from being promoted off-site. They might not want adult products, weapons, or other sensitive categories being promoted through YouTube channels, blogs, or social media. The label is there, but the full implementation hasn’t rolled out yet — which is why we’re still earning.
Scenario 2: Both Off-Site and On-Site Exclusion
It’s possible the exclusion will eventually apply to both off-site and on-site shoppable videos. Right now it’s harder to tag these products, and maybe that’s just the first step before a full restriction kicks in. This would be the worst-case scenario for influencers who focus heavily on these categories.
Scenario 3: It’s a Bug Related to Amazon’s PA API Migration
Amazon recently completed a major backend migration to a new Product Advertising API. This was a massive undertaking that wrapped up over the past couple of weeks. It’s entirely possible that the exclusion labels we’re seeing are an unintended side effect of this migration — products that get different labeling in the backend but weren’t supposed to receive the visible exclusion tag. If this is the case, the labels could disappear once Amazon finishes cleaning up after the API transition.
How to Tag Excluded Products for Your Shoppable Videos
If you’re struggling to tag your on-site videos with excluded products, there is a workaround. The standard “recently browsed” method won’t work for these products right now, and typing in the product name may not pull it up either.
The solution involves using your Idea Lists. You can add the excluded product directly to an Idea List, bypassing the “recently browsed” restriction. Then when you go to tag your video in Creator Hub, select the Idea List option instead of the recently browsed option. Your excluded product will appear there, and you can tag it normally. For a tool that streamlines this process, check out the Oink for Influencers extension, which can add products directly to your Idea Lists and bypass the tagging restriction.
What You Should Do Right Now
Don’t panic. Continue creating content as usual. If you’re earning commissions on these products today, keep going. Use the Idea List workaround to tag your videos. And keep an eye on updates from the community as we learn more about Amazon’s intentions.
The most likely outcome is that this either gets resolved as a bug from the API migration, or it becomes limited to off-site promotion only. Either way, the products that are selling well are still worth making videos for.
