Amazon’s “excluded” label has been causing confusion among influencers and content creators who rely on the platform’s affiliate commission system. If you’ve noticed this mysterious message appearing on products you want to tag to your shoppable videos, you’re not alone. Rob from Oink for Influencers recently broke down what’s happening with these excluded products, why they’re being marked, and most importantly, how you can still tag them to earn commissions. Let’s dive into the details of this developing situation and what it means for your influencer business.
Table of Contents
- The Excluded Mystery: What Started This
- Which Products Are Actually Affected
- The Current Impact on Your Earnings
- Three Possible Explanations
- How to Tag Excluded Products Right Now
- Alternative Affiliate Methods That Still Work
- What Experts Think Is Really Going On
- Watch the Full Video
The Excluded Mystery: What Started This
Over the course of about a week, creators started noticing something strange: many products on Amazon began displaying an “excluded” label, making it much harder to tag them to shoppable videos. This unexpected change immediately raised two critical questions in the influencer community. First, how exactly do you tag these products if the normal methods are blocked? Second, and more importantly, will influencers still be able to earn money from promoting these excluded products?
Which Products Are Actually Affected
The breadth of products receiving the excluded label is surprisingly wide and somewhat baffling. Obviously, adult products and gun-related items are affected, along with lingerie and sauna suits. However, the exclusions extend well beyond what you might expect. Many peripheral and seemingly normal products are also getting tagged with the excluded label, which has many creators questioning Amazon’s criteria. It’s not just the edgy or controversial stuff—plenty of everyday items are in this category too.
The Current Impact on Your Earnings
Here’s the good news: as of the time Rob recorded this video, influencers are still earning commissions on excluded products. This applies to both on-site earnings (from shoppable videos directly on Amazon’s platform) and off-site earnings (when you drive traffic from YouTube, blogs, social media, and other external sources). Rob confirmed this by checking his own commission reports and speaking with other off-site influencers who have large audiences promoting these products. Nobody has reported lost earnings yet, which means your revenue streams remain intact for now.
Three Possible Explanations
Rob outlines three scenarios that could explain what’s happening with these excluded products. The first possibility is that Amazon is working toward eliminating off-site commissions for these specific product categories. Amazon may be concerned about the optics of certain products being heavily promoted outside their platform. The second possibility is more severe: both off-site and on-site commissions could eventually be eliminated for excluded products, with the difficult tagging process being just the first step. The third and potentially most likely explanation is that this is actually a bug related to Amazon’s recent massive backend migration from the PA API to the Creators API. Since Amazon just completed this enormous technical transition, these exclusion labels might not be intentional at all.
How to Tag Excluded Products Right Now
If you need to tag excluded products to your videos, there’s a workaround that works right now. Start by navigating to the product’s page on Amazon and look for the “+ idea list” button. Click it to add the product to one of your storefront idea lists. This method bypasses the broken “recently browsed” system that Amazon’s interface normally uses. Once you’ve added the product to an idea list, head over to your Creator Hub to upload or edit your video. Find the tag products section and select the “idea list” option instead of the standard tagging method. Then locate the idea list you just added the product to, select it, and click done or submit. Many creators have found that combining this method with the Oink browser extension makes the process even smoother.
Alternative Affiliate Methods That Still Work
Beyond the Creator Hub tagging system, you have other options for promoting excluded products and earning commissions. You can still create off-site affiliate links using tools like Genius Links or Post Tap, which work by taking the product URL directly and converting it into your personalized affiliate link. These alternative tools don’t rely on Amazon’s tagging system at all, so they’re completely unaffected by the excluded label issue. This means you can keep earning commissions on these products even if the tagging restrictions become more severe in the future.
What Experts Think Is Really Going On
Rob’s expert opinion leans heavily toward the possibility that this is actually a bug rather than an intentional policy change from Amazon. His reasoning is compelling: Amazon is still actively recommending these types of products to influencers for content creation within their platform. If these products were truly being removed from the affiliate program, it wouldn’t make sense for Amazon to recommend them. The timing also supports the bug theory, given that Amazon just completed a major backend infrastructure migration. While it’s impossible to know for certain, the combination of continued recommendations and the technical migration timeline makes the bug explanation feel like the most plausible scenario.
Watch the Full Video
For a complete deep dive with visual demonstrations of the tagging process, watch the full video below:
