Why My Amazon Influencer Videos Get Rejected, and What I Do

When an Amazon influencer video is rejected, Amazon tells you a category, like a medical claim or personal information, and never tells you which words or which seconds caused it. There’s no published list of banned words, so finding the problem means cutting a piece out, uploading again, and seeing what happens. It’s trial and error, and it gets much rarer as you learn what to watch for.

I’ve been doing this a long time and I still don’t have a tidy answer to hand you, because Amazon doesn’t give one. What I have instead is a way of working around the gap.

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Why was my Amazon influencer video rejected?

Amazon reviews every video before it appears on the site, and their FAQ says that takes about two business days. The status reads in review until moderation finishes, then flips to published or rejected. If it’s rejected, Amazon’s instructions are to click manage, read the rejection reason, and edit before uploading again.

That reason is a category, a bucket like medical claims, and it’s honest as far as it goes but it doesn’t point at a timestamp and it doesn’t quote you. So you get told what kind of rule you broke without being told which sentence broke it, and a full length review has a lot of sentences in it.

Is there a list of words that get Amazon videos rejected?

Not one that Amazon publishes, and I’ve looked. People trade guesses in creator groups and some of them are good, but there isn’t a list to have.

I have my own suspicions. I think allergies and hypoallergenic have gotten me before, and anti-cruelty probably cost me one too. All three are guesses that Amazon never confirmed, and I’d hate for anyone to treat my hunches as rules and build a script around avoiding three words.

The guesses do line up with something Amazon writes down, though. Their content guidelines say not to make health claims or refer to medical conditions unless they’re accurate. The line they draw is that you can say a product helps with the symptoms of a condition, but not that it prevents or cures anything. Allergies is a medical condition and hypoallergenic is a claim about one, so the category makes sense even when the specific wording never gets confirmed.

What Amazon’s rules actually say

Read the full content guidelines once, because several of the rules are ones you’d never guess. These are Amazon’s, not mine:

• No web links, URLs, or calls to action pointing viewers somewhere else, though promoting your own social channels is fine.
• No asking viewers to do things the player can’t do, like subscribe, comment, or turn on notifications.
• No prices, promotions, discount claims, or time-sensitive information.
• No spelling or grammatical errors in the video title, the description, or anything shown on screen.
• No Amazon logos or service names without written permission.
• No visible brand logos on clothing, jewelry, or accessories you don’t have permission to show.
• No music, images, or artwork you don’t have the rights to.
• No phone numbers or email addresses, and no asking viewers for theirs.
• No derogatory comparisons. Their own example is saying one product is much better than another, which is a piece of junk.
• No tagging products that aren’t clearly featured in the video.
• No plagiarized content, no uploading the same video twice, and no using media from the product’s own detail page.

The spelling rule surprises people, and so does the clothing one, which means the shirt you happened to be wearing can be the problem. Please go read the rules for yourself, as things can change or be updated at any time.

The grill video, and what the cutting cost

The one I think about most was a grill, and I filmed it with my dad.

I wanted the whole thing, him rolling it into the yard and then the unboxing, the way it would go if you were standing there watching. It got rejected, so I cut something and uploaded it again, and it came back rejected, so I cut something else and sent it back and it was rejected again. I don’t even remember everything I took out by the end, and the video was chopped to pieces.

What finally worked was deleting the whole box. My guess is that it looked like there was personal information on it, even though there wasn’t. I never found out, because Amazon didn’t tell me then and hasn’t since. The video went up without the part I wanted in it, my dad walking a grill across the yard.

How do you find the part that got rejected?

By deleting and resubmitting, which is slow and is the only method I know. You take out the most likely thing first, based on the category Amazon gave you, and send it back. If it goes through, you’ve found it, and if it doesn’t, you cut the next most likely thing and go again. Each round costs about two business days, so three rounds runs past a week.

There’s no shortcut I can offer, and I’d be making something up if I pretended otherwise. The guessing does get better, though. After enough rounds you recognize the shape of the thing Amazon didn’t like, and you reach for the right cut earlier.

I also don’t give up on them, because I keep trying and I’m no quitter, and a rejected video is still a product I filmed and a seed I already planted. Abandoning it means the filming was for nothing, so I’d rather keep chopping at it.

What changed for me

I don’t check things before I upload. There’s no pre-flight list taped to my wall, and I’m not going to invent one for this post.

What changed is when I’m careful, because it moved into the filming itself. I watch what I say while I’m saying it, and I watch what’s sitting in the background, especially boxes. You learn to spot certain things in a room and then you’re aware of them while you work. It sits closer to a habit than a procedure.

Creator groups helped more than anything I read. People post their rejections and what they cut, and over time you absorb patterns no official page spells out. The Oink for Influencers group is one I like.

Rejections are rare for me now, though not gone, and I couldn’t give you a number because I’ve never logged them. If you’re early in this and getting knocked back a lot, hang in there. It does thin out, and it thins out from the hundreds of videos you make in between rather than from finding a list.

This week’s practice: cut one thing and send it back

1. Open your rejected video and read the exact category Amazon gave you under manage.
2. Write down the three moments in the video most likely to fit that category.
3. Cut only the first one, then upload it again and let it sit the two business days.
4. If it clears, note what the cut was somewhere you’ll see it again.
5. If it doesn’t, cut the second one and send it back. Keep going rather than deleting the video.

Frequently asked questions

Related reading

• Amazon Influencer Program Tips I Wish I’d Started With
• How Do Amazon Influencers Get Products? Where Mine Come From
• How I Keep Track of Every Amazon Influencer Product
• What I Do With Amazon Influencer Products After I Film Them

An Amazon influencer video gets rejected with a category attached and never the words you said, so the only way through is to cut one suspected piece, resubmit, and repeat until it clears. Pick the video that’s been sitting rejected the longest, cut one thing out of it today, and send it back.