Affiliate video on eBay and on Amazon differ in one respect: eBay punishes you by not paying, Amazon can close the account. The four items below are verbatim from the Program Policies and Operating Agreement, read 21 Oct 2026 — not paraphrase.
1. You may not state a price
Verbatim: "prices ... may change, your Site may only show prices and availability if: (a) we serve the link in which that price and availability data are displayed, or (b) you obtain Product pricing and availability data via Creators API or PA API". Your video is neither. Saying "only USD 29.99 today" — even when true — is a violation, because the moment the price changes the statement becomes false.
2. You may not shorten or obscure links
Verbatim: "You will not cloak, hide, spoof, or otherwise obscure the URL of your Site containing Special Links (including by use of Redirecting Links)". No bit.ly, no own-domain interstitial, no hop page. Use the tagged link directly, even when it is ugly.
In the same bucket: no links in browser extensions or on TV boxes; no bot-generated clicks; no bidding on the keyword "amazon". And no "price tracking and/or price alerting functionality" — a deal-alert channel is prohibited, not merely risky.
3. The disclosure must be present, in the right words
The standard sentence: "As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases." Put it on the last card and in the description. Without it the video is not approvable — not because it is bad, but because it is ineligible.
4. No fake urgency
Verbatim: "You must not make inaccurate, overbroad, deceptive or otherwise misleading claims about any Product." "Only one left", "lowest price ever", "hurry before it sells out" — all are claims about stock and price, and all become false the moment they stop being true.
Measured on six real scripts
Six scripts went through two layers: a labelling model (verdict allow/escalate/block with a confidence) and two regexes, one for prices and one for urgency. Results:
- Clean + disclosure: allow, confidence 0.88 → PUBLISH.
- Clean, no disclosure: escalate, 0.92 → BLOCK (missing disclosure).
- "This set is USD 29.99": model says block but only at 0.61 → caught by the price regex → BLOCK.
- "Only 1 left, grab it": model says block but only at 0.48 → trusting the model alone downgrades it to escalate, which still ships. Caught by the urgency regex → BLOCK.
- "Guaranteed to make you a better cook": block, 0.86 → BLOCK.
- "#1 best selling, lowest price ever": block, 0.70 → BLOCK.
The fourth row is why this post exists. The model noticed the problem but at 0.48 confidence, below the 0.70 threshold, so a model-only gate would have let the urgency line through. A regex has no confidence and no bad days — it only has to be right once. Conversely a regex understands no context: "rooms like a 100 dollar pan" gets caught as a price claim. Both layers are needed.
The design rules that follow
- The gate must fail closed: a model label alone never yields "publish".
- Every hard risk (price, urgency, missing disclosure) needs a deterministic rule, not just a model label.
- Write copy from the listing's real bullets, not from imagination — an invented claim is a false claim.
- Not showing prices is a design decision, not an omission: dropping prices means never violating the price rule.
Previous in this series: what Amazon affiliate pays. Next: the 90-day plan. Sources: Program Policies, Operating Agreement.