How to Exclude Products from Affiliate Commissions on Shopify [2026 Guide]

TL;DR:

Not every product in your Shopify catalog should carry affiliate commission. Gift cards, clearance items, and shipping fees have zero or negative margin, and paying a percentage on them is a direct loss.

• Always exclude: Gift cards, sale/clearance items, loss leaders, shipping fees, tax amounts
• Case by case: Bundled free items, subscription renewals, any product with margin below your commission rate
• Decision rule: If product margin % < commission rate %, exclude it or set a lower rate
• Setup time: Under 2 minutes in most affiliate apps
• Affiliate visibility: Excluded items should appear in a clear list affiliates can review before promoting

Say you’re running a 15% commission. An affiliate sends a customer who picks up a skincare serum ($65, 75% margin) and a $50 gift card. The commission on that order works out to 15% × $115 = $17.25.

The problem is that gift card. It carries zero margin — the customer pays $50 and receives $50 in value. That means $7.50 of your commission just went toward a product that can never generate profit.

Now imagine that happening 50 times a month.

You’d be paying $375 in commission on items worth nothing in margin, roughly $4,500 a year walking out the door before you even notice the pattern.

Most Shopify stores won’t catch it, because the orders look healthy on the surface. But when your catalog mixes high-margin and zero-margin products under one flat commission rate, the items that can’t support a payout eat into your program’s returns.

The fix takes about two minutes. You can exclude specific products or entire collections from commission calculations, so affiliates still earn on the items that support it and receive nothing on the ones that don’t.

In this blog, you’ll find the eight product types to exclude, a framework for borderline margin decisions, and the full setup walkthrough below.

Why You Need to Exclude Certain Products

A single commission rate works fine when every product in your catalog carries a healthy margin.

The moment your catalog includes gift cards, clearance items, or loss leaders, that flat rate starts costing you money on each of those sales.

The most obvious case is zero-margin products. A $50 gift card returns the full amount to the customer, which means there’s no margin to absorb a payout. Every commission on a gift card sale is a direct loss.

Shipping fees create the same risk when your app calculates commission on the full order total instead of the product subtotal.

What’s less obvious is the damage from sale items. A product marked down from $80 to $40 during clearance might leave you with just a 10–15% margin.

A 15% commission on that $40 sale wipes out what’s left. You discounted the product to clear inventory, not to fund an affiliate payout on top of it.

Moreover, the most counterintuitive case is loss leaders — products priced at or below cost to bring in new customers, like $1 samples or free trial bundles.

The margin on these items is already negative by design. Paying commission on top compounds the loss with every referral.

In all three situations, the root problem is the same: when commission exceeds margin, you end up paying the affiliate more than the product earns you.

Here’s what that gap looks like in real numbers.

Which Products Should You Always Exclude?

Not every product in your catalog needs a line-by-line margin review.

Most stores can protect their program margins by flagging the same eight categories: five that should never carry commission, and three where the answer depends on your specific numbers.

The first group doesn’t require any judgment. Those items lose money on affiliate sales by default.

The second group may or may not make sense to exclude, depending on how your margins compare to your commission rate.

For items in the gray zone, the decision comes down to one comparison: your product margin versus your commission rate.

If the margin is lower than the rate, you’re losing money on every affiliate sale of that product. You can either exclude it or set a lower rate for that item.

When the margin is positive but slim, say 20% on a product where you pay 15% commission,  you may still want to exclude. A single return or chargeback at that spread can erase multiple orders’ worth of net profit.

The safe threshold is roughly double your commission rate. A product with 35% margin under a 15% rate leaves enough room to absorb fees, returns, and still turn a profit. Anything below that line is worth reviewing.

How to Exclude Products in UpPromote (Step-by-Step)

The setup takes under two minutes and is available on UpPromote affiliate app.

The exclusion setting lives inside each program, so you can configure different lists if your store runs more than one.

To get started, you open Program in your UpPromote dashboard and click the program’s name to edit it. Scroll to Commission calculation, where you’ll find Excluded products/collections. By default, this applies to no product.

You can exclude specific products or entire collections, then click Save on the Shopify header. Collections are the better choice, because they update automatically.

That means when you add a new sale item to your “Clearance” collection in Shopify, it’s excluded from commission the moment it lands there. With individual product exclusions, you’d need to revisit the settings every time your catalog changes.

Once active, UpPromote handles mixed orders on its own. If a referral order contains both excluded and regular products, the app tracks the order but calculates commission only on the regular items.

You can review the breakdown on the Commission explanation page. If an order contains only excluded products, it won’t be tracked at all.

How to Communicate Exclusions Without Demotivating Affiliates

Excluding products is a margin decision, but affiliates won’t see it that way unless you frame it for them.

An unexplained exclusion list can feel arbitrary, or worse, like you’re quietly shrinking their earning potential.

The simplest way to prevent that reaction is to share the reasoning. When affiliates understand that gift cards and clearance items carry zero margin, the exclusion stops feeling like a restriction.

It also helps to frame the exclusion as a trade-off: removing those items is what allows you to offer a higher rate on everything else.

Transparency matters in where the information lives, too.

Your program description and affiliate agreement should reflect the same list, so nothing feels hidden when affiliates first sign up.

The final piece is how you present the numbers. If 15 out of 200 products are excluded, the earning opportunity still covers 185 items. Lead with that number.

“You earn 20% on 185+ products” lands very differently than “15 products are excluded from commission.”

A short message at onboarding can set the right expectation from day one:

Hi [Name],

Quick note on how commissions work: gift cards, sale items, and shipping are excluded from payouts because their margins can’t support a commission. That’s what allows us to offer you [X]% on our full-price catalog of [Y]+ products.

You can see the full excluded list anytime in your dashboard under Program details.

Questions? Just reply.

Should You Exclude a Product or Set a Lower Rate?

Affiliate software like UpPromote gives you two ways to handle products that don’t fit your standard commission rate.

Excluding a product removes it from commission calculations entirely. The affiliate earns nothing on it. Setting a special product commission keeps the product eligible but at a lower rate that matches its margin.

The choice depends on where the margin falls. If a product has zero or negative margin, like a gift card or a loss leader, excluding is the right call. No rate can make the math work at zero margin.

If the margin is positive but thin, say 15–25%, a special product commission lets affiliates still earn something while keeping your margins intact.

A store selling both skincare and accessories might set it up like this:

Frequently Asked Questions

If I exclude gift cards, will my affiliates know?

Yes. Most Shopify affiliate apps display the excluded product list directly in each affiliate’s dashboard. Excluded items also won’t appear when affiliates search for products to promote. The exclusion is transparent by design.

What happens when an order contains both excluded and included products?

The app tracks the order but calculates commission only on the included items. If a $115 order contains a $65 serum and a $50 excluded gift card, commission applies to the $65 only. Orders with only excluded products typically aren’t tracked at all.

Should I exclude all sale items from commission?

Not necessarily. Deep clearance items at 50% or more off usually have margins below any reasonable commission rate and should be excluded. Modest sales of 10–20% off may still leave enough margin to support a payout at a standard or reduced rate.

How many products should I exclude? Is there a limit?

Most apps don’t impose a hard limit on exclusions. A typical range is 5–20 items. Excluding more than half your catalog can make the program unattractive to affiliates. Frame the numbers positively by leading with eligible products rather than excluded ones.

What if affiliates complain about exclusions?

Explain the margin math: a gift card carries 0% margin, so commission on it is a direct loss. Then point to the full list of eligible products, which usually far outnumbers the excluded items. Affiliates who understand the economics tend to stay engaged longer.

Can I exclude products from one affiliate program but not another?

Yes, if your app supports program-level settings. Exclusion lists are typically configured per program, not per store. That means each program can have its own exclusion list tailored to its commission structure and margin requirements.

Ellie Tran

Ellie Tran, a seasoned SEO content writer with three years of experience in the eCommerce world. Being a part of the UpPromote team, Ellie wants to assist Shopify merchants in achieving success through useful content & actionable insights. Ellie's commitment to learning never stops; she's always eager to gain more knowledge about SEO and content marketing to create valuable content for users. When she's not working on content, Ellie enjoys baking and exploring new places.