Pagination error when trying to limit the query results. Method Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Collection::links does not exist.

Pagination works perfectly when including ALL results of a query, but errors out with the following error (below) when I try to exclude a few results in a query.

BadMethodCallException: Method Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Collection::links does not exist

Example #1: Here is the controller code that works

class UserController extends Controller
{
   public function index()
   {
	   $users = User::paginate(15);
	}
}

Example #2: Here is controller code that errors out when I try to exclude certain data (in this case, Auth::id())

class UserController extends Controller
{
   public function index()
   {
	   $users = User::paginate(15)->except(Auth::id())->sortBy('id');
	}
}

I even tried this replacement code with the same "links does not exist" error. When I take out the "whereNotIn", the pagination works perfectly.

class UserController extends Controller
{
   public function index()
   {
	   $users = User::paginate(15)->whereNotIn('id', [1])->sortBy('id');
	}
}

Question: Is there any way that I can get pagination to work while excluding certain results in the query?