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As a powerful social media and search platform, Pinterest offers multiple ways to make money. Affiliate marketing is one of the most effective ways to monetize your efforts by driving traffic to an online store, generating leads, and increasing sales for affiliate marketers.
When you start leveraging Pinterest for your affiliate marketing efforts, you can appeal to your target audience, increase engagement, and open up another avenue for cost-effective marketing.
Pinterest is a great platform for finding affiliate marketing success, but it needs to be done right. Stay with us as we explore ways to do affiliate marketing on Pinterest and the guidelines for success.
Table of Contents
What Is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a performance-based marketing strategy where a business compensates the affiliate marketer for every sale made through its network. In this way, an affiliate marketer is a lead generator.
An affiliate can be a person or a company that promotes another business’s products or services through an affiliate link. The unique link serves as a tracker and identifies the affiliate’s referral.
When a customer clicks on an affiliate link and makes a purchase, the affiliate earns a commission which could be a percentage of the sale or a fixed dollar amount.
Why Is Pinterest Good for Affiliate Marketing?
Pinterest is an effective platform for affiliate marketing because of its high engagement, visual appeal, targeted audience, cost-effectiveness, and long-term results.
If you’re thinking about affiliate marketing on Pinterest, consider the following benefits the platform offers.
- High audience engagement as Pinterest users actively searches for new ideas and products, making them more likely to engage with affiliate links and make purchases.
- The visual appeal of Pinterest content showcases affiliate products in an attractive way.
- Targeted audience campaigns allow you to target specific audiences based on interests, demographics, and behaviors, making it easy to reach the right people for your affiliate products.
- Cost-effective strategies make Pinterest an affordable way to drive sales and generate revenue.
- The long-term shelf-life of Pins on Pinterest means that your affiliate links can continue to drive traffic and sales long after you’ve posted them.
Pinterest Affiliate Guidelines and Rules
Before you begin, one of the most important questions is, Are affiliate links allowed on Pinterest?
Affiliate links are allowed on Pinterest, but they must be used in compliance with Pinterest’s terms of service and community guidelines.
Pinterest’s guidelines stipulate that affiliate links are allowed, but they must be disclosed on each post. So, when you use an affiliate link on Pinterest, you must make it clear that you can earn a commission if the user purchases a product by using your link.
Additionally, Pinterest’s guidelines prohibit using affiliate links that mislead or deceive users. For example, claiming to review a product you’ve never used or offering an alleged discount (when there is no discount).
Other rules prohibit spamming by using automation and copyrighted material without permission. All tracking and analytics tools must be subject to Pinterest’s terms, and the terms of service and community guidelines apply to all users.
To avoid any issues, it’s recommended to disclose your affiliate links fully. Make sure that it’s clear that the link is an affiliate link and that you will earn a commission if a user clicks on the link and makes a purchase. It’s also recommended to use an affiliate link shortener service which clearly indicates that the link is an affiliate link.
Can I Earn Money from Pinterest?
Affiliate marketing is one way to monetize your Pinterest account by driving sales through a unique referral link and earning a commission.
Some of the other ways to make money on Pinterest include the following.
- Sponsored Pins whereby companies pay you to create and share Pins that promote their products or services
- Use Pinterest Ads to drive traffic to your website or promote your products
- Drive traffic to your own website and increase sales for your own products or services
- Brand partnerships where you create sponsored content or participate in influencer campaigns
How To Do Affiliate Marketing on Pinterest
If you’re looking for practical and effective ways to leverage your affiliate marketing efforts on Pinterest, consider the following tips and strategies for getting started.
Get Familiar With the Rules
The first step in successfully using Pinterest for affiliate marketing is to familiarize yourself with the platform’s affiliate rules and guidelines. As mentioned above, these rules and regulations include understanding the requirements for disclosing affiliate links, avoiding misleading or deceitful links, and complying with Pinterest’s terms of service and community guidelines.
By taking the time to understand these rules, you can ensure that your affiliate marketing efforts on Pinterest are compliant and effective. It’s also important to be aware of the laws and regulations surrounding affiliate marketing in your specific location, as they may vary, to avoid any legal issues. Make sure to keep yourself updated with the platform’s policies and any changes that may occur.
Create More Than One Pin Per Post
Not all users are the same, and even among a specified target audience, some Pins may appeal to one group more than another. Creating multiple Pins for each post is a great way to maximize your affiliate marketing efforts on Pinterest, appealing to different users. Having multiple Pins for each post increases the chances that at least one of them will be shared or saved by a user.
Creating more than one Pin also allows you to test different images, titles, and descriptions to see which ones perform the best. Make an effort to ensure that each Pin is unique and visually appealing while including keywords in the Pin description to boost visibility in search results.
Don’t forget that spamming could get you suspended, so make sure you are strategic with your schedule.
Schedule Pins In Advance
Certain Pinterest tools exist to streamline your posting schedule. Set a custom schedule of affiliate Pins and add them to your queue. Then you can sit back and relax while your content gets automatically posted.
Scheduling Pins in advance also provides the opportunity to connect with users across different time zones, connecting with users when they are online. This is especially useful when selling digital products that can be accessed worldwide without delay.
Enable Rich Pins
Rich Pins are especially useful for affiliate marketing, providing the opportunity to add extra information to the Pin description itself. For example, you can add a cooking time to recipes and the name of an author to an article.
When using Rich Pins to advertise affiliate products, you can show real-time pricing and availability in the description. By adding more context to the item that you’re trying to sell, you increase the chance of driving traffic through Pinterest.
Enabling Rich Pins is a once-off action that ensures all future qualifying Pins will be Rich Pins.
Optimize for Pins SEO
Pinterest isn’t only a social media platform but also a powerful search engine where people come to discover new content, browse for items to buy, and research new ideas. Keywords are critical to how Pinterest reads your content, meaning that it’s important to place strategic keywords in the right places, helping users to find your content when searching for related terms.
Important areas to include keywords include your Pinterest profile, the Pin description, and even the board description. Keyword placement becomes even more important when trying to appeal to users wanting to make a purchase.
Be Intentional
While it’s important to take care when choosing your affiliate partner, it’s equally important to consider the products you choose to promote. Consider your existing audience, target audience, popular topics on Pinterest, trends, and keywords.
For example, DIY and craft are popular categories on Pinterest, meaning there’s a captive audience for advertising and selling related items. In contrast, there’s not a high chance of converting sales for accounting software products from Pinterest.
Publish New Pins Consistently
Even though Pinterest Pins have a long lifespan, remaining relevant for months, it’s still important to consistently post new Pins promoting your affiliate product.
The more Pins you create promoting your affiliate links, the more chance of your Pins being seen (and clicked on). Remember to make your Pins unique and use a scheduling tool to alleviate the pressure of constantly posting.
Analyze Pin Performance
Effective Pinterest marketing involves constant tweaking and adjustments. Pinterest for business offers access to analytics that show valuable insight into how your Pins are performing, how your audience engages with your content, and how much traffic you’re driving.
Important metrics to consider include the click-through rate, the amount of time spent on the website, and the number of conversions. If you notice that certain Pins are performing particularly well, it’s worth promoting them to make the most of their impact.
Maximize the Impact of Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing on Pinterest offers a world of potential, but your efforts can also be stunted without proper preparation. Hopefully, this guide has offered valuable insight into how to get started and make the most of the opportunity.
We also offer a fantastic Pinterest Clicks to Cash course for businesses wanting to stay ahead of the competition.