You’ve likely heard of Pinterest and affiliate marketing, but not many know how they work together. We should be talking about Pinterest affiliate marketing because it means there is money to be made there.
If you’re looking for a good way to start in affiliate marketing, or are an affiliate marketing veteran and looking to expand your business: it might be that Pinterest is your place to be.
In this article, you’ll discover what Pinterest affiliate marketing is and how you can use it to build your affiliate marketing income. Let’s go!
(Read more about integrating with Pinterest Ads.)
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
- What is Pinterest affiliate marketing
- The Benefits of Pinterest Affiliate Marketing
- How to get started with Pinterest affiliate marketing
- Tips for Pinterest affiliate marketing campaigns
- Examples of affiliate marketing on Pinterest
- Conclusion: is affiliate marketing on Pinterest for you?
What Is Pinterest Affiliate Marketing And How Does It Work?
Pinterest affiliate marketing is exactly what the name suggests: it’s affiliate marketing, using Pinterest as the platform to promote your affiliate links.
The ultimate goal is the same as in all types of affiliate marketing: getting people to click on your links and earning a commission when they take a certain action (like buying a product) on the platform you’re referring them to.
The technicalities are quite the same as with other forms of affiliate marketing.
You sign up for an affiliate network or program, generate affiliate links to interesting products or services you wish to promote, and share those links in the content you put out.
With Pinterest affiliate marketing, you’ll simply do the sharing in content that you publish on Pinterest.
Harness Pinterest's unique ability to drive organic traffic through visually appealing content, creating a captivating affiliate strategy that resonates with users seeking inspiration and product recommendations.
The Benefits Of Pinterest Affiliate Marketing:
It’s not just the lack of competition and the number of visitors that make Pinterest an excellent affiliate marketing platform. Here are some benefits of Pinterest Affiliate Marketing:
Minimal Competition and High Traffic: Pinterest .cs can be voted as the best affiliate marketing platform for many reasons including its low competition compared to the rest of the affiliates and its huge number of visitors.
Visual Appeal: Nowadays, the maxim “A picture is worth a thousand words” has never been as true as it is. Due to the attention scare problem, the advertisers as affiliate marketers mostly find it difficult to appeal to a vast majority of audiences.
On the contrary, visuals on Pinterest run without difficulty up to the eye of a viewer and ease the process of searching.
Shopping Intent: Buyers on Pinterest are classified as in a very emotional state, as they actively search for whatever can make their favorite items and everything they do look better.
This platform acts like a marketplace for the people with the purchasing power. Generally, members of this group have more financial resources compared to other social media users.
Active Shopper Base: During their research, Shopify has found that Pinterest users have been observed to spend an average of $140 per order which is greater than the point of sale amount of transactions made by Facebook users averaging $100.
However, Pinterest’s users tend to be more affluent as they have demonstrated a preference for high-ticket items such as electronics and designer apparel.
How To Get Started With Pinterest Affiliate Marketing?
Getting started with Pinterest affiliate marketing is pretty straightforward. Here are the steps to get started:
- Create Your Account: Through the initial step of registering a Pinterest account, you may move on to the second level. When you are logged in, you will be able to make «pins», which are posts on Pinterest treated as pinboards.
- Understand Pins and Boards: Pins are the plot of the strategy for your blog on Pinterest. You should use them to convey the value and specifications of your products. Group your pins under the “boards” category which are collections of visually oriented themes or subjects that have been gathered to get to every theme in detail.
- Keyword Research: Keywords and phrases associated with a product or niche can be found on Pinterest by typing them into the search engine. For example, when selling hair products, you may search for keywords like “natural hair” or “hair care,” this will help you identify the trends and topics to relate with the audience.
- Choose Your Niche: Focus on a niche that corresponds to your product, and pertains to a similar target audience. Put yourself in the shoes of your target customer and think about what they would type in the search bar. Then, brainstorm and ask yourself these questions: What kind of pins are they searching for, and what value can I offer them with my content?
- Board Creation: Hang boards that have been created on the topic (s) of your products. For instance, suppose that you sell makeup brushes you might segregate the boards into such names as makeup brushes, make-up brushes set, and makeup brushes review, among others to appeal to the potential customers.
- Find and Pin Images: Investigate recommend boards or simply use the search window, and then look for pictures connected to your product. Now, when you have chosen the picture that is proper for you, click on the “Pin it” button to add it to your moment. A short name edit for the pin along with the correct hashtag board selection is critical in setting the pin for publishing in the right community.
- Optimize with Keywords: Enhance the exposure of your pins by doing multiple keywords mentioned around the product. Likewise, affiliate marketing has keyword intelligence as an SEO strategy. Therefore, define the keywords your audience is searching for and optimize the content accordingly.
- Research Competitors: Try to find and follow boards that users with products similar to your craft. As an example, using search engines when you’re marketing makeup brushes, check boards about cosmetics and beauty give you keyword targeting and relevant trends.
- Engage with Relevant Content: When you happen across users or boards whose content meshes well with the focus of your product, that’s the time to get involved with their content. Repin pictures of interesting topics from trustworthy boards to yours and you may extend your audience and unearth profitable clients.
Some Final Tips On Starting Up
Ensure that your profile is set up as a business/company so that the pins you share will have clickable links.
If you want people on Facebook to be able to click on your pins to go to the site where they can buy your product, set up a business account for your Pinterest account.
Pinterest uses affiliate marketing through its “rich pins” feature. Rich pins look like regular pins but contain extra information including price and a purchase button.
You can also check out this tutorial guide for beginners from Surfside PPC which should help you get started with Pinterest affiliate marketing!
Things To Avoid When Creating Pinterest Affiliate Marketing Campaigns:
It could be overwhelming trying to get started with an affiliate campaign and it’s easy to make mistakes. Here are some things to avoid:
- Don’t use too many hashtags. Pinterest has recently started cracking down on the number of hashtags that you can use in one pin, so if you want to use hashtags, stick to a maximum of three. Don’t over-optimize and don’t make your content spammy!
- Don’t try to market all your products in one pin. Don’t try to cram every affiliate link you’re promoting in the description of all your pins. You don’t have to put in every hairbrush every time you post a picture of a brush. Keep each pin focused on one product or link. A good tactic is to link to an article on your blog where you review the best of said product, for example: a link to an article about the 9 best hair brushes in 2023.
- Don’t pin too many irrelevant images. Just as with any affiliate marketing channel, it all comes down to trust. If your profile or boards are filled with irrelevant images, no one will trust you enough to click on them or follow you, and you won’t make a commission.
- Don’t use too many affiliate links. The same goes for the number of links you’ll put in a description. If your content feels too spammy, people will soon lose interest and you won’t build up a following of people who are interested in what you have to offer.
Examples Of Affiliate Marketing On Pinterest
According to Pinterest, 463 million people use Pinterest monthly and 45% of people in the US with a household income over $100K are on Pinterest.
Here are some examples of successful marketers who are killing it by getting traffic from Pinterest:
Mommy On Purpose
Image Source: Mommy On Purpose
MommyOnPurpose.com was started in early 2016 by full-time blogger and stay-at-home mom Carly.
Carly started pinning in May 2016, and by the end of August 2016, she was working with AdThrive – one of the top ad networks that require a site to have at least 100k page views per month to be accepted.
“I use Pinterest to get 100K+ page views per month to my blog – with manual pinning!”
– Carly
She stopped publishing income reports in January 2017, but here are her income figures for August to December 2016, thanks to traffic from Pinterest:
Aug’16 – $483.31
Sep’16 – $3,365.39
Oct’16 – $5,035.17
Nov’16 – $4,768.47
Dec’16 – $5,151.57
Anastasia Blogger
Image Source: Anastasia Blogger
Anastasia tried for at least six months after starting her blog to get traffic from Google but could not get any traction. She decided to switch her focus to Pinterest, and by the end of the 10th month, Pinterest traffic enabled her to quit her 9 to 5 job.
“I started my blog on Feb 2017, and in about 10 months I was able to quit my day job to become a full-time blogger. Now I get over 300,000 pageviews/mo to my blog! Pinterest drives 90% of all traffic to my blog.”
– Anastasia
Twins Mommy
Image Source: Twins Mommy
Elna founded TwinsMommy.com to help moms make money blogging.
Like many bloggers and affiliate marketers, Elna struggled to grow her blog traffic. However, when she started using Pinterest, her traffic increased from 4,000 pageviews a month to over 60K pageviews monthly.
And it did not stop at 60K. The blog currently gets over 100,000 pageviews monthly and has 55,000+ Pinterest followers.
Whether you have a new blog that gets very little traffic from Google or want to add a new traffic source.
As shown in the above examples, Pinterest traffic can significantly boost your overall traffic and affiliate income. It can also help you get into high-ticket affiliate programs or premium ad networks faster.
Final Thoughts
Pinterest is certainly one of the underutilized channels when it comes to affiliate marketing. This means that there are chances for anyone new to affiliate marketing, or looking to expand their existing affiliate business.
The most important factor in whether or not your Pinterest affiliate endeavors will be a success is focus. You’ve got to choose the right niche, target audience, and keywords and content to target said audience.
With features like rich pins and clickable links, Pinterest continues to grow as a versatile platform for affiliate marketing endeavors. Take the leap and discover the synergy between these two powerful tools today!
