How to Use Pinterest for Affiliate Marketing

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Did you know you can use Pinterest to make money on the side? When used for affiliate marketing, you can earn real cash passively by simply creating pins to drive traffic to your affiliate links.

As of July 2022, Pinterest has over 433 million active users, making it one of the world's most popular social media platforms. Imagine if you could piggyback on Pinterest's popularity to build a recurring revenue stream by promoting and selling affiliate products, programs, and services. In this guide, we'll show you the many opportunities of using Pinterest for affiliate marketing: 

Why use Pinterest for Affiliate Marketing?

Pinterest is an excellent affiliate marketing platform because it's one of the most popular social media platforms in the world, yet it's underutilised by entrepreneurs. You can create pins with links that users can click on and drive traffic to your website, boosting affiliate sales. You can also add affiliate links to your blog posts and create pins to post on Pinterest. 

And if you think using Pinterest for earning passive income goes against the platform's terms of service, don't. It's an acceptable practice as long as you stick to these best practices:

Affiliate Marketing Best Practices on Pinterest

Know the rules: You're using two platforms, Pinterest and the affiliate program you're promoting, so knowing the rules is essential. Some affiliate programs are not allowing their links to be posted directly on specific platforms, like Etsy. Etsy Affiliates can only be promoted through blog posts, and you'll need to create pins with the blog post links instead of the actual links of the affiliate product if you're promoting on Pinterest.

Avoid spammy content: Pinterest, like most social media platforms, hates spammy content, so if you don't want your website devalued, create engaging, helpful content that people will love to click on and share. Offer something more than simply pushing an affiliate product; your content should be valuable and relevant to pique the interest of your target audience. 

Total disclosure: Let your readers know you are using affiliate links to set expectations and achieve transparency. Simply adding an affiliate hashtag (#affiliate) or a short notice that you're promoting affiliate links on a blog post or pin is enough to clue people in that you are selling affiliate products. You can also add a notice on the sidebar of your website, so people will know that some of your content promote affiliate links. 

SEO: The success of your affiliate marketing campaign on Pinterest depends on how well optimised your website is. A well-optimised website will show up high on the searches. The wider your viewership, the easier it is to market your business on social media sites like Pinterest. Don't forget to optimise your Pinterest posts by inserting your primary keywords in the descriptions, Pinterest profiles, and pins. 

Mind the image quality: Pinterest is a visual platform, so it makes total sense to use high-quality, visually attractive images to draw the attention of your target audience. Keep the pin sizes between 1000×1500 pixels and 1080×1920 for optimal impact. 

How to Use Pinterest for Affiliate Marketing

Now that you know the basic rules of affiliate marketing on Pinterest, here are some tips to keep in mind:

Creating Content for Affiliate Marketing

Assuming that you've already signed up for an affiliate program, you can focus on creating content to promote on Pinterest. You can talk about jewellery in a blog post and insert a short paragraph to reference an affiliate link for a jewellery organiser to store your accessories, for example. Whatever affiliate product or service you promote, be sure to market it creatively, so the entire post doesn't read like an ad for it.

It's important to remember to mention the affiliate product or service you are marketing in the blog post and let readers know that your content may include affiliate links. 

Using Multiple Pins to Promote on Pinterest

After posting the blog post on your website, start working on pin creation. Use the images on your blog post to create the pins and, ideally, create multiples, so you have different images to use for promotions. Creating 3 to 10 pins per blog post is normal, but you can go as high as 17 pins.

There is no consensus on the correct number of pins to create per post, but the more pins you make, the higher the traffic these pins will generate for your website. Also, pinning new pins help keep your Pinterest content fresh. 

Review the Analytics Results

Earning passive income may start slow, but a well-planned marketing strategy will speed things along. It's vital to check the analytics and update your marketing plan with data-based strategies to maximise the results. Pinterest Analytics will uncover essential data that will help you understand your ideal client even more. The information you get from the analytics will determine what kinds of content drive revenue for you!

Your top pins are a great place to start. Check which of your pins that come with affiliate links are getting the most clicks. Can you create more versions of these pins to replicate the positive results? Perhaps, you can write a follow-up blog post and spin-off feature posts, then develop pins for these pieces of content. 

Offer MORE Value for Better Results

Right at the beginning of your affiliate marketing campaign, you should prioritise growing your email list. The customer information you get from your campaign can be used for future promotions. 

Of course, people won't give their email addresses if they are not getting something out of it. You can use Pinterest to create pins for freebies to promote your affiliate products while also growing your email list. That's hitting two birds with one stone! 

Sweeten the deal by creating pins with a freebie, like a mini course, an ebook, a small discount, or a special price on certain affiliate products. Post the pins or promote these via email along with the affiliate link. The incentive doesn't have to be expensive, but it should be relevant or helpful to your recipients. 

Schedule Your Pins in Advance

Many solopreneurs juggle many tasks, and it's hard to squeeze in a few minutes to publish pins. Thankfully, many apps can automate this for you. Just create the pins in advance and let the automation tool of your choice handle the publishing for you. Some of the most popular Pinterest schedulers are: 

• Tailwind
• SocialPilot
• Buffer
• Later
• RecurPost
• Sprout Social
• Meet Edgar
• Social Champ
• CoSchedule
• Hootsuite

Some of these schedulers are free; others are paid services. If you haven't discovered the wonders of automation, we highly suggest starting with a free service to get a feel of the process. When you've made up your mind to automate this task, you can upgrade your membership!

Earning passive income using Pinterest won't happen overnight, but we guarantee that the benefits will make your effort worth it. Give affiliate marketing a try, and start with Pinterest. It's a surefire way of making money on the side while growing your viewership at the same time!

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