When talking about Pinterest, we have our heads immediately filled with abysses of colorful thematic boards with images of various directions: cooking, fashion, web design, architecture, and so on. But do you know that Pinterest is not only your personal online scrapbook but also an excellent platform for affiliate sales? Interestingly, many people still do not know that this site again allowed to weave the affiliate network through pins a few years ago.
With over 322 million monthly users and consistently high interest in visual content, this platform has proven to be a fantastic tool to drive traffic to your affiliate links. Let’s figure out the best ways to work with Pinterest to make money on them successfully.
Why Pinterest Matches Perfectly With Affiliate Efforts
People perceive visual information better than text. Seeing an informative image instead of a bunch of words is a green light for further interaction, following a link, and buying. After all, for 48% of users of this visual search engine, product selection and purchase is the number one priority. And they claim that Pinterest actually helps them make decisions about their purchases.
Many are used to treating Pinterest rather frivolously and do not even realize the scale of the lost profit. Like on Instagram, you can optimize your pins to improve SEO performance, add keywords, titles, descriptions, and hashtags, helping users find them faster. Also, remember the wonderful opportunity for users to re-pin any pin they like: this means even more additional options to distribute your affiliate links even without your participation.
Before You Start: Key Guidelines
We’ve already figured out that adding links is absolutely legal within the terms of use of the platform. But first of all, you need to remember a few essential details:
- Not all companies work with Pinterest. First, you need to check all the conditions of affiliate programs in which you participate or plan to participate. Some expressly prohibit this platform, and some simply resist using any graphic content from their site or any other associated with their brand. In this regard, online merchandise stores are pickier, and, for example, SEO affiliate partners are much more inclined towards links in visual content.
- People don’t like content without value. It is not always enough to simply post an image and link. Despite the fact that this is a fairly common option, you need to understand that it is not relevant for all proposals and does not work as well as you would like. A much more efficient way is to provide value in the form of useful information, checklist, guide, or video. We’ll talk about this in more detail below.
- The disclaimer is required. Show all cards at once regarding the placement of the affiliate link. If it is directly in the pin, you need to put the hashtag #affiliate or write that it is sponsored. Be sure to follow the changes in this direction in terms of the use of the platform.
With this knowledge, you can begin directly to benefit from this beautiful and promising site.
Deploying Your Affiliate Strategy on Pinterest
We will not tell you that first, you need to register on the site – this is obvious. You should also already have a unique link ready with which you are going to promote your partner’s product.
The most difficult thing you can face here is the creation of a large amount of graphic content to which you will attach a link. The more there are, the higher your chances of following the link, making a purchase, and getting your desired commission.
If you’ve heard about such a thing as time-saving software, then you probably know about such excellent assistants as Canva or Crello: they will help create attractive visuals even for those who do not understand design at all. Another trick is not to create your own images, but to re-pin someone else’s and add your link to them.
The best option for you and your link is 20+ boards dedicated to the product you are promoting. It is important that they cover one area or at least adjacent ones. A person with boards about kitchen goods, inexpensive travel, pet food, and link building services gives the impression of a peddler or a traveling merchant, hung with everything that comes in handy, having no in-depth knowledge of any of these goods.
Regularity is the primary recommendation. The more often you appear with new pins and re-pins, the higher the level of user interaction with your content. If you don’t have time to do this manually, you can use automatic scheduling tools such as Tailwind.
Main Ways to Work with Pins and Links
There are two main approaches you can take.
Direct Link
The most straightforward, simplest, and fastest way is to add a link directly to your pin. By clicking on it, the user is immediately taken to your partner’s website. Before implementing this approach, you need to make sure that your partners allow you to post their links on a third-party resource and not on your personal site.
In general, this is not the most effective strategy for working with Pinterest since the user is not provided with any valuable information. You can write a couple of stimulating phrases in the description, but this is unlikely to lead to an instant purchase and will not greatly endear people to the product. This option may be relevant for fairly rare narrow-profile products or services, the choice of which is small, and people looking for them are already at the action stage and are purposefully looking for a product in order to make a purchase right now.
Link Through Your Site
This method is more viable for people at different stages of the customer journey, as it offers value in return for following a link. The main touchpoint here is your site, where you direct people through your pin and where you show them useful content containing an affiliate link. Content, be it a post, infographic, video, webinar, podcast, or course, should not only be valuable and exciting in itself, but it should also harmoniously include the promoted product as an indispensable tool to achieve a specific goal.
With a pin, you signal to users that you have an answer to a specific question. They follow the link, get to your site, conclude whether your content helped them, and, depending on the answer to this question, move on to your partner’s site or leave the page. Yes, you have to spend time creating high-quality content, but it’s worth it.
Wrapping Up
Pinterest is a promising part of your affiliate marketing strategy. As a resource focused on visual content, it works much faster than others, so before you can blink, affiliate commissions will already begin to flow into your pocket. The most important rule to adhere to is not to stop. Make it a rule to pin methodically and regularly, and the result will not be long in coming.
Author
Frank Hamilton is a blogger and translator from Manchester. He is a professional writing expert in such topics as blogging, digital marketing and self-education. He also loves traveling and speaks Spanish, French, German and English. Meet him on Facebook and Twitter.
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Statements of the author and the interviewee do not necessarily represent the editors and the publisher opinion again
