Every year, millions of people pin products to their Pinterest boards. The platform Learn how to make money as an affiliate marketer. If you want to make money as an affiliate marketer, consider Pinterest. This social media platform boasts a massive reach, with 518 million monthly users and a wide range of audiences from Gen Z to high-income households. All you need is a keen eye, creativity, and some interesting products to share, and you can use Pinterest to your advantage. You can generate affiliate sales. Now learn how to leverage your Pinterest account and generate income on the platform.

What is Pinterest Affiliate Marketing?

Pinterest is a social media network and visual search engine where users can discover new products, ideas, and inspiration. Content is presented in the form of “pins” that contain images and website links, and users browse and save pins to create virtual mood boards.

Pinterest Affiliate marketing is driving sales through the Pinterest platform. It's a type of affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketers pin images and videos to virtual boards. About affiliates and services Include your affiliate link. When a user clicks on an item tagged in your pin and purchases it, Affiliate marketers receive a commission for those purchases.

Pinterest is more targeted than social commerce Affiliate marketing is based on a community of shared interests. When you promote your products on Pinterest, you reach potential customers who are interested in a niche that is visually appealing, such as travel, home decor, or food.

Should you use Pinterest for affiliate marketing?

As an affiliate, you can use Pinterest to drive traffic to your affiliate content. This could include blog posts, affiliate landing pages, or YouTube videos.

As with other affiliate programs like Shopify Affiliate, the more people who see your link, the more likely you are to generate affiliate sales and earn commissions. “I’ve grown my Pinterest following to almost 50,000 and get 50% of my blog traffic from Pinterest,” says Daniella Flores, founder of affiliate website I Like to Dabble .

Pinterest is more than just a social media platform; it’s a visual search engine. According to Pinterest, 80% of pinners discover new brands and products on the platform each week, making Pinterest a valuable channel for marketers who partner with affiliate programs.

9 Pinterest Affiliate Marketing Tips

1. Know the rules
2. Create multiple pins per post
3. Reserve your pin in advance
4. Activate Rich Pins
5. Pin to group board
6. Optimizing for SEO
7. Build your email list with Pinterest
8. Analyzing pin performance
9. Promote high performing pins

If you have decided that Pinterest is the marketing channel you want to invest in your affiliate marketing business, find relevant affiliate marketing programs through the affiliate network and set up a Pinterest account. Here are some tips to get started with affiliate marketing on Pinterest and start making money.

1. Know the rules.

Know and follow the rules for creating, pinning, and sharing affiliate content on Pinterest. Here are some key guidelines to follow as an affiliate marketer:

• Don’t hide links : Pinterest’s Community Guidelines prohibit shortening or hiding affiliate links. Users must be able to reasonably predict which page the link will lead to.

• Disclosure of Affiliate Relationships : The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) prohibits affiliate content from being labeled as “sponsored” or “ We require you to label your pins as “ affiliate ” and follow the rules by adding a disclaimer to your pins and landing pages.

• No fake accounts : Re-pinning content through a separate account is against Pinterest's guidelines.

Violating these guidelines may result in your Pinterest content being blocked.

2. Create multiple pins per post

Create multiple pins for each affiliate marketing post, including your affiliate link. The more pins you create, the more opportunities you have to engage with your audience through saves, clicks, video views, comments, and follows. A good engagement rate typically starts at 1%.

For example, try searching for Pins on Pinterest by keyword or phrase. When you look at the search results for that industry or field, you’ll see a variety of visual content, from black-and-white photos to color graphics.

“Using a multi-Pin strategy gives you the opportunity to target a wider range of keywords,” says RJ Weiss , a financial affiliate. “If you have a post about how to make money, you can create a Pin that’s optimized for related keywords like side hustles or extra income. This way, you can drive all that traffic to a single page on your site.”

There is no rule about how many affiliate pins you can create for a single piece of content or link. The key to a successful pin is high-quality graphics that stand out from the crowd. Experiment with different pin templates, such as:

• Portrait and landscape images
• Black and white photos and color photos
• Stock Images & Graphics
• Text-centric and visual-centric content

Still, creating a new pin can be time-consuming. Bryan Maniotakis, owner of Minimal Goods , is using automation tools to speed up the process.

“I currently use an automation tool that automatically generates a Pinterest banner whenever a new article is posted to my site,” says Bryan. “This tool saves me a ton of time every month and I no longer have to manually create Pinterest assets.”

3. Reserve your pin in advance

Another way to save time is to use a tool that schedules your pins in advance. Tools like Tailwind , Later , and Hootsuite allow you to set a custom schedule and automatically add pins to your boards as new content is added to the queue.

By pre-scheduling your pins, you maximize your chances of reaching users when they're online.

4. Activate Rich Pins

Rich Pins provide more information than the standard images you see on the platform. By displaying additional information in the Pin description itself, you’ll get more attention in a crowded feed, which increases the likelihood of driving traffic to Pinterest.

Activate Rich Pins:

• Products : Display up-to-date pricing and availability information on Rich Pins.
• Recipes : Display cooking times, ratings, ingredients, serving sizes, and more on your Rich Pins.
• Articles : Display title, description, and author information in your rich pins.

The process of creating and activating a Rich Pin only needs to be completed once. After you do this, all subsequent eligible Pins will automatically become Rich Pins.

5. Pin it to your group board

Not every Pinterest board has to be a personal mood board. Group boards help multiple users share content on one board. These community-style boards naturally provide greater visibility, with users promoting their pins to each other’s audiences.

Using tools like Pingroupie Find a relevant board for the category your affiliate product belongs to.

For example, craft products If you are an affiliate, you may want to contribute to boards like the ' Crochet Community Board '.

If you read the description of the group board, you'll find instructions on how to become a contributor. In many cases, you'll need to follow the creator of the board.

Also check the conditions for posting new content to a new group board. Some admins link directly to the product page. They may not allow affiliate links—in which case you can work around it by using blog content or YouTube videos as your landing pages.

6. SEO Optimization

Because Pinterest is effectively a visual search engine, you need to optimize your profile to reach existing and potential buyers when they are actively searching.

To achieve this, use SEO best practices such as using Rich Pins, which automatically pulls in keywords and metadata that reflect purchase intent to keep your Pins up to date. This helps increase traffic and user engagement, build brand awareness, and build audience loyalty by keeping your Pins up to date.

Mitchell Stern, owner of the website SideHustle.Tips , says, “People on Pinterest are looking for information. Apply all the usual SEO best practices when writing your title and description. Choose your keywords carefully and you can go viral in a matter of hours.”

The Pinterest algorithm matches pins with keywords, so start by finding keywords that your target audience is searching for. There are many tools that can help you with keyword research, some of which are free. Try the free versions of Ahrefs, Moz Keyword Explorer, or Keyword Everywhere.

Matt Lally, growth marketing consultant and founder of MattyAds, shares his process for discovering profitable Pinterest keywords: “Log into Pinterest Ads and find keywords that have between 10,000 and 100,000 monthly searches. Use those keywords frequently in your pinboards and pin creatives.”

“Do a search on Pinterest for your keywords,” Matt continues. “See what styles of content are ranking well, and create four to six variations of those.”

Once you have your keywords, focus on a few areas to successfully implement Pinterest SEO:

• Pinterest Profile: Include keywords related to the overall theme of your content in your account description. For example, if you promote health supplements, include terms like “women’s health” in your account description.
• Pin Description: Go into more detail about keywords related to each individual Pin. For example, if you’re sharing a Pin of a tutorial on how to tie your shoelaces, use the keyword “how to” in your Pin description.
• Board Description: Boards are more specific than profiles, but not as targeted as Pins. Use moderate keywords in your board title and description. For example, use keywords like “shoe tutorials” or “women’s health tips.”

7. Build your email list with Pinterest

“Pinterest can be challenging for affiliate marketers because people use the platform ideally,” says Monica Lent, founder of Affilimate . “Most Pinterest users aren’t looking to solve immediate problems and make purchases, they’re looking to plan for the future— “Until the affiliate cookie expires.”

“So the most effective Pinterest “Affiliate marketing strategy is all about capturing your readers’ email addresses,” she explains. “This allows you to send them drip email campaigns that educate your readers and get them interested in your offers. You can promote affiliate products.”

The simplest way is to include an email subscription option on your landing page. Encourage Pinterest visitors to sign up for your email list by offering them a content-driven lead magnet, a discount code, or other incentives like a freebie or benefit. Then build an email campaign to keep that relationship going.

8. Analyzing pin performance

Analyze your monthly performance using Pinterest Analytics, Pinterest’s built-in data tool. Gain insights to improve your content by evaluating your most effective Pins, user interactions, and topics that interest your audience.

Also, check your affiliate dashboard to see how many people bought the products you promoted through Pinterest.

Some metrics to consider when evaluating include:

• Click-through rate: How many people are seeing and clicking on your pins? Do certain pins get more clicks? Do pins with endorsements from popular bloggers or influencers drive more traffic than pins without endorsements?
• Time on site: How do Pinterest users differ from visitors from other traffic sources? Evaluate your ecommerce analytics: If you have a high time on site and a low bounce rate, it means your Pins are a good fit for the content on your landing page.
• Conversions: Be aware of items that are heavily promoted but have low sales, or items that are not heavily promoted but have high conversion rates. Adjust your content strategy accordingly.

9. Promote high performing pins

Buy ads on Pinterest to boost your marketing efforts. According to Pinterest, the best performing ads have the following characteristics:

• Use high-resolution vertical images.
• Put your brand at the center.
• Contains trusted links.
• It contains clear wording.

Promoting your top performing pins alongside your organic pins can help you drive more traffic and expand your audience. Use sponsored pins to directly promote your affiliate links or drive users to your affiliate marketing content.

Make money online with Pinterest

Pinterest marketing is a valuable asset for many online businesses (including affiliate marketers).

Use the tips in this guide to create search-optimized pins, stand out, and drive traffic to your affiliate content. There’s no reason Pinterest can’t be a sustainable source of income for just an initial investment.

Pinterest Affiliate Marketing FAQs