The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Pinterest Affiliate Marketing

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At the risk of provoking the ire of the SPCA — and more than a few cat lovers — it’s safe to say there are many different ways to skin the Pinterest marketing cat. Though much of the marketing activity on Pinterest is focused around branding — “Hey, look at how awesome we are!” — Pinterest affiliate marketing — “Hey, look at how awesome this is product is!” — represents a significant portion of the marketing (and revenue) in the Pinterest ecosystem.

But how does being a Pinterest affiliate work? What do you have to do — you know, besides pin some stuff — to actually make a little scratch? And is the time spent promoting someone else’s stuff actually worth it?

So, here are some tips when thinking of dipping your toe into the Pinterest affiliate marketing waters.

How to Make Some Moolah With Pinterest Affiliate Marketing

Step #1: Start With a Tribe, Then Find a Product

I know it’s tempting to want to sign up for a zillion affiliate programs, especially those with the high payouts, and start churning out hundreds of spammy pins to let the money just roll in.

Not only is this not very effective, but you’re likely to burn through the goodwill of your audience. Which is exactly what you need to focus on.

Your tribe. Not the product.

Three questions you want to ask:

What niche groups do I belong to? (Hobbies, interests, occupations, fitness, etc.)
What problems does this niche group have?
What products solve those problems?

An example:

I belong to the exceedingly cool and not dorky at all sub-culture of fantasy role playing games, like Dungeons and Dragons
One of the problems they/I encounter is what to do as a GM, game master, when you’re just starting out
Products such as beginner’s guides, resource lists and all-in-one combo packs would work well

Step #2: Browse the Major Affiliate Programs for Products

There are a TON of affiliate programs out there. Too many to mention all of them. But here are a couple of the biggest I recommend:

They all have their pros and cons. ShareASale and Impact Radius both have products with great payouts, some on a recurring basis, but conversion rates might be lower. I love using these two platforms for software and business-related stuff.

Clickbank and Commission Junction tend to be best for lifestyle and hobbyist stuff. (Just be sure to try out any product first; there’s a lot of junk out there.)

The commission on an Amazon sale is relatively low — 3-6% — but the level of trust is quite high, and people tend to fill their cart with a lot of stuff when following your link. (And don’t forget Audible. You get a $25/bounty every time somebody signs up for the service using your link.)

Note: Many programs won’t accept you if you don’t have a website, blog, or email list to market to.

Step #3: Generate Your Affiliate Link

Real simple. Generate the affiliate link for the program you want to promote.

It should look something like: https://mbsy.co/convertkit/42003161.

Step #4: Create Your Affiliate Marketing Pin

Here’s where the Pinterest rubber hits the affiliate road. But here are a couple of things to keep in mind:

You MUST mention it’s an affiliate link. You can either add the hashtag #affiliate or put in some disclaimer such as “Affiliate Link.” This is non-negotiable. Gotta do it.
Do NOT “dress up” your affiliate link with a prettier redirect such as “YourDomain.com/Product” or with a bit.ly or tiny.url redirect. These redirect tools wreak havoc with pins and cause your link to be broken. (See step #5 below for a sneaky way to get around this.)
Collage style-pins with multiple images work really well. Often better than the single shots.
Stock photos — especially those with models who look like they are on Lithium — don’t work so hot.
DIY photos that you took of the product work best. (Just make sure to brighten them up by boosting the saturation in a free tool such as Canva.)

Step #5: Pre-Sell the Product With a Blog Post or Video (Optional)

This is the absolute best strategy to kill it with Pinterest affiliate marketing. It takes a little extra effort, which is why most people won’t do it. But if you commit to it consistently, I promise you’ll see results.

This doesn’t mean it’s impossible to succeed at Pinterest affiliate marketing without a blog. (Or even succeed at Pinterest affiliate marketing without a website.) It just means you’ll have to keep a close eye on costs and ROI.

Here’s how this optional strategy works:

Create a blog post on your site and/or a YouTube video discussing the awesomeness of the product
Embed an affiliate link in the blog post or the YouTube description and video annotation (the bit of text in the corner of videos)
Create a pin that directs people to the video or the blog post

This works so well because you’re not “selling” the product. You’re “selling” helpful content, which just happens to have a handy-dandy affiliate link attached to it.

And here’s where you get to use your “friendly” URL. The absolute best way to do this is to use a redirection off your own website. If your site runs on WordPress, this is easy to do. (I like the “Redirection” plugin.) This will create a nice, attractive domain.com/nameofproduct URL for you. If your site runs on something else you may need to do a bit configuring.

I would highly recommend you NOT use bit.ly or tiny.url. Those tend to be seen as spammy and don’t convert as well.

But whatever you use, try out this extra bonus optional step and you’ll find your Pinterest affiliate efforts bring so much success, you might just need to handle a Pinterest manager to handle it all.