Can Pinterest really boost your affiliate earnings?
Absolutely!
If you follow the Pinterest affiliate marketing rules and leverage a Pinterest for business account, then you can find success using Pinterest to promote your affiliate links.
During my first year in affiliate marketing, I focused heavily on Pinterest affiliate marketing without a blog and had good success with it.
Later on, I discovered that the real advantages of Pinterest affiliate marketing came from pinning blog posts containing affiliate links.
So what makes Pinterest a goldmine for affiliate marketers, and how can you leverage its potential for affiliate marketing success?
In this blog post, I definitively answer the question, “Is Pinterest Good for Affiliate Marketing?“
Additionally, I share the strategies that have helped me earn $10k per month in affiliate commissions on Pinterest.
This blog earns me a full-time income from writing 1 – 2 blog posts a week and pinning my articles on Pinterest. If you want to learn how to start a money making blog, go register for this free training!
6 Reasons Why Pinterest is Good for Affiliate Marketing
When my Pinterest boards began appearing on the first page of Google search results, I realized Pinterest was a good place for promoting affiliate links.
The platform’s ability to drive organic traffic through not only Pinterest search, but also external search engines, makes it a valuable platform for affiliate marketing.
1. Pinterest Pins Show Up in Google Search
Search engines like Bing, Yahoo and Google index Pinterest pins and boards, giving your affiliate links a broader audience beyond Pinterest users.
This means if you optimize your pin titles and descriptions with relevant keywords, your pins can rank on Google’s search results for those keywords.
This is important for successfully using Pinterest for affiliate marketing.
The more eyeballs you can get on your content and affiliate links, the better the chances you’ll make an affiliate sale!
I’ve frequently had my Pinterest pins appear in Google search results for competitive keywords, even outranking top websites.
Many affiliate bloggers spend months, even years, trying to master first-page Google SEO.
But with Pinterest, you can quickly hack your way to the first page of Google and other search engines!
2. Reach More High Value Customers
Pinterest RPMs (revenue per mille) are often twice as valuable as those from sources like Google and Facebook, because Pinterest users are typically in a discovery and purchasing mindset.
People go to Pinterest to shop and plan for the future.
This includes finding the best summer vacation spots, discovering outfit trends, and learning about personal finance hacks to plan for retirement.
Additionally, statistics show that 1 in 3 Pinterest shoppers have an income of over $100k.
This makes Pinterest one of the best places to sell high-end affiliate products such as furniture, vacation packages and finance products, where you can earn bigger affiliate commissions.
There’s no other platform that even comes close to driving shoppers to make an online purchase than Pinterest.
If you learn how to harness the powers of Pinterest traffic, then you can make money on Pinterest with affiliate links!
3. Unmatched LifeSpan of Pinterest Pins
Social media posts usually have a short lifespan.
According to research conducted by Scott Graffius, the average half-life duration of tweets on Twitter is 43 minutes.
Pinterest on the other hand has an average half-life duration of almost 4 months. This means that your pins are potentially still reaching new audiences close to a year later!
In my experience, I’ve seen pins posted as far back as three years ago, like the birthday freebies pin below, still circulating years later.
This unmatched longevity of indexed pins ensures sustained traffic to your affiliate links over time, allowing you to consistently drive traffic and conversions long after their initial posting.
This is one of the main reasons I doubled down on my pinning efforts for my Pinterest blog.
4. Targeted Traffic to Affiliate Offers
Pinterest users often search with specific intent, so your pins can attract a highly targeted audience interested in your niche.
Think of Pinterest boards as specialized niche sites driving traffic to a specific topic, with Pinterest pins acting as targeted mini-ads capturing the interest of users actively searching for related content.
These boards effectively funnel engaged, relevant visitors to your content, making it easier to convert that traffic into affiliate sales.
For example, if you run an affiliate marketing blog focused on fitness, create boards dedicated to specific topics like “Home Workouts,” “Healthy Recipes,” and “Fitness Gear Reviews.”
Curate these boards with high-quality, visually appealing pins that link back to your blog posts or affiliate products.
Are you starting to see why Pinterest is amazing for affiliate marketing? The potential here is incredible!
My friend and Pinterest Marketing Expert, Nadalie Bardo, shows you exactly how to make visually appealing pins in her Next Level Pin Designs course. Use promo code: PILAR25 at checkout for a special discount!
5. Visual Appeal
Pinterest is a visually appealing platform.
The better you’re able to create and share eye-catching, high-quality pins, the more likely you’re to attract and engage your target audience.
Even without graphic design experience, you can stand out on Pinterest by leveraging freelancers.
We’re not all graced with good design skills, but that’s ok!
If that’s you, then you can utilize freelance websites such as Fiverr and 99Designs to find creative experts to help you design pins.
You can also ask the freelancer to create customizable reusable Canva templates. This way, you can easily update and customize pins yourself as needed.
In the past, I’ve also leveraged unlimited graphic design agencies like No Limit Creatives to produce a plethora of visually appealing graphics for me.
The more visually appealing pins you create, the better the chances that users will be inclined to click through to your content and to your affiliate links.
No Limit Creatives was gracious enough to give my readers a 50% discount on your first month of graphic + video design services. Simply choose any monthly package and use promo code PILAR50 at checkout to apply the discount.
6. Rich Pins Boost Conversions
Pinterest offers different types of rich pins such as product, recipe, and article rich pins that can help you boost your affiliate conversions.
For example, Product Rich Pins automatically update price, availability, and product details directly from your website.
This real-time information helps build trust and encourages immediate purchases of products and services.
Article Rich Pins display the headline, author, and a brief description of the article (such as the image below!).
These enhanced details make your content more appealing and clickable, which drive more traffic to your blog or website where affiliate links are embedded.
Recipe Rich Pins include ingredients, cooking times, and serving information, making it easy for users to save and try recipes.
This detailed content increases engagement and can drive traffic to your food-related affiliate links.
Btw – WP Tasty Pins is a good plug-in to use if you’re promoting an affiliate food blog on Pinterest. It’s specifically created for food bloggers!
6 Tips for Pinterest Affiliate Marketing Success
I’ve been promoting my affiliate links on Pinterest for a few years.
From my experience, I can tell you there are certain things you ABSOLUTELY need to do in order to successfully use Pinterest for affiliate marketing.
1️⃣ Follow the Pinterest Affiliate Marketing Rules
Pinterest does allow the use of affiliate links on their platform, as long as you abide by the Pinterest affiliate marketing rules.
Get to know these rules so you can avoid getting marked as spam or even worse get your account banned completely.
2️⃣ Do Pinterest Affiliate Marketing with a Blog
I know many affiliate marketers prefer using Pinterest to promote their affiliate links without a blog. However, this short-term tactic is gradually losing its effectiveness on the platform.
After experimenting with affiliate marketing both with and without a blog, it’s clear that you have a much HIGHER chance of making sales with long-form blogging content.
3️⃣ Enable Rich Pins
Rich pins stand out in search results, making your content more discoverable and attractive to your audience.
Additionally, rich pins have shown to increase your conversion rates. It’s a MUST do for affiliate marketers on Pinterest!
4️⃣ Optimize Pins for Search and Discovery
This means adding SEO meta-data to your Pinterest creatives before uploading them.
Additionally, ensure your Pinterest boards and pins are rich in relevant keywords related to your topic.
5️⃣ Use Pinterest Trends
Use the Pinterest Trends tool to identify popular and emerging keywords to create timely and relevant content that attracts more traffic.
If you understand what users are searching for, you can optimize your pins and boards for higher visibility and engagement.
6️⃣ Stay Consistent
Regular pinning keeps your content in front of users, increasing engagement and driving more traffic to your affiliate links.
Consistency also helps build trust and authority within your niche, which can lead to higher conversion rates over time.
This free resource will show you how to set up your Pinterest account in 5 steps with helpful instructions.
Final Thoughts: Is Pinterest Good for Affiliate Marketing?
Pinterest is a fantastic platform for affiliate marketing thanks to its engaged high value users, eye-catching format, and strong search features.
By using rich pins, focusing on SEO, and keeping a consistent pinning schedule, you can drive targeted traffic and increase affiliate conversions.
Get started with optimizing your Pinterest strategy and see how this powerful platform can elevate your affiliate marketing game.
Next, you may be interested in reading my best affiliate marketing tips to increase your commissions payout!
Ready to Start Pinning on Pinterest for Affiliate Sales?
Take the Pinterest Popular course by Nadalie Bardo and enter promo code PILAR25 at checkout for an additional discount!
