Make the most of Pinterest with affiliate marketing
The world of affiliate marketing keeps on growing and flourishing day by day. New tendencies come into sight, providing more and more opportunities for everyone already involved in the field, as well as opening doors and welcoming newcomers. It seems as though competing with each other and trying to outvie, developers are not twiddling thumbs and constantly creating novel products that, from the very outset, look much alike. But that's not so! Every product has its own unique features that might perform in different ways, and our goal is to take full advantage of them.
One such a product is Pinterest. Some can assume that this platform has no value in affiliate marketing because there are more powerful competitors on stage, like Instagram, Facebook, etc. We're going to prove them wrong! For a start, let's take a good look at the platform itself.
A few words on Pinterest
Before getting down to Pinterest affiliate marketing, you should get the hang of what Pinterest actually is, the way it operates, and how it is organized.
In plain English, deriving from 'pin' and 'interest', it's like a new take on an old-style pinboard. That is, it's a social platform where users share their ideas and interests by means of composing short posts containing images, videos, or text descriptions and 'pinning' them on 'boards'. That way, the users gather everything they like on the internet and bring together in one place. It has become an enormous e-catalog with a vast number of topics to choose from and amass a collection.
Even though the platform is rather young (launched in 2010), it has won the audience's favor. Suffice it to take a glance at stats.
Advantages of Pinterest over others
As we have already mentioned above, every product has its own peculiarities and advantages over others; otherwise, it will become useless and won't live. And being involved in affiliate marketing, you should be well aware of these advantages with a view to deriving benefits from them. Some folks mistakenly believe that Pinterest is Instagram's twin and turn a blind eye to its existence. Pinterest does really stand out. For instance, you can add posts on any device, publish any graphic content, create an innumerable quantity of pins, or easily repost via a special plugin.
Furthermore, it seems like guys from Pinterest make every effort to create all conditions for affiliate marketers. Firstly, pins on the platform hang around forever and don't disappear: being picked up or shared, they continue showing up in users' feeds. And thus, you can keep constantly promoting products or services. Secondly, Pinterest allows users to publish affiliate links. Thirdly, the platform's target audience consists of financially reliable users, mostly from the US and Europe. Check out the latest stats below.
On top of that, according to data, 40% of subscribers plan purchases through the platform and use it as a search engine, 32% of the audience follow brands and companies on Pinterest. Fourthly, activities on the platform are free and won't cost either you or your readers anything extra. So many opportunities for affiliate marketing, aren't they?
And what is more, Pinterest has a wide range of themes and categories, so you'll surely find your own niche. The company is also focused on improving the shopping experience, expanding its programs to assist brands in advertising, eCommerce, content creating, building an effective presence on the platform. For your reference https://business.pinterest.com/en.
How to do affiliate marketing on Pinterest
Now when you've got a foretaste of the platform and its advantages, let's move to Pinterest affiliate marketing strategy and the way to apply it. The gist of this strategy is to provide additional promotion of products, services, or brands on the platform by creating a post (a pin) and adding an affiliate link to it. When viewers go to your pin and click on the link, it redirects them to the intended source, and you get a commission.
And here's our three-step guidelines to put that into perspective.
First of all, it's necessary to sign up and create an account. Let us skip this step, for it's a snap.
Then, you should go to your account and create a new board. A board is a folder containing your pins. There is no limit on the number of boards you can create, but keep in mind that they should fall into categories accordingly. So, click on 'create board', fill in 'name' and 'visibility'.
Then, hit 'create pin' on your board and complete a form adding a title, description, image, and referral link. And that's the lot!
After saving your pin appears on your board, you can change and edit it at any moment.
On the one hand, the mechanism is very simple – all you need to do is to integrate a referral link into your pin, on the other hand, your posts should be catchy and attractive, your audience should be large and engaged, otherwise, it won't work. Composing an appealing pin requires a bit time and creativity, for title and description should be both intriguing and to the point, as well as rich in keywords. When it comes to gaining followers, it is not that easy.
In order to grow the audience, you'll have to make more efforts in terms of creating dozens of accounts, hundreds of boards, and thousands of pins. You will need to devote much time to search for people in your niche, follow others, repin the most popular content, learn your targeted audience and their interests, develop a reputation, gain loyalty, etc.
You can find more insights on making money with affiliate marketing in general in our previous article https://ungads.com/blog/start-earn-as-affiliate.
Best programs for Pinterest affiliate marketing
There are a lot of affiliate programs to apply on Pinterest, but not all of them can work well. It can depend on several factors, such as a chosen niche, audience, or Pinterest's bans. For example, the company can block Amazon's referral links. That's why we recommend that you don't choose Amazon Associates Program to work with on Pinterest.
Aliexpress is one of the largest world's retailers with a wide range of goods and categories. No matter what topic you choose on Pinterest, partnering with Aliexpress might be very profitable (8.5% commission).
Another beneficial program is Essayprofit. Although it's focused on a certain niche, an educational one, you'll find out that it's a quite popular area on Pinterest. Moreover, Essayprofit offers a high commission – 10%.
Financing is also among the most chosen topics on the platform, that's why you can derive profits from Pinterest using programs related to this niche. For example, Volsor, a financial affiliate program with a focus on European traffic, might be very beneficial (you'll get your 7% commission).
One more profitable program to use on Pinterest is ShareASale. ShareASale provides thousands of different retailers to choose from.
Some programs, however, specify their requirements. For instance, to sign up for MagickLinks, at least 100 Pinterest followers are needed. MagickLinks single program can cover thousands of products from various retailers. Thus, if you have a sufficient number of followers, then MagickLinks will surely help you get a boost on the platform.
Recommendations and best practices
Pinterest affiliate marketing has some peculiarities that should be taken into account. Therefore, having them properly analyzed, we would like to provide some recommendations to empower your affiliate efforts on Pinterest.
The more popular the topic is, the larger the audience is. That's why it's better to select the most popular themes and categories to work with. But you must be wondering which ones are prevalent now out there. Here's the list!
Popular themes on Pinterest for 2020
- Finding balance
- Conscious consumption
- Home hub
- Internationally inspired
- Pampered pets
- Responsible travel
- Rewilding
- Space everything
- 90s rerun
- Beyond Binary
Most popular Pinterest categories
- Art, Art Supplies, Hobbies (48%)
- Flowers, Food, Drinks, Gifts (47%)
- Home, Garden, Pool/Spa (45%)
- Health and Beauty (45%)
- Clothing and Apparel (37%)
As previously noted, the majority of Pinterest's users are from the USA and Europe. Thus, working with traffic from these regions would be your optimal decision.
Creating and pimping accounts manually can be tough and time-consuming. Make it easy, using special services that sell reliable accounts, for example, BuyAccs.
Working with the bulk of profiles seems overwhelming, doesn't it? No worries, hang loose! Automate your process with the help of Pinflux 2 Elite, Pinterest marketing automation software. Or you can simplify your activity by scheduling pins with the help of Tailwind.
Create a big variety of diverse boards (move beyond 10) but keep them contained within one niche.
Most people can be easily hooked on appealing visual content. That's why, when composing a pin, make sure that you use high-quality, unique, and relevant images.
You should be active, update your posts regularly, add the new ones, write comments, monitor pins of other users, and interact with them. Additionally, test your link and create a URL redirect, if it was banned.
According to statistics, more than 70% of global Pinterest users are women. This fact shouldn't be disregarded when you choose a category and compose your post.
Don't forget to disclose your affiliate links, it's a general requirement of the Federal Trade Commission. You can do it with the help of hashtags at the end of the pin, for example.
Pinterest affiliate marketing is a quick and easy way to get rather big additional profit. According to stats, the average income can amount to $1000 per day. Even beginners start with $20-200 daily earnings. It doesn't require special knowledge, skills, and even big investments. But keep in mind, the results on Pinterest are dependent on your effort. The more you pin, the more chances of success. You should test different offers and experiment with variations of descriptions and visual content in order to find out whether they could work or not. Pinterest affiliate marketing can either be a single strategy or complement to others. Either way, applying it wisely, you'll capture the full benefits.