How to Make Money with Pinterest Affiliate Links

Wait, wait, wait… didn’t Pinterest take away the feature of posting affiliate links? Yes, they did in 2015, to fight spam and scams. They worked on the algorithms and improved them, so now bloggers can enjoy the privilege of using Pinterest affiliate links again! 

Why would I make Pinterest Affiliate Posts?

Most of the bloggers love affiliate marketing because it’s quite a passive way of making money online: you can receive affiliate commissions from the same post for many years without making any additional effort if the post is popular. Isn’t it amazing? Affiliate links on Pinterest are even cooler because you are not doing all the work on your own, you have the entire Pinterest audience to help you spread your link.

Just to make sure we are on the same page, everyone knows how affiliate links work, right? Well, in a few words: a blogger shares links to products that he personally tried and loved, motivating his readers to make a purchase through his link to receive in return a commission from the seller.

It means, the blogger earns a small commission for each sale made through his affiliate links, but the buyers don’t pay anything extra, to the contrary, there are often deals with discounts available via affiliate links. The seller always pays the commission to the blogger!

Lots of bloggers make from $1k to $50k per month (!) just on affiliate marketing. I can give you a more specific example: you want to know how Ana from The She Approach makes over $10,000 a month with affiliate marketing on her blog, her Affiliate Marketing Training Bundle is the best place to learn.

I guess you are ready to start posting your affiliate links on Pinterest now, right? Well, make sure you already have a website running for this because most of the affiliate programs require submitting your site to register. It doesn’t take much time, though, I have a beginner step-by-step tutorial that will show you how you can start a blog in just 10 minutes without technical skills. This post contains affiliate links. For more information, see my disclosures here.

Just in case you were wondering if you can actually make money with affiliates, I make about 90% of the income on AnastasiaBlogger.com on affiliate products. Here are my TOP affiliate offers and networks.

• Flexoffers: so far, this is my best paying affiliate network.

• Bluehost: My best selling affiliate product. I run my blog with this hosting provider. If you use my link to buy their hosting, you get a 50% discount, they also give you a free domain and free SSL certificate if you use my link to register.
• iGain: – I get mostly survey offers from this network, and the income is the third best in my list, so if I were you, I would get registered as their affiliate too, it’s free! And if you were interested whether my blogging journey has been successful so far, here is  How much I made in the first 6 Months Blogging.

Popular niches for Pinterest affiliate links

You should start by looking at the people around you, who is the typical Pinterest user, what are their interest and needs? It’s well known that the majority of Pinterest users are women, so think of the ways you could sell things to them!

• Kids and mother goods. Is there anything a mother wouldn’t buy if it’s her child that needs it? You can create boards with cute kids clothes, toddler snacks, furniture for children, toys, games and other stuff that children love.
• DIY + Crafts Blogs. Give affiliate links to your craft supplies, tools, along with other images aiming to inspire the creativity of your audience.
• Food and Cooking. Open new boards with your favorite recipes, and add links to your favorite kitchen appliances, cookbooks, etc.
• Fashion and Style. If you paid attention to this, most of the fashion-related post on Pinterest or any other social platform, are stuffed with affiliate links! It seems that fashion & style content was created for affiliate marketing! You can promote every part of the model’s outfit, and it will still look natural because after all, isn’t 90% of the fashion all about brands? So you just share the links to the brands.
• All about Blogging. There are so many niche information products for bloggers and money-makers, so many online service providers have affiliate programs, including blog hosting companies, email marketing tools, WordPress templates, etc.

Pinterest Affiliate Tips

Pinterest took down the affiliate link feature in 2015 for a reason. It was too much spam around it. I hope you are not on the dark side, just like me, so it’s important to know the main Pinterest Affiliate Tips that will help your pins look natural and not like spam.

1. Disclosure is a must!

Never ever miss adding a disclosure to an affiliate link on Pinterest. The service insists that you have to add a disclosure to your pin description. This is also the requirement of any respectable affiliate program, which is obliged to do so by FTC regulations. The disclosure can look as simple as #afflink at the end of your description.

2. Do not use short links on Pinterest.

Another critically important thing to which many bloggers don’t pay attention. You can’t use services like Pretty Link, Bit.ly, etc. to make your links look pretty – in Pinterest’s Acceptable Use Policy this is explicitly forbidden.

3. Create a board dedicated only to affiliate products.

For example, the board could be called “Best Blogging Resources.” This is very straightforward, all your subscribers will know, when they are ready to purchase a service or product, they can go directly to this board of yours and get a discount or bonus, which are very often included in affiliate programs.

4. Get the maximum from pin descriptions.

I hope you already understood that pins with affiliate links don’t go to your site, so all the words you would have told to your audience to sell the product, you don’t have them anymore. All you have at your disposal is the pin description. So use it at the maximum to recommend the product, make it informative and don’t forget to include keywords that will help Pinterest users to find your pin!

Try to make a mini-review of the product in 2-3 sentences that will fit the description limits (what the product does, why you recommend it, what is its value for buyers).

5. Don’t go crazy pinning affiliate links.

You know how important is blogger’s credibility, right? If you use too many affiliate links on Pinterest, your followers will turn off of you! Make sure you don’t betray your blog’s authenticity for pins with affiliate links – try to use in the same colors and style.

6. Test multiple images for affiliate pins.

Just like with your non-promotional pins, an image can change a lot. The same content can get 100 times more repins with a better image. So, for the pins with affiliate products, try to experiment with different images, don’t stick only to what the product seller provided, add your personal touch. This makes you different from all other bloggers who tend to reuse the same pin images again and again.

7. Use Pinterest scheduler to spread affiliate links in pins over time.

Can you imagine how irritating for your followers can be seeing 10 pins with affiliate links in a row? To avoid this, try to spread your affiliate pins over time using Pinterest scheduling tools like Tailwind.

These services will make your Pinterest activity so much easier! You can schedule your pins with affiliate links to be repinned as many times as you need, and at the best hours you define.

• Bonus Trick for Tailwind

Try using “Board Lists” feature – this allows you to schedule affiliate pins to multiples boards with a few clicks! By the way, if you register on Tailwind using this link, you will get a $15 credit for your first month!

Here is a quick video that explains how to use this amazing time-saving feature:

By the way, Tailwind can also be used to schedule your posts on Instagram. Here is a video which shows how you can find hashtags which are the best for your post. Tailwind suggests Pinterest hashtags based on your post content. It’s actually a unique feature of Tailwind.

HOW I USE PINTEREST FOR MY OWN ONLINE BUSINESS AND MY RESULTS

When my site was just a little over 1 year old, I started with a 0 following Pinterest account and by the 10^thmonth blogging, I reached 172,000 monthly pageviews to my blog, with about 90% of traffic coming from Pinterest.

I started my second blog in Feb 2018, and the new blog momshealth.co already hit 74,000 monthly pageviews in less than 90 days! And again, almost all the traffic comes from Pinterest.

If you are interested in growing your Pinterest traffic fast, you can get yourself set up for success with my Pinterest SEO Traffic Secrets course. It’s over 6 hours of video training packed with my personal know-hows and Pinterest hacks.

I can guarantee that at least 50% of the Pinterest tips and tricks I share with you in the course, are absolutely exclusive and you will not find them in any other Pinterest course.

If you don’t need to grow fast and don’t mind working at your 9-5 job for a lot longer, you can totally keep reading my emails and posts because I also share tons of free advice. It’s just a matter of how FAST you want to grow your blog and income.

Did you find this post useful? Save THIS PIN to your Pinterest marketing board on Pinterest and check the most important tips later again.

How to Make Money with Pinterest Affiliate Links

Print

Instructions

1. Why would I make Pinterest Affiliate Posts?
2. Popular niches for Pinterest affiliate links
3. Pinterest Affiliate Tips
4. Create a board dedicated only to affiliate products

Anastasia Blogger

I’m Anastasia and I’m a full-time blogger, online entrepreneur, and Pinterest marketing strategist. I help digital entrepreneurs and bloggers drive targeted traffic from Pinterest either through my online courses or through Pinterest consultancy.

Sharing is caring!