Pinterest Affiliate Marketing: A Comprehensive Guide for 2024 - Shopify

Millions of people pin products to Pinterest boards each year. Here’s how to earn passive income as an affiliate marketer on the platform.

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Pinterest is more than a social media platform; it’s a visual search engine where users go to discover ideas and inspiration. For affiliate marketers, this makes Pinterest an opportunity to reach a highly engaged audience actively seeking products and solutions.

Ahead, learn how to put your Pinterest account to work and generate passive income on the platform.

Pinterest is a social media platform with 522 million active monthly users and a reach that covers everyone from Gen Z to high-income households.

On Pinterest, content is formatted as “pins,” which contain images, videos, and links to a website. Users browse and save pins to create virtual mood boards.

Pinterest affiliate marketing is a way to earn money by promoting products and services through pins on Pinterest. When users click on an affiliate link in your pin and make a purchase from your affiliate partner, you receive a commission. This method allows you to combine your passion for sharing social content with the potential for income generation.

More targeted than social commerce, Pinterest affiliate marketing builds on the idea of community and shared interests. If you are promoting products on Pinterest, you are typically reaching an audience with interests in niche markets such as travel, home décor, food, and other visually appealing areas.

The process of promoting affiliate links through Pinterest is straightforward. It involves capturing traffic on the platform and driving it toward your affiliate partner’s website. Here are the basic steps:

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Pinterest boasts a massive user base of over 522 million monthly active users, with a significant portion being open to making purchases based on what they discover.

As an affiliate marketer, you can use Pinterest to drive traffic to your affiliate content, whether that’s blog posts, affiliate landing pages, or YouTube videos.

Here’s why Pinterest stands out as an attractive platform for affiliate marketing:

The more people who see your affiliate links, the higher chance you have of generating affiliate sales and earning commission.

“I’ve been able to grow my Pinterest following to almost 50,000 and get 50% of my blog traffic from it,” says Daniella Flores, founder of the side hustle education website I Like to Dabble.

To effectively promote affiliate links on Pinterest, it’s essential to understand its user demographics:

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Here are some tips to help you get started as a Pinterest affiliate marketer:

Do your due diligence and learn the rules for creating, pinning, and sharing affiliate content on Pinterest. Key guidelines to follow as an affiliate marketer include:

Violating any of these guidelines could result in your Pinterest content being blocked.

For each affiliate marketing post you create, generate several pins containing that affiliate link. The more affiliate pins you have, the more opportunities you have for audience engagement, which can include saves, clicks, video views, comments, and follows. The threshold of good engagement typically starts at 1%.

You can search for pins on Pinterest by keyword or phrase, for example. Take a look at the search results for your industry or niche. Chances are, there’s a range of visual content on display, from black and white photos to colorful graphics.

Search results for the phrase “DIY home office ideas.” Pinterest

“You can use the multiple-pin strategy as an opportunity to go after a wider variety of keywords,” says finance affiliate marketer R.J. Weiss. “If you have a post on making money, you could create a pin optimized for many related keywords that match the search intent of making money, for example, side hustle, earning extra cash. This can all be driven back to a single page on your site.”

There’s no rule on how many affiliate pins you can create for a single piece of content or link. The key to a successful pin is a high-quality graphic that will stand out from the crowd. Try experimenting with different pin templates, including:

Creating new pins can be time-consuming. Bryan Maniotakis, owner of Minimal Goods, which curates minimally designed home and office products, is one affiliate marketer using automation to speed up the process.

“I’m currently using an automation tool to automatically generate a Pinterest banner whenever it detects a new article on my site,” Bryan says. “Overall, it saves me a ton of time every single month, because I no longer have to generate these Pinterest assets manually.”

Try creating various types of pins, such as infographics, videos, and carousel pins. This diversity can help you reach a broader audience and keep your content fresh.

Experiment with different pin formats, such as:

Rich pins automatically pull data from your website, making it easier for users to make informed decisions.

As the name suggests, rich pins are more descriptive than standard images you’ll see on Pinterest. They show extra information in the pin description, including product pricing and availability—often attracting more attention on a crowded feed as a result.

Enable rich pins for:

The process for creating and enabling rich pins only needs to be completed once. After you’re set up, all future eligible pins will become rich pins.

One time-saving Pinterest affiliate marketing tip is to schedule pins in advance. Automation apps like Tailwind, Later, and Hootsuite allow you to set a custom schedule, add new content to your queue, then automatically add pins to your board.

By scheduling pins in advance, you can maximize the chance of reaching users when they’re online.

Not all Pinterest boards have to be an individual’s mood board. Group boards exist to help multiple users share content to one board. A natural byproduct of this community-style board is greater awareness. Users promote pins to each other’s audience.

Find relevant boards in the niche your affiliate products fall into using tools like Pingroupie.

If you’re an affiliate for craft products, for example, Crochet Community Board would be one worth contributing to.

Read group board descriptions for guidance on how to become a contributor. Many require you to follow the creator of the board.

You’ll also find terms for posting new content to a new group board. Some admins don’t allow affiliate links directly to product pages—work around this by using blog content or a YouTube video as your landing page.

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

To accomplish this, utilize search engine optimization (SEO) best practices, such as using keywords with purchase intent and rich pins, which automatically pull metadata so your pins stay up to date. This can help increase traffic and user engagement, build brand awareness, and strengthen audience loyalty because your pins provide current and helpful information.

The Pinterest algorithm connects pins with keywords. So, start by finding the keywords your target audience is searching for. Several keyword tools exist to help you conduct keyword research—some are even free. Try free versions of Ahrefs, Moz Keyword Explorer, or Keyword Everywhere.

Growth marketing consultant Matt Lally, founder of MattyAds, shares his process of discovering lucrative Pinterest keywords.

“Sign into Pinterest Ads and find keywords that have between 10,000 and 100,000 monthly volume,” says Matt. “You want to use the main keywords often in your Pinboard, as well as in your pin creatives.”

Matt suggests taking your keyword and searching it on Pinterest.

“Find what style of content ranks well and produce four to six separate variations,” he says.

Once you have your keywords, focus on several areas to help successfully implement your Pinterest SEO, including:

A well-optimized Pinterest profile can impact the visibility and reach of your pins. Try these profile enhancements:

Monica Lent, founder of Affilimate, finds Pinterest can be tough for affiliate marketers because people use the platform aspirationally.

“Most pinners aren’t looking to solve an immediate problem and make a purchase to do so,” says Monica. “They’re planning for the future—long past the expiration date of your affiliate cookie.

She says the best affiliate marketing strategy for Pinterest is to capture readers’ email addresses.

“That way, you can promote affiliate products through drip email campaigns that take the time to educate readers and warm them up to your offer,” says Monica.

The simplest way to do this is by including an email opt-in on your landing page. Invite Pinterest visitors to join your mailing list by giving an incentive—such as a content-centered lead magnet, discount code, or another perk or freebie. Then, build an email campaign that continues to nurture that relationship.

The key to successful Pinterest affiliate marketing is understanding what makes your pins perform well.

Use Pinterest’s built-in data tool, Pinterest analytics, to review your monthly performance. Assess your best pins, user interactions, and topics of interest to your audience to gain insights about how to improve.

Follow these metrics to monitor your content:

Look at metrics such as impressions, clicks, and saves to understand what content resonates.

Monitor the click-through rates (CTR) of your pins. This metric indicates how many users who saw your content then took your desired action (visiting your affiliate partner). You may find some of your pins are better at attracting attention, while others do a better job of persuading users to click.

What percentage of people see your pin and click it? Do specific pins get more clicks? Do pins with an endorsement from a well-known blogger or influencer drive more traffic than those without?

Use the dashboard provided by your affiliate partner or platform to track conversions from your Pinterest traffic. Understanding which pins drive sales can help you optimize your future content. To do this, you’ll need to ensure your affiliate links have unique tracking codes.

Pay close attention to your conversion rate on items you heavily promoted with minimal product sales, or items you’ve not promoted with high conversion rates.

The best analytics in the world mean little if you’re not prepared to act on your findings. Based on your analysis, adjust your content strategy to focus on what works best. Experiment with different types of content, keywords, and posting times to improve your results.

Bolster your marketing efforts by buying ads on Pinterest. According to Pinterest, the best performing ads often:

Promoting high-performing pins together with organic pins can drive more traffic and grow your audience. Use sponsored pins to promote an affiliate link directly or drive users back to your affiliate marketing content.

To succeed with Pinterest affiliate marketing, follow these best practices, and get pinning!

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To share an affiliate link on Pinterest, create a Pinterest business account, load a new pin, and enter a direct affiliate link as the source URL. You can also direct people to affiliate-related content, such as blog posts or videos, to prime users before they purchase. Affiliate pins and other content should disclose affiliate links where it is required by law.

Yes, it’s possible to make money online through Pinterest by sharing affiliate links on the platform. You’ll earn commission—the percentage varies by brand—when users purchase products through your affiliate link. To get started, create a Pinterest account, join an affiliate marketing program, and share your affiliate products and links in your pins.

Marketers are allowed to share links from various affiliate networks, including ClickBank. Just make sure you follow Pinterest’s community guidelines for sharing affiliate content on the platform.

Pinterest allows users to share affiliate links from Amazon Associates. These links must be clear, as the Pinterest platform doesn’t allow links to be disguised.

Stay updated with Pinterest’s guidelines and best practices. Diversify your marketing strategies and focus on creating high-quality content that provides value to your audience.

Follow the 80/20 rule when posting affiliate content: 80% valuable, engaging content and 20% promotional content. This helps maintain follower engagement and trust.

Use the analytics dashboard available to Pinterest business account users to see which pins are driving your traffic and earning you affiliate commission.

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