Your complete guide to Pinterest affiliate marketing

Pinterest is an excellent channel to boost affiliate sales. It’s one of the most affiliate-friendly social media platforms and boasts a monthly active user base of 445 million.

With the right products and marketing strategy, you can grow an audience and drive sales. In this guide, we’ll reveal how you can make money with Pinterest affiliate marketing in five simple steps.

Let’s dive in.

Is affiliate marketing allowed on Pinterest?

Yes. You can promote affiliate links on Pinterest. But you need to follow the community guidelines and terms of service. 

First, you shouldn’t cloak your affiliate links. The Pinterest community guidelines state:

“Pinners should be able to reasonably anticipate where your link will take them.”

Second, you need to disclose affiliate links with a “Sponsored” label in the description of your Pin.

Breaching the guidelines could get you banned from the platform. In some cases, Pinterest will block all activity from your IP address.

If you have multiple affiliate marketing sites, using a tool like Multilogin can help you avoid IP bans. 

You can create a virtual browser with a customizable digital fingerprint to keep your Pinterest account segregated. It reduces the risk of an IP ban stalling the growth of your affiliate marketing business.

How to do affiliate marketing on Pinterest in 5 steps

1. Find the right affiliate programs

The first step is to find affiliate products to promote on Pinterest. 

Pinterest audiences are different from other social media platforms. Some niches are much more suitable for the platform than others.

So finding out which niches are popular is an excellent place to start.

A study in 2017 revealed some insights into what’s popular. But you should also consider the types of people that primarily use Pinterest. 

Most users are female, but the platform has seen a significant increase in male Millenials and Gen Z users over the last couple of years. In addition, Pinterest users typically have higher average incomes than other platforms.

Once you’ve settled on a niche, you can use our list of the top affiliate marketing platforms to find a merchant to partner with. 

If you don’t know what makes a good affiliate program, check out our post on how to choose affiliate offers.

Create affiliate Pins

Before you promote any affiliate links, sign up for a Pinterest business account. This will allow you to access analytics to measure your marketing performance. 

Now, there are two ways that you can use Pinterest for affiliate marketing. 

Add Pins for your website content

You can create Pins for every blog post on your affiliate website.

Click on the plus sign (+) at the top of your Pinterest profile, and then “Create Pin” from the dropdown menu. 

Next, add a catchy title, description, and image for your affiliate Pin.

Pinterest is a visual platform, so make sure your Pin is eye-catching and clickable.

Here’s an example:

The last step is to add your webpage URL to the destination link box. 

You can reach a bigger audience by creating several Pins for your affiliate blog post. Try different image and title combinations and use your analytics to see which performs best. 

Post direct affiliate links

Pinterest also allows you to add affiliate links directly to your Pins. 

Some merchants don’t allow direct affiliate links on social media, so check the terms of your affiliate program before using this method. 

The process is very similar to the steps above. You’ll need a high-quality product image, a compelling description, and a clickable title.

Instead of a link to your website, add your affiliate link in the destination link box. 

This type of post can generate sales. But you need to avoid being over-promotional and spammy. 

Find a balance between promotional Pinterest affiliate links and educational posts. That way, you’ll find it easier to grow an audience and attract potential customers. 

Optimize for Pinterest SEO

Pinterest is a visual search engine. Like other search engines, you can optimize content to increase your ranking and reach.

Around 97% of Pinterest searches are unbranded. Instead, people use keywords to search the platform for trends, recipes, and inspiration.

So you should focus your Pinterest affiliate marketing strategy on educational and solution-based content. 

First, you need to discover which search terms your audience is using with a tool like Ubersuggest or Keywords Everywhere.

Enter your seed keyword, and you’ll see the monthly search volume, SEO difficulty, and paid difficulty.

The tool will also show you related keyword suggestions.

Good target keywords have a high search volume and low SEO difficulty. However, you can still target competitive search terms. The key is to offer something different and more valuable than what’s already published on Pinterest. 

Once you’ve identified a target keyword, the next step is to analyze the competition.

Head to Pinterest and look at the top Pins for your target keyword and the types of content that perform well. You can use these insights to inform your content creation.

The last step is to create your content and post it on Pinterest. Make sure you include primary and secondary target keywords in your Pin titles, descriptions, and Board descriptions.

Analyze performance

Pinterest Analytics can help you track and measure the performance of your Pins and Boards. 

You can see impressions and engagement metrics to determine which topics and formats perform best. You’ll also be able to see demographic data and find out more about your audience.

Creating a custom Google Analytics segment for your Pinterest traffic is also a good idea. You’ll be able to see how these users engage with your affiliate content and compare the conversion rate to your other traffic sources. 

Boost high-performing Pins with ads

You can scale and grow faster using Pinterest Ads.

Use your analytics to determine which organic Pins generate the most engagement, clickthroughs, and conversions. These top-performing Pins should be the foundation for your Pinterest Ads campaigns.

Creating an ad is easy. Click on Ads in the top menu of your Business Account and choose the Pin you want to boost. 

You can set a maximum campaign budget and duration. There are also targeting options to help you narrow in on your target audience.

This Pinterest marketing strategy can be super effective if you promote high-ticket affiliate products. 

Make money online with Pinterest affiliate marketing

Pinterest is one of the best social media platforms for marketers. Using the Pinterest affiliate marketing tips above, you can drive more traffic to your affiliate content, grow your audience, and make more sales. 

But you should minimize the risk of account bans. Multilogin can help you grow while protecting your affiliate brands and ad accounts. 

Visit our dedicated affiliate marketing use case page to learn how Multilogin can help you grow on Pinterest.