Pinterest Affiliate Marketing: Guide to Passive Income in 2023

Want to make passive income with Pinterest affiliate marketing in 2023?

Pinterest has something that other social networks lack. I am talking about one of the most important qualities that will allow you to earn a passive income. Want to know what is it and how you can leverage your affiliate marketing on this platform?

Then keep reading, and I’ll show you how to create a Pinterest affiliate marketing strategy that works.

*Disclosure: I only recommend products I would use myself, and all opinions expressed here are my own. This post may contain affiliate links that at no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission.

But first, what is Pinterest Affiliate marketing?

Pinterest affiliate marketing is when you recommend products or services on Pinterest with your affiliate links.

Then, when a user purchases one of the products or services you recommended, you get a commission.

This is a great strategy that will help you make money on Pinterest. Even if you don’t have a website, you can still use this strategy using your affiliate links directly.

It is, without a doubt, one of the best ways to make money online and earn a passive income.

Why Pinterest?

When it comes to digital marketing, you need to work smart. This means you should focus your time mainly on strategies with a good ROI instead of trying to have a presence on every social media platform.

It is smart to focus on Pinterest because it will drive organic traffic to your content for months, which translates into higher revenue.

This is something that the rest of networks like Facebook or Twitter lacks. As soon as you post something on them, the lifespan compared to pins on Pinterest is nothing! Your posts will get lost in minutes, if not seconds. But on Pinterest, it will stay visible for months.

But first, you will need to get familiarised with how it works. It also requires a bit of basic SEO understanding. But don’t worry, it is not complicated, and I will show you how to do it in this post.

How to do affiliate marketing on Pinterest

Creating affiliate pins is pretty straightforward. In this section, I’ll show you how to use affiliate links on Pinterest step by step.

The first thing you should do is spend some time optimizing your profile. This will increase your chances of being found.

This is exactly how you need to do it:

Step #1. If you don’t have it yet, create a Pinterest business account and enable rich pins. That gives you a type of pin that offers more information about your landing page than a regular Pin.

Step #2. Add keywords to your profile. To do that, head to the top menu, and click on Settings> Edit profile. Here is where you need to add relevant keywords to the products or services you want to promote.

And as simple as that is how you optimize your Pinterest profile for SEO.

The next you’ll need for this strategy to work is to find the right affiliates.

Try to choose affiliate programs that:

• Offer high recurring commissions.
• Have a long cookie lifespan.
• Have evergreen products with great brand recognition.
• Use attractive and professional-looking materials.
• Offer affiliate partner training.

Whatever you choose, make sure they all are in the same niche. You will need to create several boards, and you should be able to save your affiliates on several related boards. Filling boards with relevant content and with frequency is how you leverage your game.

Lastly, I suggest you check the best affiliate programs to join, which do not require a website.

Boards are the “folders” where you save your pins.

When creating boards, it is important you only save pins related to your board title and description. By keeping relevant pins on your boards, you will increase your chances of being discovered.

Is a good practice to start at least with 10 boards. These boards should be all related to your niche but diversify the topics.

Also, for the boards to get some traction and for the Pinterest algorithm to understand them, you should include at least 10 related pins on each of them.

Lastly, it is essential to add keywords to your board names and descriptions. This is how you optimize your boards for SEO search.

Pinterest is a visual search engine. So I don’t need to tell you how important your cover is if you want people to click on it.

Before creating the cover, you will need to know what product or service you are going to promote so you can create your cover accordingly. Some of the best practices for pin covers are:

• Use the aspect ratio of 2:3 (vertical.)
• Use images of great quality related to the product or service you want to promote.
• Include a clear title on your pin. Use legible fonts and at least 16px.
• Use bright colors- they are more eye-catching.

Now, when it comes to designing your pin cover, you have two options:

1. Do it yourself in Canva. If you are good with designs, try this. It is not complicated.
2. If you are not good at designing, simply hire a freelance on Fiverr to create covers for just $5. Easy peasy.

Also, infographics work very well on this platform. This is an example of a pin I created that is doing great:

As you can see, this pin covers all the aspects mentioned before. And although it might not be a piece of art, it works and drives traffic to my site, which is the ultimate objective.

Now you have all the elements you need to start your marketing strategy, let’s create the pin.

The elements you need to create a pin with your affiliate link are:

• The pin cover, which you just created in the previous step.
• The pin title. You should include keywords and be helpful so users want to click on your pin by reading the title.
• The pin description. A brief description should include the why (why the pin is valuable to your readers) and the what (what benefits you get if you click). It should also contain related keywords.
• The link. Lastly, you need to add your affiliate link so that when users click, they get redirected. The link can go directly to an affiliate or a blog post.

Once you have everything, you just need to publish your pin.

I will cover exactly how to add your affiliate link and publish it in the next section.

How to use Pinterest for affiliate marketing

Creating pins with affiliate links does not have many differences from normal pins.

But before creating pins with affiliate links, you should read your affiliate marketing guidelines.

Almost every affiliate network will require that you have some disclosure to an affiliate relation. This is due to FTC requirements for affiliate networks. You should always disclose these relationships in your pins.

So you will always need to check the guidelines of the program you want to promote before adding your links.

You’ll also have to pass on link cloaking. Pinterest’s Acceptable Use Policy makes it clear that your viewers should know where they’re going. This means that short links or links where the final address is not clear can not be used.

Now this is clear, let’s jump into how to create a pin with your affiliate link:

Step #1. From your profile page, click on “Create>Create Pin.”

Step #2. Next, you will need to fill in your title, description, alt text, and destination link. Remember to use keywords in all of them (except the link, of course.)

Step #3. Finally, select the board where you want to add the pin from the top right corner and hit “publish.”

Pinterest affiliate marketing strategy to make money.

Not every pin you create is going to make you money. Even if you create amazing pins with great affiliates, you won’t get many clicks without a strategy and some optimizations.

To improve your chances of making money with your pins:

In order to create successful pins, you need to know which categories are the most popular.

That will allow you to create some boards and pins that will get more visits, increasing your chances to monetize.

A great way to discover the most popular categories is by simulating you’re creating an ad. That way, you will get access to the list of main interests and subcategories. The numbers below are the subcategories within each interest. The higher the number, the more people you can attract:

This is the complete list of the most popular interests:

So if you can focus on any of these, you will have a better chance.

The great thing about Pinterest is that you don’t even need an audience to be found.

However, building an audience can definitively help you because it will be easier for others to pin your content. Hence, more exposure and more clicks.

Some tips to gain some followers are:

• Pin consistently (at least 10 pins a day). It will help you to be found.
• Follow other people in your niche and pin their content. It will help you to be noticed, and most of them will follow you back.
• Comment on others’ pins.
• Repin popular pins. When you repin content that is already working, you will attract more visitors to your profile.

The best strategy is to create amazing content. If you want people to click on your pins and click on your affiliate links, you need to give them a good reason to do so. And the best reason is to create useful content that provides value.

So start by creating a great pin cover. We have already discussed this in previous sections.

Next, when people click on your pin, you need to convince them to click on your affiliate links somehow. And the best way is with a great and useful article that can help your readers.

Some ideas on how you can do this are:

• Create how-to guides and show them how to use a product or service step by step.
• Create video tutorials.
• Create a useful product or service reviews.
• Teach them something new.

It is only when you create content that actually helps your readers that they will feel inclined to click on your links.

One of the best ways to get traction is to join group boards. This way, you’ll have an audience without having to build one from scratch.

Group boards are not as important are they used to be. However, you can really benefit from joining 5 or 6. You don’t need a lot, just quality ones.

When looking for groups, you should look for things like:

• Content quality guidelines.
• The ratio of followers to pinners (you’ll want more followers.)
• How relevant the content is.
• The quality of the pins in the group.

To find a group board, you just need to look for a topic in the search bar and select “boards.”

Then is easy to find them because the picture of the owner will have multiple people. You can see it below:

To learn how to join a group board, read the group description. If it is open, they will say how to join. But if it does not say anything, it is because it is not open for collaborations:

Joining group boards is a good way to put your content in front of a bigger audience. Just read the guidelines before posting, and keep the quality of your pins up.

Lastly, for this strategy to work, you need to come up with a plan.

The good news is that if you optimize your profile and pin frequently, you’ll see results. The bad news is that pinning consistently can take plenty of your time. But if you want this strategy to work, then you need to work on it.

Because, let’s be honest, manual pinning takes a lot of time. And it is the price to pay if you want to see good results. However, there is a way you can cut this time to a third and organize your pin strategy much faster and very efficiently.

It is called Tailwind. 

Tailwind makes it super easy to schedule a month of pins and let it run automatically. All you have to do is upload your pins with the title and description optimized with keywords, sit back and relax.

What is also great about Tailwind is that it also recommends the best times to schedule your pins, which will definitively have an impact on your audience.

This is the tool I personally use to schedule my pins. And what I like the most is all the precious time it saves me while still driving me consistent traffic. I suggest you give it a try for free and see it by yourself.

You should also use Pinterest analytics to identify your best-performing pins and create more like these.

In the next section, I will show you how to perform your Pinterest affiliate marketing strategy with Tailwind step by step, so keep reading.

Run your Pinterest affiliate marketing campaign on auto.

If you have followed all the previous steps in this post, your pins will start gaining organic traction through the SEO optimizations discussed before.

However, pinning with consistency is the real game-changer.

That is why I recommend you use Tailwind to automate your pinning. It is just a really small investment that is going to save you plenty of hours and drive traffic. And most importantly, it will provide you with a good ROI.

This is what you need to do:

Step #1. Head to Tailwind. You just need to click the button “Start creating now,” and you will start for free.

Step #2. Click on “Sign up with Pinterest.”

Step #3. Click on “Give access.”

Step #4. Select which best describes your marketing needs:

Step #5. Next, Tailwind will guide you on how to create your first pin and provide you with some tutorials. But I am going to show here how to do it.

Now, you have 2 different ways to schedule your pins in Tailwind:

• Uploading an image.
• With the browser extension.

To schedule a pin uploading an image:

Step #1. On the home screen, click on the publisher (speaker icon) and click on “Upload images.”

Step #2. Select the pin image you should have created previously. This would be your final pin.

Step #3. All you need to do is include the boards where you want to pin this content, adding a title, description, and a link. Once it is all filled, click on the “Add to queue” button. That will place the pin on your scheduled pins board, which will be published automatically at the best time.

Finally, all you need to do is to repeat this process until you get to schedule at least 10 pins a day. It is a good practice to pin 80% of your content and 20% of the content from others.

Step #1. Sames as before, head to the publisher section. If you still do not have your chrome extension activated yet, you can do it now from here:

Step #2. Once your extension is active, the Tailwind icon will appear every time you hover over an image. So all you need to do is to hover over the image you want to schedule from your blog or Pinterest itself and click the Tailwind icon to schedule it.

Step #3. A new window will open. If the image has the metadata on it, you won’t even need to write the title and description. The link will also be directly populated from the page you schedule it from, so there is no need to change it. Just make sure you add relevant boards and the information is accurate, and click ok “Add to queue now.”

And that’s it. All the pins you create this way will automatically be published at the best time.

With just one hour a week, you can plan your whole week! Isn’t that powerful?

And what is best, you can create a Tailwind account for free. So if you don’t like it or it does not work for you, you just don’t pay anything!

Are you Leveraging Tailwind to monetize Affiliate pins?

Passive income is never easy or fast. But with the tips in this article and with consistency, you will get there for sure.

Just remember to work smart. In this case, Tailwind will save you thousands of hours you can spend on creating more amazing content. So I would seriously consider it.

Are you using Pinterest to drive traffic to your affiliate links?

Leave a comment with your answer in the comments below.

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