Pinterest Affiliate Marketing; Beginners Guide.
If you're thinking of starting affiliate marketing on pinterest but don't know how then you've come to the right place.
In this article I'll walk you through the steps you'll need to take in order to get started with affiliate marketing on pinterest.
What is Pinterest?
The internet in recent times has seen a significant spike in the use of visualized information. As technology advances, businesses, startups, and giant corporations are utilizing visuals in their marketing campaigns.
With about 885.7bn monthly visitors, pinterest is the best option for anyone looking for a way to get content in front of a lot of people fast. One main reasons for pinterests success is the fact that it makes it very easy for users to access content that's not within the app making it one of the best options for bloggers who are looking for traffic to their website or affiliate marketers who're trying to promote their affiliate offers.
What is Pinterest affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing first of all means promoting other people's products and services in order to earn a commission from the sales.
So it's safe to say that pinterest affiliate marketing simply means promoting affiliate products and services via Pinterest.
How do Pinterest affiliate marketers get paid?
The same way as every other affiliate marketer out there gets paid. The process is quite simple because most of the heavy lifting is done by the merchant.
When an affiliate joins the merchant’s affiliate program, he or she is given an affiliate link when promoting the company’s product.
When a potential buyer clicks on the link, a cookie will be stored on their device.
An affiliate cookie does two things;
It helps the merchant attribute the sale back to the affiliate.
It usually holds an expiration date, so the affiliate gets paid even if the buyer delays their purchase.
Whenever a buyer completes the sale process, the merchant checks the sales record for the cookie in order to identify the affiliate as well as the source of referral.
If the merchant finds a cookie with an affiliate ID, the affiliate is credited with the sale.
The merchant makes reports available so that the affiliate can see their referrals (clicks) and sales.
The merchant pays the affiliate commission at the end of each payment period (i.e. revenue sharing).
The flow is pretty straightforward once you understand it, and it works the same no matter what kind of product you’re promoting or how established you are as an affiliate marketer.
What are the benefits of Using Pinterest for affiliate marketing?
Now that you understand how affiliate marketing with pinterest works, let’s look at a few top benefits.
- Free traffic source.
Pinterest makes it possible to promote your affiliate products to a wider audience in a short period of time.
Being on Pinterest will allow your affiliate business to boost brand awareness, showcase the products, and most importantly, inspire.
One of the great things about pinterest is that you’re able to include your verified website address on your Pinterest business profile.
This is one great way to immediately start driving traffic from your pinterest profile to your website.
- Access to analytics.
One of the advantages of using pinterest is the access to analytics. The only way to access your analytics and use pinterest for commercial purposes would be to create a business account.
With a business profile, you'll be able to access your analytics. You can either create a brand new account for a business or turn your private account into a business account with just two clicks.
You'll be able to view impressions, engagements, clicks, views and so much more. You can also select specific date ranges and view all of your pins or only the Pins saved from your website.
By viewing your analytics, you'll be able to see which Pins are getting the most attention so that you can promote them more and create similar products, blog posts or Pins to replicate that success.
- Low-cost.
By using Pinterest for affiliate marketing, you'll be able to start promoting your affiliate products immediately without having to pay for ads. With affiliate marketing, all you need is a traffic source. Even if it doesn’t work out, all you’ve wasted is time.
- It’s a passive income source.
Once you’ve established the framework of your affiliate marketing business and start getting traffic to your site, you’re pretty much set. All you have to do is choose the right affiliate partners that will appeal to your audience and post those links. Your unique links and codes will continue to bring in a recurring commission for you.
How to Use Pinterest for Affiliate Marketing.
As stated earlier, pinterest represents an incredible opportunity for advertising. Here’s the step-by-step process to follow when creating a pinterest account for affiliate marketing.
Step 1: Pick a niche.
A niche is a section of a larger market defined by its own unique characteristics. It becomes your specialty and the topic people will know you for.
Before starting affiliate marketing on pinterest you'll have to decide on which type of products you'll be promoting. When starting affiliate marketing it's a good idea to pick a niche that you're familiar with.
- Make Research;
You need to look for what's trending in your niche as well as what people are searching for.
Do your research! A great way to evaluate the competition in your niche, would be by making keyword research using third-party tools. Keep in mind that a lot of pinners on Pinterest use simple words when searching, so integrate those during the keyword research process.
Use the right keywords when writing content for Pinterest. Pinterest pays a lot of attention to the quality of your content. If you do it right, you'll be driving traffic to your affiliate products in no time.
You also need to take note of some of the Pinterest rules before starting out.
Only operate one Pinterest account. Some marketers try to game the system by repinning content from a selection of accounts. This is against the platform’s guidelines: “Don't operate multiple accounts or coordinate with other people with the purpose of manipulating the Pinterest platform.”
- Understand Your Audience.
It’s very important that you’re familiar with your target audience and know exactly what they’re searching for!
Take the time to learn who is likely to buy your affiliate offer.
Once you have a clear understanding of who will buy, you will be able to use your analytics to adjust the timing and content.
Check out the top-performing boards and pay attention to how the pins look, what kind of titles and descriptions they use, and look for lots of repeating keywords.
- Tailor The Content.
After you've gotten an idea of what your audience is searching for you'll need to create content that's specific to peoples search intent.
Use images or videos to show how a product can solve a particular problem. They also add interest to a web page and increase the click-through rates in emails.
The goal is to choose a niche that you enjoy. You won’t be making six figures overnight, as affiliate marketing takes commitment and time.
Step 2. Sign Up as an Affiliate, for a Product or Program.
Consider what products you already use that you could recommend to your target audience. It could be digital products such as online courses or physical products from Amazon or any other retailer.
There are a lot of affiliate marketing programs out there, so it’s important to make sure you find the program that is right for you. One good thing to note is that each affiliate program function in different ways.
Example; Amazon's cookie policy only lasts for 24hours. This simply means that the affiliate link will expire after 24hours and any sale made after that time won't be credited to the affiliate.
Make sure not to just focus on high-paying affiliate programs but to find the affiliate offers and products that will appeal to your audience.
Finding the right programs is critical to running a successful affiliate business.
You can also find products and brands to work with in the following affiliate marketplaces:
Amazon associates affiliate program
Step 3. Create High-Quality Content around your Affiliate Offer.
The last step would be to create content around your affiliate offer. Think of this content as a way of telling people what your affiliate offer is about and clearing their doubts. Affiliate marketing can be difficult but if you're able to convince people then you'll surely succeed.
Giving people something valuable is the only way you'll be able to gain their attention. People are willing to try something out if there is something in for them. This could be a free item or just valuable information.
Create content specifically for the products or services that you are an affiliate for and publish this content on your website this could be a short blog post about the product or a personal experience you've had with that product, it doesn't have to be an in-depth guide, it's just meant to upsell people to make a purchase.
For example, If you're promoting a dog training course then the smart thing to do would be to create a pin that will catch peoples attention. This would be by using an attractive title like.
10 tricks every dog owner must know.
After coming up with a catchy title you'll need to create content to accompany it. Calm down, you aren't trying to rank this piece of content on Google or anything. You're just using it as a way to promote your affiliate offer.
It’s important that you provide value when promoting any affiliate offer.
There's no excuse for not having a website to promote your affiliate offers. There are free site builders such as wix, weebly, strikingly, site123, Google sites that enable you to create a good looking site for free so check them out and try using them.
You can promote your affiliate products using other means but having a website is really the best way of doing it.
Pro tip; By using a website to promote your affiliate offers you'll be able to hide your long ugly looking affiliate links.
Now you know all the steps you need to take in order to get started with affiliate marketing on pinterest lets go through the steps you'll need to take in order to grow your pinterest account.
How to grow your Pinterest account fast in 2022.
Here’s my advice on how to grow your Pinterest account fast.
Optimize your Pinterest account for SEO.
Pinterest isn’t just a social networking site, It’s a search engine. So you'll need to follow certain steps to make sure your pins are visible. You need to apply the right keywords to have your content show up in relevant search results.
The Pinterest algorithm connects pins via keywords. As we said earlier in this post keyword research is essential when creating a pinterest account for commercial purposes. Browser extensions like keywords everywhere show the monthly search volume alongside suggestions based on one seed keyword.
Once you’ve got your keywords, there are three areas to play close attention to when implementing Pinterest SEO:
Pin description. When writing your pin description it's a good idea to not only include your keywords but to also add related keywords as well.
Board description. Boards are not as targeted as a pin So use broad keywords in your board title and description, such as “blogging tips”
pro tip; Never delete your Pinterest board as it will affect your account negatively. Instead of deleting your pinterest boards just archive them.
Create multiple pins per post.
Pinterest users interact with pins differently from the design of one pin to the fonts and texts used on another so by providing a range of visual content you'll be able to reach more people.
One pin isn't enough to promote your affiliate products. You'll have to create at least 3-5 pins per post. By doing this you'll be able to make use of more keywords. This method also helps to showcase your content to thousands of people daily on the platform.
The best way of doing this would be by using bright colours and legible texts that will stand out from the crowd. So, use free DIY tools like Canva and experiment with different pin templates.
Here are some example pins Latasha created to promote the above-mentioned blog posts:
Stay Consistent on Pinterest.
Passive income strategies are notorious for being time-consuming and slow-moving. However, they snowball with time.
“One of the ways you can stay consistent on Pinterest is by pinning fresh new Pinterest pin images for your blog or video posts daily. This will help boost your traffic which will send visitors to the posts you created with your affiliate links,” says Latasha.
Don’t feel like you need to create a dozen pins all at once for each post. You can start with a few, and then add more as you go along. This is easier to accomplish, and better for the health of your Pinterest account too.
Pin to group boards
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 beauty products, for example, the “group beauty, hair, nails” board would be one worth contributing to.
Read the group board description 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 that by using blog content or YouTube videos as the landing page.
Conclusion.
Starting affiliate marketing on pinterest can be quite stressful. You'll have to post regularly, update your affiliate links, update previous pins etc but once you start getting decent traffic to your pins, all the hard work pays off.
