Despite banning affiliate links on their site only last year, Pinterest has recently announced that it has reversed this decision and is once again enabling users to make use of affiliate links within their pins.

The initial decision to prohibit affiliate links was made because spammers were abusing the system; however, in a bid to avoid this happening again, the visual social curation site have made some updates to their acceptable use policy.

Many marketers and businesses will be pleased with this decision, as affiliate links have proven to be a relatively low-cost way to reach large audiences and drive additional revenue. 

Additionally, it benefits from the prestige of an influencer recommendation. 

What’s also great is that Pinterest have acknowledged that users require a sustainable way to keep creating high quality content, which is ultimately why they’ve re-introduced these links.

What are affiliate links on Pinterest?

Affiliate links are specific URL’s containing the affiliate’s ID. In affiliate marketing programs, advertisers can use these links to monitor the traffic that is sent to their website. 

On Pinterest, this would work by having agreements with bloggers or other influencers, whereby they pin your products, in turn encouraging their followers to purchase, and if the pin drives a transaction on your site, they earn a commission. 

How do affiliate links impact expenses?

While this type of advertising indeed comes at a cost, as previously mentioned, it can be more cost-effective than alternative advertising tactics.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that if you’re already generating a solid revenue from Pinterest traffic, it might not be worth investing in these affiliate links. 

If, on the other hand, you only receive little traffic on Pinterest, this new policy could provide a great opportunity to drive additional exposure and revenue. 

How to get started with affiliate marketing.

To get started using affiliate marketing on Pinterest, you will firstly need to inform your affiliates about this recent change, and instruct them how to include a tracking link in their pins. To do this, they will need to manually add a pin to their board and then edit it to include your tracking link.

Your affiliates should also be reminded that they may need to disclose it is a paid post, something that can be included in the pin description. This is to comply with specific government legislation regarding marketing, for instance if they are in the US, this is something that is required by the US Federal Trade Commission.

We recently announced an integration with social media scheduling and marketing tool Mento, which enables our inventory management software users to create social media posts on platforms such as Pinterest, based on the information and images used within your product listings and inventory.