Awesome Tips for Affiliate Marketing on Pinterest Without a BLOG
Do you want to know how to set up Pinterest to make money without having to maintain a blog using direct affiliate marketing links on your pins then read on for Awesome Tips for Affiliate Marketing on Pinterest Without a BLOG.
Pinterest was my first social media tool – I started using it about 6 years ago on and off only to create boards and find pins but for nothing else.
I never knew there was another world out there called Affiliate marketing and you could use your love of Pinterest in a money making way.
If you have ever wondered how you can use your love of Pinterest to provide a side hustle income then read on to discover how.
(If this post contains affiliate links please see our full disclosure policy although I have to say I tried really hard to make it interesting and even I struggled to write it so if you really must read it you can find it here)
Awesome Tips for Affiliate Marketing on Pinterest Without a BLOG
I am just starting out with my website and before even starting I wanted to use Pinterest to make some money so that I wasn’t spending before I was earning and also to see if I really could earn money this way.
So can you use Pinterest as an Affiliate marketing tool on its own?
Its actually quite difficult to find the answer to this on google as many websites hint towards this as being an option but don’t quite show you how.
The answer is yes- have I made any money at the moment the answer is not yet but the way my affiliate pins are going ( lots of clicks )it won’t be long and I have only had my affiliate boards up and running for a few days.
I keep these as separate boards as I do not want to pin them to group boards at the moment as most group boards do not like you pinning your Affiliate pins.
What is affiliate marketing?
Most people have an idea of what it is and just let me say as long as you have used or liked the product you recommend and feel it would benefit your audience go ahead and offer them the link.
I have now done three courses on Affiliate Marketing and can recommend all three so if you want to check out each of these in more details here are the links to have a look at. I like them all for different reasons and its up to do which ones you choose they all cover the basics but I would say Makingsense of affiliate marketing probably is the most in-depth and comprehensive but it depends on how much you want to go into it each has different tips but essentially each course covers the basics.
- Makingsenseofaffiliatemarketing – by Michelle Schrodier Gardner of Makingsenseofcents
- Affiliatemarketingforbloggers – by Carly Thomson of Mommyonpurpose
- Pinstoprofit- Affiliatemarketing– by Mckenzie Bean of Momsmakecents
Affiliate marketing is a commission based way of earning revenue when you promote a product to your audience so for instance – I have signed up as an affiliate for Pinterest affiliate marketing course by Mckenzie Bean and have no hesitation in recommending her course Momsmakecents to you.
I have learned so much about affiliate marketing through her course and also how to use Pinterest and how to make Pins using Canva that are super cool and get the repins that you need that I highly recommend her course.
It is a great beginners course if you want to get a handle on Pinterest and Affiliate Marketing.
The course includes the following:
1- Explanation of Affiliate marketing and its use on Pinterest
2-How to optimise your pins- creating and adding links and how to set up your boards to optimise your marketing
3-Branding and design
4-How to implement your affiliate marketing
5-Using affiliate pins for bloggers
A word of caution before we go further you know that saying ‘don’t put all your eggs in one basket’ it applies here too – consider other options, as well as affiliate marketing but to begin with this, is a great idea to dip your toe in the water.
How do you get started with Affiliate marketing and Pinterest.
Firstly you need a presence on Pinterest.
You will need to make sure your account is set up as a business one and if you are having trouble with verifying your website then you can following my post on how to verify your website here.
https://smartpennies.com/verify-your-website/
Ideally, you need around 10 different boards with at least 10 pins ( not your own) on each that are not affiliate marketing pins.
I do recommend that you pin content to the boards manually initially to get a feel for how Pinterest works and also to make sure the pins are of high quality and have the overall feel you are looking to achieve.
Sometimes when you click on pins they can take you to the wrong website – these are spammy pins please don’t add these to your boards! Sometimes unscrupulous people will hijack reputable peoples pins and add their own spammy website link to it.
PLEASE, whatever you do don’t report that pin – as it will be the original pinner who will suffer.
You can add board covers or not it depends on whether you can get your brand looking cohesive with just your pins see a snapshot of my boards below.
If you want to know what the 3 most important boards you should have on your website then check out my post.
Alternatively, you can click on the pin below.
Do you Know What the 3 Most important Pinterest boards you should have are?
Pin production for Affiliate Marketing
So that you don’t need to spend money initially on making pins for your boards then I suggest you try the free tool called Canva.
I am still using it and I will plan to continue using Canva but would also like to use Picmonkey – this does incur a monthly or yearly cost which I don’t want to start paying just yet.
Canva lets you upload lots of your own graphics and photos to use on to craft a pin and to be honest this is what I tend to do.
If you want to find free stock photos then check out my resources page for a list of free photos sites that I use here.
https://smartpennies.com/resources/
My Secret Weapon is Group Boards
Some Group boards do not want affiliates pinned to their board so make sure you respect their rules and not pin.
Join as many groups boards that are relevant to your individual boards as possible so that you can showcase your pins to these boards if they allow any sort of pins- so far I have found 2 group boards I can do this with.
I have found the best way to find group boards is to stalk the top bloggers you follow in your niche and join the group boards they are on.
Feel free to stalk me and see which boards I have joined and if you would like you can also follow me!
https://pinterest.co.uk/Smartpennies/boards/
Don’t fret if you haven’t heard back – I send about 10 emails to join group boards and end up with about 3 approval requests back.
Affiliate Networks
For Pinterest the two affiliate networks that I highly recommend is Awin because it has Etsy on it and also Shopstyle collective.
Now listen this is the cool bit to sign up to some of these networks you need to add a website so what do you do?
Add a website from free domain set up like wordpress.com or blogger.com they allow you to give a website to the affiliate network without having to maintain a properly set up self-hosted one.
My free website is located on wordpress.com is this is the link https://smartpennies.wordpress.com/
Check it out you can fill in a coming soon post to say you are just getting started and even if you like add a few more posts.
Funnily enough, that website has had no traffic to it!
How to Upload and add an affiliate link to your Pin
Ok so you have your Pin all set up something nice like this for example:
Winterberry Jewelry Etsy ShopNext, you want to upload it to Pinterest by clicking on the big red plus but beside your profile image at the top of the Pinterest menu. See the image below.
Ok, now you need to edit the pin go to both your saved copies of your pins and add a description and MOST important the affiliate link to the item.
Now If you have already published your post insert the URL into the box above – do not use the shortcode use the full URL otherwise Pinterest thinks its a spammy link.
Once you have uploaded your image it will ask you to save it to a board that you have set aside for you affiliate pins.
Now another top tip it will also ask you to see it now do that because you also want to save it to another relevant group board that you have for affiliate pins.
If you do that it will look like the pin has been saved twice- have a look at the stats on the pin and you will see it has 2 saves!
Cool no!
Make sure the description and URL are on the original pin – go to your pins page and check them all.
The repins will not allow you to add the URL as they are repinned! Its the original pins you need to make sure have your affiliate link on.
Also, make sure these are on your top performing boards.
If after all that you want to use a scheduler to Schedule your pins then I recommend Tailwindapp its easy to use and best of all you can upload multiple new pins at the same time to schedule on Pinterest.
Remember if you are using Tailwindapp you need to know the rules of your Group boards in order to make sure you don’t spam the boards.
Awesome Tips for Affiliate Marketing on Pinterest Without a BLOG
Ok so I hope that was informative and helped you set up your pins and boards to make the most use of your affiliate links.
If you are wondering how I am getting on since setting up my pins on my gift boards have a look at my Awin dashboard I have increased my clicks in February from just under 20 to over 45 now check out both my stats.
Ok so I haven’t yet earned anything but at least things are happening and rapidly.
If you liked this post please share it by clicking on the pin below or using the share buttons.
Fancy a PDF copy of this post? If so subscribed to my list below to grab your copy.
I hope you enjoyed Awesome Tips for Affiliate Marketing on Pinterest Without a BLOG
