Have you been wondering how to do affiliate marketing on Pinterest?
I see a lot of people sharing bad affiliate marketing strategies. This annoys me a lot. That’s why
Pinterest is not just a social media platform. It has turned into a real search engine. It is known mostly for women stuff and is dominated by American women.
In this post, I’ll show you how Pinterest affiliate marketing really works. The good and the bad way of promoting affiliate products on Pinterest.
Before that, let’s talk about Pinterest, what is it and how does it work
How does Pinterest work?
On the platform, you can create pins and link to other sites. This can be used to our advantage as affiliate marketers.
You can use Pinterest to promote affiliate products. But there are good and bad methods. These methods will be revealed later on in this article
How to do affiliate marketing on Pinterest
There are many ways to using Pinterest for affiliate marketing. The main goal is to get someone to click on a link from your pin on Pinterest and make a purchase of the affiliate product you are trying to promote.
Three ways to use Pinterest for affiliate marketing
They are mainly three ways I’ve seen to do affiliate marketing on Pinterest
1.Direct Linking (the bad method)
This is a bad and short sighted strategy which is basically adding your affiliate links directly on your Pinterest pins.
In this case, you don’t have any control on what is happening. You are just working to build someone else’s business.
When you get clicks on your pins they are just going to another person’s website. You might never make any affiliate commissions this way.
Even if you manage to earn some affiliate commissions, it won’t be consistent. I hate this method and you should avoid it by all means.
2.Drive traffic from Pinterest to your content
In this case, you are using Pinterest to get traffic to your website or your YouTube channel. To some extent this is a really good strategy.
If you are monetizing your website with google AdSense, you can also earn some money from AdSense ads showing on your site plus affiliate commissions.
If it’s a YouTube channel and you are also monetizing it with ads, you can make money from ads and affiliate marketing.
But just like I mentioned earlier, this is not the only strategy to be using. One of the best ways to use Pinterest is to use it to building your email list
3.Build your email list from Pinterest
An email list is a very valuable asset for affiliate marketers and business owners alike. With an email list you can get traffic to your website on a regular basis.
To build an email list, you’ll need a platform where you’ll be hosting your emails and sending messages to your list.
Now that you know the three ways to do affiliate marketing on Pinterest. Let me show you the exact steps so that you can go ahead and implement it.
How to do affiliate marketing on Pinterest (step by step)
Step 1: Choose an affiliate product to promote
For you to make money with affiliate marketing, you’ll need to sell a product. This product will definitely be for another person.
Since we are affiliate marketers, we don’t need to worry about creating a product. But we must find a product to promote so that we can earn commissions.
There are many places where you can find affiliate products to promote. In fact, with a quick google search, you will discover more than 20 affiliate programs you can join.
Before we get to step 2. Let me show you different ways to find affiliate programs and some wonderful affiliate programs that pay nice commissions.
Where to find affiliate products
There are two methods I use to find affiliate products that I can promote as an affiliate. If you really want to join an affiliate program. It’s either you join directly on the company’s website or you join from an affiliate marketplace.
Let’s go over the affiliate marketplace first
Examples of popular and trustworthy affiliate marketplaces
Here are a list of really nice affiliate marketplaces to join if you are looking for a good affiliate program.
1.Sharesale
You can find a ton of products on shareasale. They have many categories you can choose from. With shareasale you’ll be able to find and promote high quality products and earn a good commission doing so.
2.Warriorplus
Warriorplus is a marketplace that has mostly digital products. This means that you can earn some really big commissions. Most of the products their gives insane affiliate commissions like 50-100% of the front end sales.
Some even give recurring commissions. If you are still looking for affiliate products to promote, just create an account on warriorplus and find relevant product you’ll be willing to promote
3.Commission junction
I like this platform because it’s very similar to shareasale. If you want to find thousands of affiliate program – this is another platform you should check out.
Cj is also really nice because of the way they pay out commissions.
Some companies do not run their affiliate program on another website. They prefer to create and run their own affiliate program on their website.
Examples of good affiliate programs to join
Here are a list of affiliate programs that pay high commissions and are of high quality.
1.Getresponse ($100 per sale or 33% recurring)
This is an email marketing platform, they are one of the best email marketing companies out there. If you read this blog often you’d notice that I talk about getresponse a lot. That’s because I’m part of their affiliate program and their commission structure is really nice.
If your niche permits, you can join the getresposne affiliate program as well. You don’t even need to apply compared to other affiliate programs.
2.Dreamhost ($100 per sale)
Just like getresponse, dreamhost affiliate program is a really wonderful one as well. Whenever you get someone to buy their yearly plan. You’ll earn $100. You can join it if you talk about web hosting or blogging related stuff.
3.Systeme.io (40% lifetime recurring)
This is a wonderful affiliate program that you should join. They pay their affiliates commissions for life. All you have to do is get them a lead and you can earn money on every purchase they make on the platform. It’s so cool.
Other good affiliate programs
– Fiverr ($100 per sale or 10% revshare for 12 months)
– One funnel away challenge ($100 per sale)
As you can see, they are many affiliate programs that pay big commissions so all you have to do is choose one and start.
Step 2: create a simple landing page
Our goal is to build an audience first before promoting affiliate products to them. So after choosing a product you’d like to promote, your job now is to create a simple landing page that will be used to build your email list.
To do this, head over to systeme.io and create a free account.
Log in to your account and go to the sales funnel section. Here you can choose from a ton of prebuilt opt in pages.
Just select one and edit it to your taste and you’re done. Make sure you are giving something for free in exchange of their email address. This could be an ebook or a free video
Just creating an optin page is not enough to get people optin in. that’s where Pinterest comes in. we are going to use Pinterest to drive traffic to our landing page.
Step 3: Start creating related pins
Create an account on Pinterest or login if you already have an account. Your goal now is to create pins related to what you are giving to people on your landing page.
For example, if you are giving a free eBook that will teach people how to send money online. Assuming the outline of your eBook is
- Benefits of saving money
- Ways to send money
- Money gateways
These are all potential pins you could create to get traffic to your landing page.
Sometimes it can be boring to send people directly to a landing page. Since they don’t really know you it can be hard to get them to convert and join your email list.
Other ways to build your email list
Send traffic to your blog first
Don’t forget our goal which is to get people to opt into our email list. Since we might have run out of pin ideas or have gotten bored sending people to our optin page.
Let’s change our strategy a little bit and do something different. This time, we want to get them to our website first, after which we would try to entice them to join our email list.
How can your do that? Let’s discover
1.Create a how-to guide
Remember that your main goal is to get them to join your email list, so that you can build a relationship with them and make affiliate commissions later on.
In your article, you’d be teaching people something about your niche but at the end of the article, you’d try to get them to opt in to your email list using a call to action.
Take this article for example:
I’m showing you how to do affiliate marketing using Pinterest. I could create a pin about this topic and link back to my article. When they get to the end of the article, there would be a call to action that is trying to get people to sign up.
Link to other type of content on your website, like a:
* Review
* List post
* Comparison article
2. Send traffic to your YouTube videos from Pinterest
From Pinterest, you can drive traffic to your YouTube videos. In your YouTube videos, you can be talking about the affiliate products. This would definitely result to more affiliate commissions for you.
But remember that your main goal is to get these people to join your email list. So at the end of your videos always make sure to add a link to your opt in page.
As more people watch your YouTube videos, your email list will start getting bigger so will your affiliate commissions.
Step 4: Create a simple email sequence
Just getting people to opt in to your email list is nothing if you can’t get these people to buy something using your affiliate link.
That’s why, after creating your landing page and getting a few opt ins. You need to also create an email sequence. This is very important. With this email sequence you can tell these people about the affiliate products you are trying to sell.
I like using an email sequence because it makes email marketing easier. You don’t have to send emails every single day. When you have a campaign setup. It will go out automatically.
The good news is that you can do that for free on systeme
Don’t forget to add your affiliate links inside your emails so that you can earn commissions
How to get more exposure on Pinterest
Since you are trying to do affiliate marketing on Pinterest, it would be really nice to understand how the platform works.
So in this section, I’ll show you how to get more exposure on Pinterest.
– Post frequently
The more pins you have, the more exposure you get. This means that posting frequently can help you get more impressions on the platform.
– Join group boards
This are basically a group of people helping you repost your pins. With this method you get more exposure consistently.
Is Pinterest the best way to get traffic?
I don’t think so. Pinterest is a good place to get a lot of traffic but it’s definitely not the best way to get traffic.
Personally, I think the best way to get traffic to your website is through search engine optimization. This is obviously a slow way to get traffic but it’s definitely worth it.
Imagine writing an article once, with proper optimization you can be getting traffic consistently to your website for years to come.
But on Pinterest it’s not always the case.
Conclusion
I really like doing affiliate marketing on Pinterest. But I always try to use the right strategies. I never send traffic directly to my affiliate links because it’s a very short sighted strategy.
The best way to do affiliate marketing is by building your email list first. This way, you would be able to promote products to your email list multiple times resulting in more affiliate commissions for you.
You’ve read this article to this point, I’ll like to get your feedback.
What do you think is the best way to do affiliate marketing on Pinterest. Sending traffic to your landing page or driving traffic first to your blog post or YouTube videos?