Pinterest Allows Affiliate Marketing Links (Again!)
Pinterest announced in a Pinterest affiliate marketing blog post that the social media channel is once again allowing affiliate links. Pinterest is a visual social channel popular among affluent females. It has over 100 million users with almost half of them in the United States.
Pinterest is an important channel for affiliate marketers, bloggers, as well as influencer marketers. The ban on affiliate links makes it more difficult for bloggers to make money from Pinterest. For the past year, Pinterest marketers had to direct links to their home pages, as Pinterest was blocking the affiliate links as spam.
Pinterest has had a love-hate relationship with affiliate marketers. In their early days, Pinterest redirected affiliate links to their own schema, thereby skimming affiliates’ traffic and sales. After a backlash, the social channel stopped redirecting affiliate links and allowed marketers to have free-reign again. Then in another reversal in 2015, Pinterest banned and spammed affiliate links. The only recourse for marketers was to direct users to dedicated landing pages on their own websites and then pass the reader onto the affiliate landing page. As we know, the more hops the reader has to take to get to the sale, the lower the conversion rates! This was a work around, but not an ideal web traffic and sales model.
Now that our spam detection system is so much stronger, we’re ready to allow affiliate links again
Once again, Pinterest is embracing affiliate marketers. The social giant realizes they have to allow more money making opportunities on Pinterest for their user base. If not, then bloggers, vloggers, influencer marketers, and affiliate marketers will favor other channels with higher ROIs.
