Pinterest Affiliate Marketing for Beginners

Are you thinking of making money with affiliate marketing?

By including affiliate links in your blog or social media content, you can start making a regular affiliate income from your site.

Affiliate marketing is not as easy as people make it seem, but if you do it right and put in the work, you’ll be sure to succeed.

Many people get into affiliate marketing because it seems like a fast way to make money but then many of them don’t see success in it.

The main problem is if you don’t have an audience or a substantial social media following there won’t be many people who see your content. So you won’t have many people clicking your links and making a purchase.

But, if you put in the work to grow your audience at the beginning you can have an automated affiliate marketing system down the line!

What is Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is when you promote products that don’t belong to you (like a company’s product) and you earn a commission on sales that are made through your affiliate link.

Basically, if you register as an affiliate for a product or service you then earn a commission for each sale you refer — this is affiliate marketing. You are only paid after the sale is complete.

Benefits of Affiliate Marketing

With affiliate marketing, you don’t have to worry about order fulfillment or customer service, and you don’t need to have your own product to sell.
If you have a [new] blog and don’t have products to sell to your readers you can join an affiliate program in your niche and promote their products. This is a great way to supplement your blog income.
If you make many sales on a certain product you will know that it’s a popular product among your audience. You can then create something similar to sell to your readers, this way you can keep all the profit – So, affiliate marketing can help you do product research before actually creating something for your audience.
Affiliate marketing is an easy way to monetize your content as a beginner blogger.

Disadvantages of Affiliate Marketing

It may take some time to see your first sale with affiliate marketing.
You make less money than if you were to sell your own product.

Join affiliate programs

There are many affiliate programs out there, so choosing the right one for you can be a bit tricky.

In order to find the best affiliate program for you check that the commission on each sale is not too low and that the product is high quality.

You don’t want your audience to lose trust in you and if the product ends up being bad quality they won’t buy from you again.

Affiliate networks that are easy to enter…

1. Shareasale

Many companies such as Grammarly, Tailwind, and Eden Beauty use Shareasale to run their affiliate programs.

There are products for different levels of affiliates. If you’re a beginner you can apply for programs that don’t require approval.

With Shareasale you need to have a website to get accepted, even if it’s a new website you just started. You can apply to be an affiliate for different brands on Shareasale and wait to get accepted. Or you can filter results by instant approval and start promoting brands immediately.

2. Clickbank

The Clickbank signup form is a bit tricky to find but it’s actually not hard to get into Clickbank at all. There are many high-ticket products on Clickbank where you’ll get a decent payout by promoting it.

However, check the reviews for products you want to promote and research the company so that you know it’s legit.

You wouldn’t want to be selling your audience crap because they WON’T be coming back for more…you’ll end up losing subscribers that way.

3. Digistore24

Many products that are on Clickbank are on Digistore24 as well, but I’d suggest Digistore24 for beginners over Clickbank.

The Digistore24 signup process is a bit long but relatively easy, I’d recommend this platform to all beginners because you don’t have to make a sale in a certain amount of time to stay on the platform: If you don’t manage to make sales after a certain timeframe on Clickbank, they will suspend your account.

4. Amazon

Since Amazon literally sells everything, there will be many products you can promote no matter your niche. The payout is quite low but it’s easy to get started with if you’re a beginner.

With Amazon Associates, you also need to make one or more sales within six months to stay in the program. Therefore, ensure that you’re getting traffic to your blog or social media content before becoming an Amazon Associate.

5. Impact

Impact is an affiliate marketing network that allows its users to promote a diverse range of products. A few brands on Impact are NuLeaf Naturals, Revoult, Wirex, and much more. The commission rates and cookie duration vary from program to program.

Impact affiliates can use multiple devices to track and analyze buyers’ interactions.

The payment system is quite unique and effective as compared to other affiliate programs: You can choose how you want to be paid.

Pin for later…

6. CJ

Brands like Zappos, Verizon, Barnes & Noble, and many others use the CJ affiliate network.

When you sign up, CJ does ask how many unique visitors your site gets per month, but they also have a “Not Launched Yet” option if you’re just getting started.

You should always apply to affiliate networks with an active website though – it’s just best practice to at least have some web presence.

CJ affiliates enjoy a simple and intuitive interface with a wide selection of link-creation tools. You also get to “sell” ad placement space on your website, and you’re paid on time every month.

7. Wayfair

Wayfair is an online store that sells home decor and furnishing.

They offer millions of products and even a 3-D viewing room.

To join Wayfair you have to be on the CJ Affiliate Program. If you’re already on the CJ network or have set up your CJ Affiliate account, simply apply to be on the Wayfair Affiliate Program from there.

The more purchases made using your affiliate link, the more money you make.Wayfair reports that their average purchases are around $300.

The Cookie length is 7 days but the commission is good. You would earn on average $21 per purchase. With such a short cookie length you should promote products in a way that people feel a sense of urgency to buy it.

Ps. If there’s a product you like and are already using, check if that company has an affiliate program and apply for it.

How to choose an affiliate product

Choose businesses within or related to your niche. Get 5–10 high-quality affiliate products to promote. It should make sense for your business to be promoting this product.

Research the product: Check reviews and make sure the ratings are high. There shouldn’t be a lot of abandoned carts or returns for the product.
Decent commission: This is the income you receive on each sale, and some platforms pay you more than others.
Cookie length: This is how long your affiliate link is tracked. If the cookie length for an affiliate program is 7 days and someone clicks on your link and buys within 7 days you will get a commission, but if they buy on the 8th day, you won’t get paid. A longer cookie length is better.

Check merchant guidelines

Some merchants don’t allow you to promote affiliate links directly on Pinterest.That doesn’t mean you can’t promote that product.

Later we’ll get into other ways to promote affiliate products through Pinterest, which are more sustainable and bring you better results than directly linking to affiliate sales pages.

How to Promote Affiliate Links on Pinterest

The easiest way to promote an affiliate product on Pinterest is to create a static, carousel, or video pin showing the product being used and the results you get. You can then include the affiliate link in the pin description and mention that it’s an affiliate product: #sponsored or #affiliate.

People will click on your affiliate link and get to the sales page. If they make a purchase, you get paid.

Below are 4 ways to promote affiliate products on Pinterest:

1. Create a pin and promote it on Pinterest

Use Canva to create pins, upload them to Pinterest and add your affiliate links. You can also schedule pins with Tailwind Tribes to get more shares and engagement.

When someone clicks on the link they will automatically get to the sales page and if they make a purchase, you will get a commission.

When you pin include a hashtag like #sponsored #affiliate #ad, you don’t need all, just one is enough.

2. Include affiliate links in blog posts

There are a few types of blog posts that are great for incorporating affiliate links, such as: how-to posts, list posts, reviews, and X best _.

Simply add affiliate links to blog posts, don’t stuff pls.

Always disclose affiliate links on your website. You can add an affiliate disclosure to every blog post automatically by using a plugin.

To get blog traffic:

Create many pins, upload them to Pinterest and include a link to your blog post. If you do this, Pinterest users will click on the link in the pin description and go to your blog post. They will read it and click on your affiliate links if they’re interested in the product.

Another thing you can do is add a few pin images to your blog post. Then use the Pinterest chrome extension to pin those images from your blog post to Pinterest.

How to include affiliate links without seeming too salesy?

Provide valuable content to build trust. Create content around a pain point your audience might have. At the end of the blog post, your audience should have learnt how to deal with their problem.

Try to solve their problem, and provide the affiliate product as a solution to their problem.

You can use your blog, Youtube, or Quora to create content and promote products.

3. Create a pin that leads to a landing page

Instead of placing affiliate links directly in the pin description, rather link to a landing page that collects emails. You can then send these subscribers 5-7 emails promoting your affiliate product.

Having an email list is the best way to do affiliate marketing because you can continuously promote different products to subscribers as long as you nurture them correctly.

Once you have their emails you can still send them to your blog by including blog links inside the emails and recommending they read them – so you’ll get traffic to your new blog!

4. Affiliate marketing with Idea pins…

Idea pins are hot at the moment. Although you can’t add affiliate links to them you can still showcase a product in an idea pin and tell people to check out your link-in-bio. The link-in-bio goes to a landing page with all your affiliate product links. This is one of the best ways to do Pinterest affiliate marketing.