Affiliate programs can be a great way to earn a passive income, but in order to make cash, you must first develop a viable strategy for the effective spread of affiliate content. This is the same no matter if you’re a part of the Influencer, YouTube, or Pinterest affiliate programs.

The popular platform Pinterest comes with some neat features and characteristics that can make it an invaluable part of your global affiliate strategy. Because of this platform’s level of usefulness when it comes to affiliate marketing, we’ve decided to prepare a guide that should equip you with all the relevant information you’ll need in order to form a working plan and succeed on Pinterest in 2022.

The Unique Benefits of Pinterest

While Pinterest is often thought of as a social network, it will be more advantageous for us to view it as a unique search engine, instead. Unlike with social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, the content on Pinterest is often discovered through the use of the search function. This means that said content will remain ‘’evergreen’’ – your old Pinterest pins will keep attracting new visitors and potential buyers, allowing you to earn a steady passive income for a long period of time.

And, if you’re primarily marketing products that are heavy on visuals, then you simply mustn’t overlook Pinterest! With 450 million users every month, who are interested primarily in visuality, you’re bound to find a customer or two (or 1000).

4 Essential Tips for Pinterest Affiliate Marketing

While Pinterest does offer intriguing advantages when compared to traditional social networks, you’ll still need some know-how if you want to make it big there. Here’s what you should have in mind.

Take Advantage of Rich Pins

Rich pins synchronize the data from your website to the pin itself. Therefore, they provide additional information to users, capturing their attention and increasing the chances that such users will later pay money for the affiliated products/services.

For instance, if you’re marketing a product, rich pins can show the up-to-date information on its availability and pricing. For articles, rich pins can entice the user with an interesting description. For recipes, they can display the necessary ingredients and the necessary cooking time. 

To enable rich pins on Pinterest, you’ll first need to add rich meta tags to those pages you want to have rich pins for. Then, consult with the rich pins Validator to make sure that the tags have been uploaded correctly. If everything is as it should be, you’ll just need to wait some 24 hours, and voilà, you’ve got yourself some cool and useful rich pins!

SEO Matters!

SEO is not limited to blog posts and website articles, but it is a tool you should use to make your Pinterest pins more visible, too. Choosing the optimal keywords for your title and description, then, is essential if you’re looking to reach as many people as possible. 

How to choose the right keywords? A good way is to use Pinterest Ads to find popular keywords, preferably those with 10,000 or more monthly uses, so that you’re aware of what’s currently trending. Consider using a YouTube keywords tool in order to find the trending keywords on YouTube too. Once you’ve found the right keywords, use them to search Pinterest, analyze the more popular content for inspiration, and come up with at least four logical keyword variations to use.

Pay special attention to the use of appropriate keywords on your Pinterest profile, and your pin and board descriptions. It’s also worth noting that there are specialized companies, such as White Label SEO, that can devise your Pinterest SEO and make sure that it is always as optimized as possible. Spending some additional money on hiring the experts can net you a significant profit in the long run, so it’s certainly an idea worth considering.

Performance Analysis

We advise using Pinterest Analytics in order to gauge your pins’ level of engagement. You can also create a special segment in Google Analytics dedicated to those users who’ve visited your page through Pinterest. And, of course, keep an eye on your affiliate dashboard, where you can see how many purchases were made based on your marketing efforts.

What’s the information that you should look for in all of these analytics programs? Click-through rate will tell you how many people that viewed your pin(s) actually clicked on it. Conversion rate will net you valuable info regarding the total number of visitors that actually bought the product. Analyzing these two rates will help you to isolate the underperforming pins, and allow you to learn from their failure.

Save Money on Taxes

Pinterest marketers who are working as an LLC (Limited Liability Company) should be aware of the special tax regulations that will enable you to keep more of your money. So, be sure to study the regulations carefully while handling the tax-regulative bureaucratic process.

The rules are different depending on the type of LLC you’re running. For Single-Member LLCs, you’ll need to file the Form 1040, and to report profits and losses in the Schedule C document. If you’re running a Multi-Member-LLC, apart from the same two forms, you’ll also need the 1065 partnership return document.

However, both Single-Member and Multi-Member LLCs can also elect to be taxed as corporations. You’ll need the Form 2553 in order to be taxed as an S-Corp. The reason for doing so is that with S-Corps, only the owner’s salary is subject to taxation, and not the entire profit you make. Therefore, it’s worth it to spend some additional time on paperwork. 

Additional Tips for Making Money on Pinterest

• Find the group boards relevant for your affiliated products. Naturally, by posting there you’ll likely find at least a few buyers. If the group admin doesn’t allow the users to post affiliate links, then you can post an appropriate YouTube video or blog article instead.
• If you want results quickly, or you are simply looking to additionally boost product visibility, consider paying for pin promotion. 
• Use nice looking, but differing pins for each of the products/posts you’re promoting. Not only can the sheer number of pins attract new customers, but the diversity in your visual approach may attract those buyers who wouldn’t have taken notice of your pins otherwise.
• By using a tool such as Tailwind you can schedule the publishing of new pins in advance. Apart from making it easier to post pins, scheduling pins for different times of the day will also allow you to reach a higher number of buyers.

…And with all that said, we wish you good luck and a lucrative passive income!