Pinterest in Affiliate Marketing Explained

About three weeks ago, a well respected affiliate named Tricia Meyer did a webinar explaining what Pinterest was all about. I finally had a chance to listen to it and learned a few things about how businesses and affiliate marketers could leverage this tool to gain additional exposure and traction of their products and brand through image sharing.

In a nutshell, users can “pin” things they are interested in on their boards, and people can repin them. Affiliate links can be added into there “pins”, and, when they are “re-pinned” the original affiliate link gets passed along too. Very interesting business model and marketing strategy indeed. Its a hot topic right now and a social tool that’s not going anywhere fast, so take the time to watch this video and educate yourself as to how Pinterest is changing the way merchants and affiliate marketers are working with new tools on the web.

Quote from Tricia Meyer:

“I was initially attracted to Pinterest not as a user but as a marketer because I saw how quickly it was gaining momentum with my friends who usually are not much into social media. I was skeptical of the value for affiliate marketers and bloggers but started reading as much as I could about how people were using it. What jumped out at me was how negative people were responding to both the thought that Pinterest might monetize the site in some way and also the alleged copyright infringement allegations. As an affiliate marketer and lawyer, I had to speak up.

After writing a blog post in defense of Pinterest, more and more people started asking for my opinions. After being approached by Affiliate Summit, I decided to put everything that I had found into one webinar. Since the webinar, Pinterest has updated its terms to exclude some of the legal liability language that was making people nervous.

Regardless of whether you personally like Pinterest or its business model, if you are an affiliate marketer, blogger, merchant, or affiliate manager, you need to at least be educated about what it can and cannot do for your business.”

Tricia Meyer, affiliate marketing consultant