How to do affiliate marketing on Pinterest: 10 steps

Updated October 22, 2026 · 6 min read

Step 1: choose a niche you can sustain

Pick one topic and stay in it: home baking, small-space gardening, trail running, budget travel in Europe. The test is whether you can make fifty different pins about it without repeating yourself, because Pinterest reads every pin's text against the boards it sits on, and an account that is about one thing ranks for that thing. Broad accounts rank for nothing.

If you already have an audience, a blog or a shop, the niche is chosen. If not, choose what you buy and use yourself; the FTC expects you to have actually tried what you recommend.

Step 2: join one or two programs

Read the program's rules before you make a pin, especially the part about where links may appear. Amazon Associates, for instance, allows links only on the sites you identified in your application and bans link shorteners that hide the Amazon destination. Networks such as ShareASale, Awin, Impact and CJ host thousands of merchants with their own terms. The programs guide explains what each is for.

Start with one merchant whose products you know and one network, so you learn two dashboards, not ten.

Step 3: set up the account

Switch to a business account. Write a display name that includes your topic ("Mara | Small Space Gardening") and a bio of up to 160 characters with the keyword in the first sentence. If you have a website, claim it in settings so your pins carry your name and so you can use rich pins.

Step 4: find twenty phrases

Put your niche into the keyword tool and collect twenty phrases that are specific, searched, and buyable: "raised bed garden kit", "balcony herb garden ideas", "self watering planters for apartments". Note which ones are seasonal from the trend bars; those get pinned two to three months before the peak.

Step 5: build three to five boards

Name each board with one of your phrases and give it a two-sentence description that uses the phrase and its close variants. One topic per board. These are the boards your affiliate pins will be saved to first, and the first board is the strongest signal Pinterest has for what a pin is about.

Step 6: make the first twenty pins

One pin per phrase. For each:

1. A 2:3 image, 1000 by 1500 pixels, showing the product in use or the result it gives, with a text overlay of six to ten words.
2. A title under 100 characters with the phrase in the first 40.
3. A description of 150 to 800 characters: the phrase in the first sentence, the disclosure in the second, then what the product does and who it suits.
4. Alt text describing the image in plain words.
5. The link: the product page with your affiliate link, or your own review page, over https, with no shortener.

Save each to its matching board first, then to one other relevant board a day or two later if you like. Do not save the same pin to five boards in an hour.

What a good first twenty looks like

Twenty pins for twenty phrases can still feel like one idea repeated. Vary the angle so each pin answers a slightly different search and gives Pinterest a different image to show.

Four or five of these angles across twenty pins gives you enough variety to learn from, and none of them is a copy of another, which is what Pinterest's rules on repetitive affiliate pins are about.

A tracking template

Keep a plain spreadsheet with one row per pin: date, phrase, angle, board, link tag, and three columns you fill in monthly from analytics and the program dashboard: impressions, outbound clicks, orders. After the first month, sort by outbound clicks. After the third, sort by orders. The pins near the top are your template for the next batch; the phrases near the bottom with no impressions at all are usually phrases nobody searches, and the keyword tool will show that in their volume.

Step 7: disclose, every time

The disclosure goes in the first or second sentence of the description, in words anyone understands: "I earn a commission if you buy through this link." A profile-page disclosure does not count on its own, and neither does a hashtag at the end. The disclosure guide has lines that pass and lines that fail, and the checker will tell you which yours is.

Step 8: track clicks per pin

Add a tracking tag to each affiliate link (most programs call it a sub-ID or campaign tag) and name it after the pin or board. In Pinterest analytics, filter to the last 30 days and sort pins by outbound clicks. Those two views together tell you which pins get clicks and which clicks become orders.

Step 9: make more of what works

After two to four weeks, take the top two or three pins by outbound clicks and make three new pins for each: a different photo, a different title angle (how-to, list, who it is for), a different board. Leave the rest published. The point is to find the pin-product pairs that Pinterest's audience responds to, then widen them.

Step 10: keep the routine

The weekly routine after that: thirty minutes making five to ten fresh pins, twenty minutes reading analytics and the program dashboard, ten minutes refreshing one board's description or cover. That is enough to keep an account growing for a year. Volume beyond that mostly adds risk: Pinterest's guidelines ask for affiliate links in moderation and treat repetitive pins as spam.

What to avoid from day one

• One account only. Pinterest's affiliate rules say so plainly, and a second account to pin the same links is the fastest way to lose both.
• No link shorteners or redirect chains. People must be able to anticipate where a link goes, and Amazon bans shortening that hides its domain.
• No asking people to save your pins in return for saving theirs. Pinterest names quid pro quo saving as prohibited.
• No claims you cannot back. A pin that promises weight loss or income needs evidence you do not have.

The mistakes guide goes through the rest.

Where to go next

• Pinterest affiliate marketing: the full guide
• Affiliate pins that convert
• Pinterest SEO: how search decides what to show