Most performance marketers will remember last year when the popular image sharing social network Pinterest banned affiliate links. Many Pinners lost significant amounts of revenue because they were no longer able to include affiliate links in their posts, which is how they were earning their income. At the time Pinterest said that they made the move because of, “irrelevant Pins in feeds, broken links and other spammy behavior.”
Naturally, many of the most popular Pinners who were making most of their money with affiliate marketing were making fewer posts. While the most popular ones could make money in other ways, it was a big problem.
Pinterest, however, has recently announced that they are reversing this move and will be allowing Pinners to use affiliate links once again! The change of heart comes just about a year after the initial banning and is apparently because of improved spam fighting technology, according to Pinterest.
Adelin Cai from Pinterest commented on this move saying, “Because we weren’t allowing affiliates, we weren’t giving users the right sort of incentive to continue creating really beautiful content. We believe that if we remove the ban, we’re incentivizing those influencers to generate much more beautiful content.”
While they aren’t coming right out and saying that it was a mistake to ban affiliate links, that is clearly what it was.
You can read the updated Acceptable Use Policy, which is where the changes are being made HERE. The change is currently being rolled out across their system so marketers can likely begin using affiliate links right away.
