Adios Affiliates! Pinterest Pulls The Plug On Affiliate Links

Apologies, power pinners, your affiliate revenue will be coming to a screeching halt. Early this morning, Pinterest has announced that they’ll be removing all “affiliate links, redirects, and trackers on Pins” according to VentureBeat. The email was sent to a select group of users and assured users that the pins they’ve place will still show up normally, just without the affiliate code appended.

This of course is a big deal to the power users that helped the service grow as the revenue can be significant and Pinterest has already banned paid pinning. This leaves users with the ability to create content for a business, or curate boards as a client, very different (and much tougher) options. The official statement from Pinterest is as follows:

“We are removing affiliate links to ensure we’re providing the best possible experience for Pinners. Recently, we observed affiliate links and redirects causing irrelevant Pins in feeds, broken links and other spammy behavior. We believe this change will enable us to keep the high bar of relevancy and quality Pinners expect from Pinterest.”

At one time, Pinterest was doing the very same thing. It leveraged Skimlinks to swap all links out in order to collect affiliate revenue on items purchased. This news also comes on the heels of the launch of iOS App Pins that could help Pinterest compete in the App Install Ad space down the road.

Maybe Pinterest is trying to look more appealing to a suitor? Maybe their own “buy It Now” is coming? Or maybe they are just cleaning up an issue that they should have a while back. Either way, those not selling an actual product will have a much harder time profiting on Pinterest moving forward.

For more information see VentureBeat.

About The Author

Greg Finn

Greg Finn is the Director of Marketing for Cypress North, a company that provides world-class social media and search marketing services and web & application development. He has been in the Internet marketing industry for 10+ years and specializes in Digital Marketing. You can also find Greg on Twitter (@gregfinn) or LinkedIn.