Yup, it happened this past couple of weeks. The official ban on affiliate links on Pinterest is over. In an article I read on Pacedm this week (Pace (Pesach) Lattin's new incarnation), Michael Levanduski goes into a bit of depth about the turnaround in Pinterest's policies regarding affiliate marketing on their platform.
According to Michael, Pinterest originally banned the use of affiliate links due to “irrelevant Pins in feeds, broken links and other spammy behavior”, but I recall reading last year there were additional causes for the ban including forms of jacking and similar forms of abuse including spam bots. Michael does state that interest intimated that one of the reasons for un-banning at this time includes new and more robust spam prevention technology.
Pinterest now claims that after one year of the ban, they've seen too much of a reduction in participation and I expect that other platforms allowing affiliate links may have been slicing off rather large chunks of their respective traffic, which Michael does not state, but maybe did lethargically hint at. He does quote Adelin Cai from Pinterest as 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.” In my mind, this is the saying the same thing.
This is a clear cut case that the platform turned into something they hadn't planned on and tried to push back into shape by eliminating the very members that brought them so many revenues. They realized that they actually need us affiliates and they are welcoming us back with open arms, however I don't think there are any apologies coming our way. I can live with that.
Here are the new Pinterest Acceptable Use Policies. Haven't read through them yet, but it's on my evening reading list.
I'm about to revitalize my old boards and get them earning! How about all of you, are you going to do the Pinterest thing again?
According to Michael, Pinterest originally banned the use of affiliate links due to “irrelevant Pins in feeds, broken links and other spammy behavior”, but I recall reading last year there were additional causes for the ban including forms of jacking and similar forms of abuse including spam bots. Michael does state that interest intimated that one of the reasons for un-banning at this time includes new and more robust spam prevention technology.
Pinterest now claims that after one year of the ban, they've seen too much of a reduction in participation and I expect that other platforms allowing affiliate links may have been slicing off rather large chunks of their respective traffic, which Michael does not state, but maybe did lethargically hint at. He does quote Adelin Cai from Pinterest as 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.” In my mind, this is the saying the same thing.
This is a clear cut case that the platform turned into something they hadn't planned on and tried to push back into shape by eliminating the very members that brought them so many revenues. They realized that they actually need us affiliates and they are welcoming us back with open arms, however I don't think there are any apologies coming our way. I can live with that.
Here are the new Pinterest Acceptable Use Policies. Haven't read through them yet, but it's on my evening reading list.
I'm about to revitalize my old boards and get them earning! How about all of you, are you going to do the Pinterest thing again?
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