Pinterest - how do you create an affiliate link behind a Pinterest picture on a board

[SueP]

Hi everyone,
I've been playing with Pinterest and just for fun started a Sock Monkey board. My idea was to have each picture link to an affiliate link for the product. I was trying to use my Amazon affiliate to do this. But to put a link to the pictures on Pinterest you need a link that is an http://...... link. And when I go into my Amazon Affiliates page and try to grab a link to any product, Amazon only offers me html code that doesn't begin with http://.....

So....is there a way with Amazon to get an affiliate link to a product that is not a piece of code? Actually, I'd like also to use an http:// link on Twitter or FB or in my e-zine each week to various Amazon products (books, electronics, etc.) i keep running into this problem over and over again because I can't find a way to build an affiliate link in Amazon that begins with http://..

Help???

Thanks!

Sue

[ChristineCobb]

If you log into your Amazon account and browse to a product or page, you'll see in a gray bar at the top, a link that says "Link to this page". When you click that, you'll see a lightbox with some tabs and code. If you click Text, you'll see a code box like this

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0051VVOB2/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=spesavinvtra-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0051VVOB2">Kindle Fire, Full Color 7" Multi-touch Display, Wi-Fi</a>

There you see the URL is between the quotes starting with http and ending with OB2 in this example.

Once you pin an image, then you can edit the link. The problem may be with their terms of service which prohibit commercial use of the site. Maybe the better way would be to pin and link images on your own site reviewing and/or displaying the products and then have your affiliate link be embedded there.

[SueP]

Hi Chris,
Thanks for your reply. Holy cow if Pinterest isn't for commercial use a LOT of peeps will be shut down, LOL! Have you seen Dan Morris's new video about how to monetize it (along with SEO and other items of interest).
Sue

[ReginaSmola]

I've heard the word Pinterest over the last couple of weeks, but I haven't checked it out yet. Personally, I think I'm going to wait till I see results from others in a few months. I'm still trying to find time for FB, Twitter and LinkedIn. Plus, I jumped on the Google+ bandwagon and it was rocking at first, but I think it's slowed down a bit. Well I should say, until they came out with making your own biz page, who knows how that will take off.

Good luck Sue with your new board. Let me know how you like it. I'm interested to see someone if you have success with it. As for the "no commercial use," that rules me out.

[SueP]

Regina,
I get it about a lot of social media stuff, it's like riding a wave, constant change and new balances. My gut reaction is that Pinterest will be hot, and no matter what they say about being non-commercial, it WILL be commercial. There's a lot to learn about how to best use it, I'm just feeling my way around right now.

About Google, I do think the "business profile" pages are worth doing and watching. But you're right, you have to pick and choose where to put your time, for sure!

Sue

[ChristineCobb]

Hi Chris,
Thanks for your reply. Holy cow if Pinterest isn't for commercial use a LOT of peeps will be shut down, LOL! Have you seen Dan Morris's new video about how to monetize it (along with SEO and other items of interest).
Sue

I suspect that it will allow them to boot spammy boards. It took YouTube a while to start booting "make money online" folks and they used their TOS to justify it. It's inevitable that Pinterest will attract tons of IM'ers if the early adopters have success with it. So with any social media site, use it--don't let it use you and be prepared for change.

[DanRMorris]

1. Pinterest's CEO has lauded the new companies that are now using his service.
2. In the description field, if you type a dollar sign and a number, a banner gets added to your pin to show it is for sale.

These show me that Pinterest has been planning commercial since the beginning. The fact they haven't updated their Terms of Service is beyond me. I imagine they will at some point (or at least reword it).

One of the commercial issues with Pinterest is that it is synchronous, a bit like Craigslist. While the boards themselves are there forever - your ability to get people back to your board is almost nill on-site. The only way to do that is to keep pinning and staying in the stream of your followers - just like Facebook pages. But unlike Facebook pages, you can't actually "save" a board to go back to - just a picture from that board. Pinterest is Shiny Button Syndrome at its best - even if you keep pinning - there are so many other buttons to press - it would take a lot to get clicks that turn to money.

So if you pin the sock monkey to your board, it soon gets buried by other sock monkeys you pin. That means you have to keep using affiliate links to post new sock monkeys to even make an income dent. I think most users will find this too arduous to do. I saw in the Warrior Forum there is now automation software to create pin boards - but I don't think anyone's really tried it.

I would suggest making Pinterest a source for traffic, not necessarily income. In my Pinterest video you reference, I talk about potentially creating Boards that match the categories on your site. I think you could turn your Pinterest page into a resource for your audience. You can obviously pin your own stuff - but why not have the best sock monkey board on the planet complete withe photos of all of them? Maybe you could even iFrame it on your site - similar to a store front.

In the end, sites like Tumblr, Fancy and renren do better as traffic generators than on-site income producers. I think the commercial part will rise till it's too much - then fade away just in time for a new site to enter the scene.

[derek miller]

Pinterest is trending every where.. I haven't yet used it but I hear they don't have brand pages. Is it true?

[DanRMorris]

Pinterest is trending every where.. I haven't yet used it but I hear they don't have brand pages. Is it true?

That's sort of true. But as you can see from these examples, there are plenty of companies that have created their own "branded" pages:

http://pinterest.com/etsy/
http://pinterest.com/realsimple/
http://pinterest.com/nordstrom/
http://pinterest.com/amnestyusa/

Lands End did a huge Pin it To Win it Contest driving traffic to their page and their website. Pinterest isn't quite like Facebook in its adoption of business pages yet - but I don't think that has slowed anyone down.