I know that LTK (formerly RewardStyle is an integral part of your blogging business, and it’s been fun to help our clients strategically sell on Pinterest and add to that passive income stream. Obviously, this works for whatever affiliate marketing platform you’re on. We work most frequently with Amazon Associates, Collective Voice (formerly ShopStyle) and LTK.
I’m hoping to really dive into what my experience is working with affiliate links on Pinterest one day… I feel like there’s a lot of information out there and a majority is false information.
Here are some tips for content creators hoping to grow their passive income via LTK by promoting that content on Pinterest either linking to the LTK post itself, tagging the products in the photo with affiliate links OR (my fave option) creating a blog post that has the affiliate links inside of it.
Yes, LTK posts should be a thing you do because they have the app where people shop directly from the app itself. I have heard there is definitely an audience there for that, but I don’t think that’s the only place your potential buyers are. Personally, I don’t use the app at all, but certainly buy via affiliate links that are LTK. I shop via Instagram directly or I search for something on Pinterest, come across a blog post and then decide I need what’s within that post.
That exact customer journey is why it’s very much worth diversifying where you share affiliate links for the same content. Also, since I specialize in Pinterest, I’m biased, because people on Pinterest want valuable content that helps them plan for something, shop, get inspired, etc. They want your blog posts, your tutorials, your informational content. There are just not enough characters in your LTK post to give them what they want and since Pinterest users are cold to you, they care more about information you can provide them than you.
The other reason is that I will always recommend you point people to the part of the internet you own. Pinterest sends traffic to where you link for years and years. If LTK disappears or changes its links or does something drastic, you’ll lose that traffic. When you have it linked to your site, you’ll get that traffic forever AND you can convert how you need.
When a new user comes to your website for “10 Fall Dresses to Wear to a Wedding,” for example, you can do the following:
If you direct to LTK, you can:
See the difference?
Here’s where I will share my magical (not really- they’re kind of simple) ideas for creating LTK content and Pinterest content at the same time. I hear a lot that bloggers are overwhelmed with all the content they have to create and the thought of adding Pinterest on top of it is just… stressful. I want to keep spreading the work that Pinterest is about repurposing, so with the tiniest bit of forethought, some handy Canva templates OR a fire Pinterest manager, you shouldn’t have to add much to your plate to add a whole new marketing platform into your biz.
A product tag is directly adding a product or an affiliate link onto Pinterest so that it provides a quicker route to the checkout page. I don’t find them to be extremely successful, but I have heard from people at Pinterest that they are prioritizing content with product tags. It’s something they push so I feel it is worth continuing to test on a smaller scale. If affiliate sales is your #1 priority and you do not have a blog, then I think it’s certainly worth testing linking to the LTK post vs. tagging the products.
Below is what it looks like to tag products on your static pins:
When you instead include an LTK link in your pin (or schedule that out via Tailwind), it looks like this instead:
Create a blog post that includes the affiliate links inside. This blog post should have value and ways to connect with the cold audience that comes from Pinterest. Reread my rant above if you forgot why I harp on blog posts soooo much.