---
title: 'I Tried Pinterest Affiliate Marketing for 6 Months - Here''s What Happened'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=xILNGoQv-zk'
video_id: 'xILNGoQv-zk'
date: 2026-09-04
duration_sec: 715
channel: 'Christina''s Side Hustles '
---

# I Tried Pinterest Affiliate Marketing for 6 Months - Here's What Happened

> Source: [I Tried Pinterest Affiliate Marketing for 6 Months - Here's What Happened](https://youtube.com/watch?v=xILNGoQv-zk)

## Summary

The creator shares the results of a six-month Pinterest affiliate marketing experiment, detailing the strategies tested, the earnings (or lack thereof), and the key lessons learned about choosing high-commission affiliate programs and the importance of a strategic approach.

### Key Points

- **First Experiment Failure** [00:14] — The initial 90-day experiment, posting 2-3 images daily, earned only about 30 cents, prompting a strategy overhaul.
- **Strategy 1: Simple Product Pins** [01:34] — Posting product photos with affiliate links (the initial strategy) yielded minimal results, earning only about $30 over 90 days.
- **Strategy 2: Keyword Research** [02:02] — Using Pinterest Trends and Semrush for deeper keyword research increased impressions and engagement but did not significantly boost affiliate sales.
- **Strategy 3: Blog Posts** [03:19] — Publishing blog posts with affiliate links, instead of direct product pins, led to a significant increase in outbound clicks, a key metric for potential earnings.
- **Strategy 4: Video Pins** [04:12] — Posting videos from brands (not reposting viral TikTok content) increased impressions and views but did not significantly improve outbound clicks.
- **New Pinterest Feature: Product Tagging** [05:34] — Pinterest introduced a feature allowing users to tag specific products in pins, but it did not support the creator's primary affiliate network, Mavely.
- **Six-Month Results: Amazon Associates** [06:41] — After 150 days, Amazon Associates earned a total of $9 in commissions, a 3000% increase from the initial 30 cents but still far from the promised $100/day.
- **Six-Month Results: Mavely** [07:28] — Mavely generated about 600 clicks and 5 purchases, but the total commission was $0, leading to confusion and near surrender.
- **The Turning Point: High-Commission Programs** [07:56] — Discovering Kimberly Mitchell's success with the SoFi affiliate program ($75 per referral) revealed that the problem was not Pinterest but the low-commission programs chosen.
- **Pivot to Fundrise** [09:01] — Leveraging existing content about Fundrise, which pays $50 per referral, and repurposing it into blog posts with affiliate links, earned $29 in the sixth month.
- **Key Takeaway: Strategic Approach** [10:22] — Affiliate marketing requires time, strategy, and experimentation. Choosing high-priced items with high commissions is crucial, as quality over quantity can be key.
- **Bonus: Cookie Window Benefits** [11:03] — Amazon's cookie system ensures commissions on any purchases made by referred users within the cookie window, even for unrelated items, highlighting the value of driving traffic.

### Conclusion

The six-month experiment shows that Pinterest affiliate marketing is not a get-rich-quick scheme, but with a strategic approach, high-commission programs, and persistence, it can become a viable income stream.

## Transcript

So after doing Pinterest affiliate marketing for about six months, I ended up making Welcome to what is probably the most requested video on my channel since the beginning of time. This one is technically part two of my I try Pinterest affiliate marketing video. And it's
been my first video when I tried Pinterest affiliate marketing for 90 days. You guys probably know that experiment didn't go quite well. In fact, I only made like 30 cents for posting 2-3 pins per day for 90 days.
And so in today's video, I'm going to show you guys what happened after I attempted to run this experiment for another 90 days and I'll even show you guys how much I was able to make. So if you've been curious about getting into Pinterest affiliate marketing, this video
is for you. So let's jump into it. Ever since my first experiment, I decided to change my strategy. Okay, honestly, I didn't really have a strategy. I was literally just posting photos of furniture and adding my affiliate links on Pinterest.
However, ever since then, I spent a lot of time watching a lot of different Pinterest affiliate marketing videos and learning all different types of strategies that other YouTubers have implemented. And spoiler alert, as a result, I was able to increase my earnings.
So let's talk about the exact strategies that I have implemented since then. Oh, and by the way, don't forget to hit that like button to support this small channel and also follow me on Instagram because I would love to be friends. I also wanted to clarify that this is not a Pinterest affiliate marketing step-by-step tutorial.
This is not how to do it, it's more like what I did. If you want to see a more detailed tutorial, I will include my Pinterest affiliate marketing tutorial down below. Anyways, let's talk about strategy number one that I've tried. This one was the most simple one, which is just posting
product photos on Pinterest and adding my affiliate links. So this was the strategy that I followed for the first 90 days and as you guys saw, it only earned me about 30 turns. So I'd I'd probably say this strategy is not that effective.
Now, strategy number two is pretty much the same thing, but using a more in-depth keyword research. So a lot of you guys will comment in the previous video and ask me if I did any type of keyword research,
trend research, or anything like that. To be honest, no, that's not something that I was doing in my first video. So ever since then, I've started doing a more in-depth keyword research. Pretty much the way I did it is what I described in my Pinterest Declared Marketing Tutorial video,
is I started researching Pinterest trends, which is a tool that you can access for free with the Pinterest business account, which is also free to set up. You notice that trends tend to change depending on the time of the year, so pretty much I would go into Pinterest trend research and look
up what are some of the most popular keywords or trends that people are researching. Once I have identified that, then I would go to SEMrush, which is my favorite keyword research tool, and dive deeper into the sub-niches within the trend.
After implementing this strategy, I did notice that there was a significant increase in the overall impressions and engagement on my pins. Now SEMrush is not sponsoring this video but I highly recommend that you check them out This tool is quite an investment but trust me it does pay off because it helps you so much with keywords not just on Pinterest but in many other platforms as well
so make sure to check them out, and if you use my link down below, you will actually get a free trial. But even with that, I still didn't quite see a huge increase in my affiliate sales. This is when I tested strategy number three,
which involves both strategy number one and strategy number two, to you, but instead of just posting pictures and leaving people directly to the product listings, I started posting blog articles as well. So at this point of my Pinterest affiliate marketing
journey, I just didn't really feel like starting an entire like physical product blog anymore. I decided that instead of just pitching physical products, I would also pitch some of the digital products as well and also leave people to my blog. And at this stage, I once again started seeing a
significant uptick in not just impressions and views, but also outbound clicks, which was a pretty positive sign because you do want to focus on outbound clicks because at the end of the day, people just clicking on the pin and not doing anything is not going to make you money. Now,
strategy number four, which I researched quite a bit and decided to implement as well, is instead of just posting classic Pinterest pins or images, I also started posting videos. Now, a lot of the
Pinterest tutorials teach you to repost viral TikTok or viral product videos. As a creator myself, I don't feel like it was the most ethical thing because I actually recently got notified that multiple people started reposting some of my videos and inserting
their affiliate links and pretty much making money from like my content. And I personally didn't really like it, so I didn't want to do it to other people. So I didn't want to follow that route. However, what I started doing is I would take some videos directly from the brands because
at the end of the day, if I'm using their content and driving sales to a better product, I felt like it was a little bit more ethical. I also posted several AI videos, which is something that I also made an entire video about. And after testing that, I did see a big uptick in impressions
and views, but I didn't really see much of a difference in terms of outbound clicks, which is once again what I really wanted to focus on. And at that point, I had only made maybe like $5 worth of affiliate revenue, which was a significant increase, but still very little
money for the amount of effort that I was putting in. Around that time, I also did notice a lot of people started posting videos writing similar experiments and saying that they didn't really make anything at all. And that's when I started wondering whether this side hustle was even
legitimate at all, because again, I didn't really see much money coming in. And so around that time, when I sat down and started creating my next batch of Pinterest things, I did notice that Pinterest
implemented a new feature, which again, I don't know if it was new because I only scheduled my for like once every couple of months or so, but I did notice that Pinterest is now allowing people to tag specific products that they will be trying
in their pins, which I don't believe was a thing when I first started. So if you don know what I talking about you can technically pin different products that are included in your pins The easiest way would be to post Amazon affiliate links You can also use affiliate links from some of the other
retailers, but unfortunately I couldn't really post my main blue rings, which is the main affiliate network that I was using. This part is a little bit frustrating because I feel like Amazon listing images are usually not super aesthetic, but I tried my best to still create pins that
match my previous board aesthetic. So anyways, I decided to give this method a shot and that was also around the holiday season. So I tried to create as many pins as possible and scheduled them out for the entire month of December. And so about 150 days after I started this entire
experiment, I finally sat down and looked at my analytics. So as I mentioned in the past, the two major affiliate networks that I was using were the Amazon Associates, which is, you know, probably the most common, most popular, easiest to get into,
as well as Newsly, which allows you to create affiliate links from a lot of different types of retailers instead of having to join every individual affiliate network. And so, from the Amazon Associates program,
I ended up making a total of $9 in affiliate commissions. Now, while this was technically almost a 3,000% increase from my original earnings of $0.30, Obviously, $9 was still far from like $100 per day like a lot of the YouTubers claimed the site has looked like you.
Now, when I looked into my Maplely analytics, the numbers I saw literally made my jaw drop. So, on Maplely, I ended up generating a total of right around 600 clicks.
And there were five successful purchase transactions. And my total affiliate commission was $0. dollars. So obviously I was really confused and I decided to dive into the analytics and what I saw
was that even though multiple transactions happened and multiple purchases were made, apparently none of those purchases qualified for affiliate commission and like at that point I was like maybe it's just time to give up. However, this is when I came across the video by Kimberly
Mitchell where she described that she was able to make a pretty decent commission on Pinterest affiliate marketing through the SoFi affiliate program. And the thing that really clicked in my mind is that she paid $75 for each referral from SoFi. And that's when it clicked in my head. Maybe
the problem wasn't really Pinterest affiliate marketing itself because at the end of the day, I was getting outbound clicks and people were purchasing stuff from my links. I realized that the problem was really the affiliate programs that I went with. Because as we all know, Amazon
an associate program is great because it's very accessible but their commission is notoriously low and with Maple I mean again fine purchases when they didn't even pay me anything. So that's when I decided to start researching what's some of the highest paid affiliate marketing programs and so
that's when I went back to the drawing board and started researching some of the highest affiliate commission programs that exist out there in the market and that when I also remembered that one of the best referral programs that I personally been a part of and has made quite a bit of money was the Fundrise referral program In case you new to my channel I used to make a
lot of Fundrise review and Fundrise portfolio update videos. And Fundrise will literally pay you $50 per referral if you have a basic plan in up. And so what I did is that I went back to my Fundrise videos, I transcribed those videos, and turned them into blog posts
like I've been doing with a lot of my videos, and inserted my affiliate link. Obviously, if you don't have previous content that you've done, you can also just create an article using AI. I created a Pinterest pin that led to my blog articles.
And so after doing Pinterest affiliate marketing for about six months, I ended up making $209 instead of just $9 like I did at the five-month mark,
thanks to the Fundrise referral program. So that was obviously a pretty significant increase from my original attempt. However, just another reminder that most of the side hustles you see on the internet take time to build up.
And I'm not saying that people are scamming you or lying to you in those YouTube videos. I think calling someone a scammer is a very big accusation. I just wanted to show you that when someone says you can make $100 a day, it doesn't mean that you'll go to start making $100 per day right away.
So a lot of these things take time, take strategies, and take experimenting. And once again, I think my biggest takeaway from this entire six-month experiment is that you do need to put in strategy and thought into all of this.
And also, if you are thinking about doing a series now today, try to go for higher ticket items or something with higher commission or higher sign-up bonuses, because you can technically make $200 from $4.50 referrals, or you can make $200 from $400 referrals for
smaller ticket items. So quality over quantity might be key. So this is where I kind of started thinking, like, should I continue doing Pinterest affiliate marketing? The answer is, I'm probably just going to continue doing this as crazy as this journey has been,
now that I know that I need to focus on higher ticket items. Another thing that I also wanted to mention from this whole experiment is that when I looked at my Amazon associate's report, I realized that a lot of the purchases that people made with my affiliate links
were both from the products that I was recommending, as well as some pretty random products that I have never posted or even seen before. Because the cool thing is that when you have all your affiliate links out there, the cookie system also ensures that if people come back to that website
and make any other type of purchase, you still get commission, even if it wasn't the product that you recommended. But since you technically brought the traffic to that website, you can still make money. So even if you're not posting like the best products and people are not buying them,
but you can get people to click on your links that can still help you over time. Anyways, once again, I hope this video was helpful, so make sure to click that like button if you enjoyed this video. Also, if you like this video, I think you're going to like this one as
well. And as always, I will see you guys in the next video. Bye!