Influencers may now earn money from shoppable pins on Pinterest

Pinterest is pursuing the influencer market. Today, the platform unveiled its first set of tools for content producers to make money by promoting things from around the web. 

The platform is introducing support for affiliate links, allowing artists to earn a percentage of the sales they generate. It is also adding product labelling to its story-like Idea Pins in order to drive sales from additional sources, as well as a new “paid partnerships” label to support sponsorships within Idea Pins. The improvements come only months after the network announced a $500,000 fund for BIPOC artists, and they intensify the company’s focus on buying as other platforms, such as Instagram, begin to take on shopping as well.

Businesses may already post “Product Pins” on Pinterest, allowing visitors to click through to locate and then purchase a product. Creators can now explore accessible product pins and incorporate them into their Idea Pins, creating content with the product and making it simpler for prospective customers to grasp what they’re seeing and how to utilise it. The authors can also include their own affiliate links in these tags, allowing them to profit from any product sales. It’s all a ploy to encourage people to purchase on the site.

Availability varies, but the product tagging feature within Idea Pins will be available to all corporate accounts in the US and UK, with foreign creators receiving access in the coming months. The paid partnerships feature is now available to select creators in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada, as well as 16 other countries.

The major goal here is obviously for Pinterest to make it simpler for people on its site to sell the items they’re already promoting, as well as for users to more quickly acquire whatever supplies they realise they need to make the many Pinterest project ideas they see come to reality. Other platforms have taken advantage of the shopping trend as well. Instagram, as the most obvious example, has a full shopping tab in its app, allows for product tagging, and makes it simple for companies and creators to collaborate.