Tricia Meyer

Affiliate Marketer, Blogger, and Consultant

My Unpopular View of the Pinterest Links

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Pinterest Skimlinks Disclosure
Should Pinterest Disclose It Is Making Money?

Since the beginning of January, discussions about Pinterest have taken off everywhere. From my Bunco group to Affiliate Summit, everyone is talking about it for some reason. Initially it was because it was a cool, fun site that all my mom friends were using. Then it was because my affiliate marketing friends discovered a way to get traffic and make money from it. Now it’s because everyone thinks that they have been “misled” by Pinterest in some way. I have to voice my opposing view because it doesn’t seem like many people are.

At issue: Pinterest is converting user-generated links to merchants into affiliate links via a service called Skimlinks. As a result, Pinterest will make money if anyone makes a purchase through those links. In addition, affiliate marketers are creating links themselves and fear that their links may get overwritten by Pinterest’s affiliate links.

My disclosure: I’m a Pinterest user. I’m an affiliate marketer. I’m a Skimlinks dabbler.

The Affiliate Argument: I don’t think affiliate marketers have a right to be angry about anything. We’re using someone else’s site to try to make money ourselves. We never had a deal with Pinterest to begin with that we could place our money-making links on their site. If they do end up overwriting them, we can’t complain. They never said that we could place them there. We were taking advantage of their system and their traffic to make money. And we didn’t disclose it to anyone–Pinterest, our merchants, or all of the Pinterest users who click on our links. If it works out for us, great! If it doesn’t, it was a risk we chose to take understanding the way that social sites work.

The Pinterest User Argument: Pinterest users feel duped that Pinterest was making money off of them and they didn’t know it. From my perspective, we don’t have an argument there for a lot of reasons.

  • It’s a free service with lots of great functions. Surely everyone realizes that Pinterest had to make money somehow. There are no advertisements on the site. They aren’t selling our email addresses to anyone. How would they be making money?
  • The only links that they are making money on are the ones that you create to a merchant site. So you are already copying the content from the merchant when you “pin” it to Pinterest. How can you complain that it was your content to start with and Pinterest shouldn’t make money off of it?
  • Pinterest doesn’t in any way encourage you to buy anything through their links. They don’t review the merchandise. Your friends do. If you buy something, it’s not because Pinterest convinced you to, it’s because your friends did.
  • If you are going to buy the item anyway as a result of what you learned from the Pinterest site, why not allow Pinterest to make some money off of it? You don’t lose anything when they make money.
  • If you are pinning your own actual, unique content from your own website, Pinterest is not making any money off of it.
  • Do you know how many other sites make money off of you when you click on their links? Coupon sites don’t post coupons for you just to make you happy. Price comparison sites don’t exist just to help you out. Even a lot of forums let you chat away for free about whatever you want but then overwrite some of your words with Skimlinks. They all have affiliate links and make money when you click on their links and most of them don’t tell you. Are you complaining about those sites?

The Disclosure Issue: For some people, this is where it gets murky. Does Pinterest have to disclose that they are using affiliate links? The issue of disclosure in affiliate marketing is not clear. We do have to let our visitors know that we are setting cookies on their computers that collect certain data. The Pinterest Privacy Policy takes care of that. We also must not deceive our customers into buying something when we have a financial relationship with the seller. Pinterest isn’t representing anything at all. They aren’t writing reviews of products; the other users are. They aren’t encouraging you to visit merchant sites; the other users are. Does the fact that Pinterest might make money off of you if you make a purchase in some way take away from the experience that you are having on the site? I just can’t see why it would. The FTC Guides are about endorsements and testimonials, not links in general.

I’m truly interested in listening to opposing points of view on this. I’m sure that Pinterest will come out with some kind of disclosure policy just to make their users happy. They may also add something about affiliate links in general to their terms to warn affiliates about how they are treating their links. It would be helpful, but I don’t understand why it is required.

Links to other informational articles on the subject:

Pinterest is quietly generating revenue by modifying user submitted pins.

How Pinterest is secretly profiting from your links

What Affiliates and Merchants Should Know About Pinterest Links

Affiliate Tax in Indiana Update

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While I was away at Affiliate Summit, the State of Indiana was making a pretty big deal that could have an impact on my business. Governor Mitch Daniels announced last week that Amazon and Indiana have reached an agreement whereby Amazon will begin collecting sales tax for purchases in Indiana starting in 2014. Although the issue does not directly impact affiliate marketers in the state, I see it as fairly good news. Unfortunately, a new affiliate tax bill has also now been written.

Why was the Amazon agreement good for affiliates? First of all, much of the argument in favor of taxing all online purchases in Indiana was based on Amazon having fulfillment centers here. The issue of whether true out-of-state merchants whose only contact with Indiana are its affiliates became muddied into the discussion. The average voter/consumer did not understand where the physical location argument stopped and the alleged “nexus” argument began.  (See my full post Internet Tax Looming in Indiana?) [Read more…]

10 Best Choices I Made at Affiliate Summit West

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Although I’m suffering through a nasty cold and still behind on sleep, I couldn’t let the day go by without recapping the incredible experience that I had at Affiliate Summit West. Life’s about choices and here are some that I made in the last few days about which I am most happy.

Time With Friends

Affiliate Summit is about business, but for me that business is about working with friends. Whether we were chatting over a meal, bonding over sports teams, shaking it on the dance floor, singing along to karaoke, or just reconnecting in the hallways, the time that I spent with friends (both old and new!) at Affiliate Summit was invaluable to me. I especially enjoyed all of the time that I spent with my mom (Cindy Ballard) and Ashleigh both from a personal and a professional aspect. It’s always an adventure! [Read more…]

What Should You Wear to Affiliate Summit?

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As a mentor for every Affiliate Summit since they started the program, the question I am most frequently asked is about what people wear to the conference. This is both an easy and a hard question because I have quite literally seen people wear everything from bikinis to tuxedos. I don’t really recommend either but rather something in between. I’ll try to break down the sessions and parties and throw in some pictures from my Facebook account as demonstrations. Because, after all, it’s most important what you want to look like on Facebook because you will be tagged in all of those pictures before the conference is even over. And then they will be on your Timeline for the rest of your life.

Sessions: Dress in something that is comfortable both physically and mentally. You’ll be doing a lot of walking through the halls so wear something that you are not constantly tugging at or that is too hot or too cold. I usually think it is cold in the conference rooms so most days I wear layers. From a mental perspective, wear something that is YOU because you want to focus on being yourself and not worrying what people are thinking of what you are wearing. If you are usually a casual person, dress casual. If you enjoy getting dressed up, dress up. I usually dress up a little bit more on days when I am speaking than when I am not.

Monetizing Blogs Panel

I think this picture is a good illustration. Marty has on a jacket as the moderator. Carolyn has on a sleeveless dress as a speaker. Kristen and I both have on sweaters and slacks as speakers. You can see audience members in t-shirts, sweaters, and button down shirts. Really a mixture of different types of clothes.

Parties: This is where things can get a little tricky depending upon which parties you are attending. Some of the clubs in Vegas do have dress codes. You will want to check out individual events if you are going someplace like that. But for the most part if you are attending the Shareasale party and the Affiliate Summit Karaoke, your dress does not need to be much different than what you wear during the day.

This is from one of the evening events held at the hotel. Andrew is known for sporting the hip-by-being-un-hip t-shirts. Todd did the “casual shirt but dressy jacket” thing. My mom and I both wore the standard LBD (little black dress) with basic accessories. I actually think I take that dress to every Affiliate Summit just as a fall-back outfit. Others were wearing jeans and polos, slacks and jackets, and dresses.

A lot affiliates work from home so we do not have the standard “work clothes” that people in offices have. Although you can certainly use Affiliate Summit as an excuse to buy new clothes, you can work with what you have. Nice jeans, slacks, a couple of basic skirts. Church clothes. Or even just dress up what you have with a couple of new accessories to update classic outfits to be a little more contemporary. Just don’t bring too much with you or you won’t have any room in your suitcase for all the exhibit hall junk you want to take home.

If you are really worried about what to wear and fitting in, you can check out the Affiliate Summit photostream on flickr. There are thousands of pictures on there from all different types of events at the various Affiliate Summit conferences over the years. But what you will see is essentially this–wear what you like, what you feel confident in, and what you want others to see as representative of you. And what looks good on Facebook.

Naughty Merchants Deserve Lumps of Coal

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It’s that time of year when we talk about who is on the “Naughty” list and who is on the “Nice” list. In the last 48 hours, I’ve decided that there are some merchants who belong on the Naughty list. Because of the nature of retaliation in affiliate marketing, I’m not going to name a lot of names. On the flip side, affiliates need to know just what is happening with certain merchants so that they don’t end up getting taken advantage of the way that I have been.

First on my naughty list, and I have no problem naming names, is Disney Movie Club through Commission Junction. I have no idea how the program is or is not actually related to Disney because it is not run by the same people as the Disney Shopping or Disney Games accounts. But to make a long story short, I had 100% of my leads reversed for October and was told that they reversed 78% across all affiliates that month. The reason wasn’t fraud or cancellation but rather that the leads “didn’t show up in their reports.” I’ve been in affiliate marketing for over 7 years, and I can’t make heads or tails of this rationale. I tried to get more information but in the end just decided to stop promoting them because clearly they don’t care about affiliates. [Read more…]