Pinterest already generating revenue

Image-blogging site and current tech industry darling, Pinterest, has been frequently hitting the news of late, mostly thanks to its meteoric rise. TechCrunch recently obtained exclusive information from comScore showing that it was the fastest independent site to hit 10 million monthly uniques in the U.S. Couple this momentum with the fact that the service is making money from links on its users’ pins and you have quite the money-spinner.

Pinterest is a social media-blogging platform, but unlike similar services like Tumblr, images are linked to their source – which creates a great opportunity for Pinterest to monetise its users’ pinboards. This fact isn’t lost on London startup Skimlinks, which has been credited with providing the affiliate links behind Pinterest.

We asked Skimlinks about which aspects of its product made it attractive to Pinterest, and Marketing Director Aaron Weissman was happy to let us in on the secret: “It saves you time by automatically affiliating pre-existing links and product references, pays out higher commissions, grants publishers access to over 18,000+ merchants, has superior reporting that gives valuable insight into the shopping patterns of your users,” he revealed.

Profiting through clean design

Pinterest’s focus is predominantly on page design and aesthetics, and Weissman believes that this is another big reason why Skimlinks’ product was exactly what the social media company was after. He says that the “ability to monetise without distracting ads, and provide an amazing user-experience” was a big draw for Pinterest.

These are prosperous times for Pinterest, then, but will the site allow users to adopt their own affiliate links to monetise their pinboards? Weissman confirms that this is already the case: “Pinterest is not currently over-riding other people's affiliate links, and Skimlinks’ technology respects pre-existing affiliate links.” He declined to comment on the subject of the social pinboard’s future affiliate plans, however, saying: “Pinterest's strategy and future business decisions as ultimately that is Pinterest's call!”