Pinterest has finally made the long awaited announcement that they will be adding a new button for ‘buyable pins.’ The feature will first launch in the United States only, but most people expect that it will then roll out globally over the coming months. The feature is in response to one of the most popular requests the site got, which is the ability to buy items that people pin.
In fact, in the announcement Pinterest Co-Founder and CEO Ben Silbermann read a tweet from a users who said, “I wish Pinterest was as store. Like how great would it be to walk in and buy all those clothes, and food and shoes and puppies and boys?” He went on to comically say, “People have been asking for this stuff a lot and while we can’t promise puppies and boys, I’m really excited to announce today Buyable Pins.”
The new feature will allow certain companies and partners to add a ‘buy it’ button, which will be blue and appear next to the existing red ‘Pin It’ button. When clicked, users will be able to buy the items featured in the pins, paying through ApplePay and traditional credit cards at first. There are plans in place to add additional payment options in the near future.
One of the most surprising parts of this announcement is that Pinterest won’t be taking a cut of each sale. They are allowing the brands and marketers to retain all their profits. Pinterest will benefit from the fact that this will make their ‘sponsored pins’ more attractive, which should increase revenue.
The program is going to start with only a few selected brands, but they are big names and will make it so over 2 million buyable pins will be active at launch. The initial companies include Macy’s, Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom as well as Shopify. Marketers can list their own products on Shopify, which can then have them on Pinterest so there are options for individual marketers.
It is expected that the program will open up to all marketers in the future, which will generate a lot of opportunity for affiliate marketers who can list their products on this very popular site. Whether they will have limits on the types of products and affiliate links that are permitted or not isn’t known yet.
The bottom line with this announcement is that it is going to turn Pinterest from a great traffic generating tool for marketers into an actual eCommerce site where marketers can begin generating great revenue directly.
