Product: Super PinMadness
Creator: Erica Stone
Price: $21
Website: SuperPinMadness.com (WSO product)
Rank: 75/100
What is Super PinMadness? – An Overview
Super PinMadness is a 58 page PDF guide on how to leverage the power of Pinterest for affiliate marketing without dealing with setting up your own website. It was put together by well known Warrior Forum member Erica Stone. If you aren’t familiar with her this isn’t her first Pinterest marketing PDF guide; she has put together other products including PinPlosion and PinFabulous Affiliate. Each deals with their own separate realm but SuperPin Madness is the most recent of them all, just launched last week (October 2014).
What will you learn and how is it different than other how-to guides on Pinterest?
This program is unique because you don’t need a website at all to start with affiliate marketing. You’ll be walked through how to set up a new business Pinterest account and find affiliate programs that will work to direct link from Pinterest. Since most affiliate programs don’t allow direct linking via social networks, and Pinterest doesn’t like direct linking either, this is taking advantage of a loophole.
Erica talks about 2 artsy affiliate sites that let you do this, at least for now. Meaning, there’s technically nothing in their current terms of service that forbid direct social linking, but they could change the rules (either the affiliate program or Pinterest itself) whenever they feel like people are abusing them.
Amazon and other affiliate networks already have filters in place that will strip an affiliate link when posted directly from Pinterest. Just because these programs she talks about don’t do that, doesn’t mean they never will.
She also discusses another affiliate network, Share-a-Sale, that will let you direct affiliate link to Pinterest as well. Although, the majority of programs within the Share-a-Sale network actually don’t allow it, so you need to read every affiliate programs terms carefully before you sign up and start posting their links.
Do the methods actually work?
Erica claims she has self tested this method and it works for her. Now I’m sure they really do work for her and I’m sure others who follow the guide could make it work for them, too. The problem is, however, this isn’t something that will work forever and could very well come crashing down sooner rather than later. Especially now that she’s packaged and sold these methods, there’s going to be an increase of people trying to direct affiliate link from these programs (especially if people abuse the links) and it may send some red flags to the Pinterest team.
While this may work it’s only a temporary fix for the here and now.. not for next year, 6 months from now, and maybe not even for tomorrow. It will require a lot of work to implement and I’m not sure you can really experience great results using only the methods she outlines in the Super PinMadness PDF. The “secret” to the method, using ViralWoot, is only really powerful if you have the money to throw at your promotion. She doesn’t outline a good way to gain free, solid traffic to your affilitae pins (at least not with this guide in particular).
Price + Additional expenses (buying “seeds” with ViralWoot)
Super PinMadness currently is selling for $21 as a Warrior Special Offer. There aren’t any upsells, either. You really can follow the guide all the way through and she doesn’t push any sales in your face.
However, there’s a site called ViralWoot in which you’re supposed to join in order to increase your Pinterest followers and to promote your affiliate pins. The problem is that it doesn’t work very well if you don’t pay for the promotion. Anyone can sign up for free and earn “seeds” (the Viralwoot currency) by liking pins, following other members, and repinning pins.
But as a free member those seeds don’t come easy and go very fast. If you really want your affiliate pins to get promoted and re-pinned consistently, you’ll have to have a lot of seeds in your account. But every time someone follows you, likes, or re-pins your pins, your seeds get taken away. My balance kept ending up in the negatives every hour!
It’s unrealistic to spend every hour going back earning more seeds, so that is why they offer paid packages. You can spend anywhere from $29 – $300 buying seed packages, or sign up for a monthly account with them for extra seeds and additional benefits (which is overpriced in my opinion). It’s sort of like you’re paying for advertising, but you could be throwing a lot of money away if you choose to spend your money on this. (Viralwoot is also very buggy and seems questionable, I personally wouldn’t feel comfortable giving them my credit card information).
Since this is pretty much the only traffic method discussed within the guide, you’ll need to actually pay additional expenses for advertising. Unless you already have 1,000’s of Pinterest followers on your business account, or know how to gain 1,000’s of followers, you’re going to have a hard time getting much exposure for your pins.
Pros vs. Cons
Pros:
- Don’t need a website
- Pinterest is fun and addicting so it doesn’t really feel like “work”
- You’ll learn how to grow your Pinterest traffic and exposure
- The very same methods can be used to promote your own websites or products
- Erica is very responsive to emails if you need help
Cons:
- Unstable business set up, can be taken away from you at any time
- Takes advantage of loopholes to earn money
- Can throw a lot of money away promoting your pins with getting very little in return, losing your ROI
- Recommended program for affiliate pin promotion is questionable
- The conversion rate will be relatively small, so your pins will need a A LOT of exposure to make sales
My final opinion – is Super PinMadness a viable long term business strategy 
If you plan to use this exclusively without a website and your only source of income is from direct affiliate links, you’re building a business on eggshells. You’ll also need to put a lot of time, effort and money into getting your pins the exposure they need to convert… and it’s risky to invest all of that into a business that might not work tomorrow.
I don’t think it’s a bad idea to get involved with Pinterest; it can be a highly beneficial social network for blog and product exposure (and just for fun, too). But Pinterest should be used to gain traffic to your own blog, not an affiliate link. If you don’t want the rug thrown out from under you, I recommend that you use these strategies with your own website instead.
Once you quit searching for “the next best thing” and focus your energy on creating an actual sustainable online business, you’ll find yourself much ahead of the game.
Looking for a sustainable online business strategy? Let’s compare Super PinMadness to another product on the market….
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