Our Friends The Spammers

Below are some comments from a spammer forum. A lot of the Pinterest accounts may look legitimate on the surface, but many are fronts. In order to perform their spamming feats, these guys have to infringe on copyrights. But on the other hand, they are exploiting pin hags and degrading their infringement experience. It's hard not to feel ambivalent.

Becoming A Pinterest Authority

Im currently attached to a board called "Hawaiian Islands" has around 3,700 Images and 1,200 followers. I have not posted much but it seems to get a lot of attention. Might be worth making you're own board and giving it a trial run to see how things go.

Increase your Pinterest Accounts and boost your traffic and increase sales by yourself.

5000 Pinterest Accounts = 300$
Time Frame = 1 - 3 days

Must Read Last Pinterest Thread

Very interesting will implement this method.................. But how much time it will take to see traffic from pinterest???

Pinterest Journey

I pinned 3,700 odd images by hand in a few days, its very easy Plus i had some time.

PinPioneer is an awesome tool to have. You simply scrap images related to you're keyword and then pin em, all automated other than typing in the keyword you want and the description. I have no pinned anything over 150 images at a time but the owner Rick said the bot can pin 1,000 Images an hour.

Ben Silbermann's New Account

When the copyright infringement monster made its presence felt under the beds of pinners everywhere, Ben Silbermann himself deleted his own boards at http://pinterest.com/ben/, a URL that now leads to a 404-not-found page. He did, however, start a new one from scratch, under the rather disingenuous guise of wanting the experience what it is like to be a debuting pinner all over again. Right.



CLICK HERE to view Silbermann's new (possibly) copyright-respecting boards. Limiting, isn't it, Ben?

The Future Of Images On The Internet

Today, the spotlight is on you.

What is your principal source of revenue arising from the display of your art on the internet?

As an artist/photographer/creator, what measures are you considering taking in the short term to minimize copyright infringement?

What measures are you considering in the longer term?

What do you predict will be the ultimate effect of the erosion of image copyright on the internet?

Are there parallels to be made with the music industry?

Mothership Spam Is Our Friend

Welcome to Pintensify, the spam mother ship.


Will Pinterest be dominated?

The swarm gathers steam and spam automation tools in the dark confines of Black Hat World forum. "Black Hat" refers to a web savvy crowd whose goal is to exploit the internet and search engines to their fullest extent, no holds barred, with every means at their disposal. They are the finders of loopholes. They are the hackers. Mostly, it's legal. There is a lot of buzz about Pinterest right now.

Many Black Hat World threads seek ways to mine Pinterest

Bugs are being worked out; how to cloak redirects, monetizing through CPA (cost-per-action) affiliate marketing, Amazon, diet scams, fake gift cards, pages serving pay-per-click advertising. They work in informal teams harvesting image libraries, programming bots, dealing in followers and invites, creating and selling Pinterest clone programs. Small spammers even complain about the larger spammers "ruining it for everyone."

Like the artists whose websites are being copied onto Pinterest by pinners, spammers are trying to evaluate the worth of Pinterest traffic. Unlike artists, these guys count their coins and keep statistics.

Black hat webmasters trying to market Pinterest-spamming bots are of course lauding it as "highly converting traffic," a.k.a. cash-in-the-bank for a spammer. Very few report high earnings "making a steady $300-400 from Pinterest" (a feat that appears to require about 20 thousand followers and thousands of accounts), they are outnumbered by skeptics:

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"I've dabbled in this and I still don't get it. The clickthrough rate is horrible."

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"i found pinterest requried too much work compared to other methods...i have no interest in spending tons of valuable time trying to make a hundred bucks/mo...i could make more at mcdonalds."

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April Total earning
Ad.sense Earnings: €62.83 = $82
Amazon Earnings: $6.01
CPA Earnings: $40.20
TOTAL: $128.21

Number of accounts: 74
Total followers: 1165
Total following: 1483

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"i am getting a decent amount of daily traffic from pinterest but not making much money. getting cpa offer conversions from pinterest traffic is not doing too well for me but i know a lot of money can be made from the site."

For many artists and photographers, thousands of pins result in negligible traffic. How much is this negligible traffic really worth? The spammer jury is still out.

How Does Pinterest Make Money?

At first, Pinterest monetized its pages with SKIMLINKS. Users would post a picture link to a product that could be purchased, for instance, on Amazon.com using their own affiliate code so that they might receive a commission if a sale was made. Unbeknownst to them, Pinterest was wiping off these affiliate codes and replaced them with its own. This caused some outcry - largely becaues Pinterest did this secretly - and Pinterest dropped Skimlinks late in February 2012.

Now Pinterest is funded by venture capital to the tune of $38 million, with an eye on a future sale of the company or a steady income stream. Pinterest is expected to be monetized some time in the future.

This future may come soon. Just a few weeks after Skimlinks was suspended, on March 22, Business Insider announced that Tim Kendall had been hired by Pinterest. Tim Kendall's claim to fame is to have masterminded the monetization of Facebook pages.

There is money and advertisements in Pinterest's crystal ball.