If you are big on affiliate links then going to Pinterest should be thought thoroughly. There is something about affiliate links and Pinterest. They are like oil and water, they don’t mix well. Pinterest has signified that it doesn’t want affiliate links to be pinned. The trend started when the Pinterest system started to remove all information about Amazon links. Recently, Linkshare affiliates have started complaining that Pinterest has started a crackdown. This has become alarming and it could well impact businesses that are in Pinterest and at the same time uses affiliate links to boost traffic. Most businesses are in Pinterest because they want to harness the power of the system to generate traffic. More often businesses would use a force multiplier to their efforts to generate traffic through affiliate links. These just won’t work when people are going to pin the links on their own boards that would generate referral traffic for websites in exchange of commission when there is a sale that follows. This is good because it allows casual Pinterest users the ability to earn money while just casually using the system for their personal use. However, Pinterest cracked down on this citing several reasons. Pinterest sees common sites such as Amazon as spam. That is why it began a crackdown on the links that has Amazon on it. Remember what was mentioned earlier that a poster of an affiliate link earns commission each time someone clicks and buys; this would no longer be possible if Pinterest would no longer allow this kind of links to be pinned. What makes this a bit annoying is that Pinterest started the crackdown without notifying the users first. Everyone was caught by surprise when this thing started around April of 2012. What made the issue muddled further is the fact Pinterest has cracked down on URL shorteners such as bit.ly among others. This has a direct impact to small businesses that are exploiting the power of affiliate marketing as part of their marketing mix. Now people have no recourse but to abandon affiliate marketing in the world of Pinterest because of the restrictions. Pinterest has also restricted a common technique to track click-throughs by eliminating the additional information at the end of a URL before making the link go live. E-commerce people have been scratching their heads since. What brings to fore is that Pinterest may be killing a potential competitor for its own affiliate program. It is only natural for Pinterest to earn but it may only stunt the growth of the platform as a result. Shortened URL is cool because it would protect users from being scammed and infected by malicious websites. Pinterest should work on ways to prevent scammers and spammers to allow legitimate referrals go through. While Pinterest has a very solid ground to stand in this issue, this opens a Pandora’s Box that may impact small businesses using Pinterest to generate traffic through affiliate links and pins. While the pins will not be much impacted by this move, it would the people that are relying on affiliate programs will be affected. This is a very scary thing because the strength of Pinterest is grounded on its leverage to e-commerce. If it cracks down on affiliate programs it may give enough reason for business to leave the platform for better opportunities elsewhere. It will surely give a dent on the further expansion of the use of Pinterest for business.