Pinfluence: The Complete Guide to Marketing Your Business with Pinterest

Advice for Artists, Photographers, and Other Visual Content Providers

I’d like to first address the concerns of artists, photographers, and other people who provide visual content on the web—folks I’ll refer to as artists throughout this section.

As a quick aside about the Pinterest terms of service: Until recently, Pinterest did have a line item in their terms of service that stated that by using Pinterest, you were allowing the site to sell the images that you uploaded or to which you linked. Artists (justifiably) got very upset about this clause, and many complained. As of April 1, 2012, Pinterest removed the word “sell” from their terms of service, stating:

Our original Terms stated that by posting content to Pinterest you grant Pinterest the right for us to sell your content. Selling content was never our intention and we removed this from our updated Terms. [Emphasis added.]1

It’s understandable that artists feel vulnerable about the use of their images on Pinterest; these are valid concerns. But there are steps that artists can take to protect themselves, while still enjoying all of the great benefits of having their images on Pinterest.

Being willing to loosen the reins a bit regarding your approach to sharing your content online can also have enormous benefits when it comes to Pinterest. Pinterest now drives more traffic to websites and blogs than Twitter, YouTube, and Google+. That means that millions of visitors are going to websites from Pinterest pins, and that some ...