Pinterest business model canvas

Pinterest is a photo-sharing website, launched in March 2010, which allows users to create and maintain theme-based inspiration boards (pinboards) and follow the boards of others.  The model switched from invitation-only membership to unlimited membership, and boasts a intense following of fashionistas, party-planners, DIY-ers, foodies, brides-to-be, and more.  The numbers are staggering -- as of April 2013, Pinterest monthly active users topped 48-million and the most followed board, "Delicious" by Jane Wang, included more than 6.9-million followers!  The model is effective in part because it's using social influencers to generate product excitement; users choose to follow those with similar interests, so the content delivered to users through the Pinterest feed is of high relevance.

The opportunity for Pinterest is generating revenue through the enormous base of users already established.  There are two major opportunities that Pinterest can pursue right away: 1) kickbacks from click-through to e-commerce sites, and 2) enticing advertisers (retailers) to pay for affiliate advertising in dedicated space on the www.pinterest.com site.  

1) Because a large amount of the pins on the site are dedicated to product and because pins typically link directly to the e-commerce site, Pinterest should be able to partner with retailers to receive some type of kickback for directing traffic to the retailer site.  This kickback could be based on amount of traffic or on traffic conversion.  Pinterest has a lot of bargaining power -- the user base is predominately female (an attractive asset to retail partners!) and Pinterest has the power to allow or block click-through traffic through its programming.  

2) The second opportunity is integrating dedicated advertising space on the Pinterest site, either in top or side banners.  The Pinterest site is uniquely optimized for relevant advertising.  For example, Nike could pay for affiliate advertising on boards dedicated to fitness but avoid DIY boards and J.Crew could advertise on boards dedicated to style and fashion but avoid boards centered around recipes or home decor.  The optimization and key words associated with boards ensures that retailers would be utilizing ad spend effectively and that the advertisements would hit the customer base while their engaged with the topic at hand -- the perfect combination and selling point for potential retail partners!