I just saw the news that Pinterest is making money off of people’s pinned content, unbeknown to the individual’s creating the bulletin boards.

As I learned via Shelly Kramer’s post (who learned it from Josh Davis), when you pin something that came from an ecommerce site, they quietly change the link so that clicks back to the ecommerce site and purchases there can be tracked. Pinterest gets paid for each purchase that resulted from a link on its site.

My question: If Pinterest is making money off my content, where’s my cut?

First, like Shelly, I am all for startups making money. Moreover, I’m all for startups that provide a great service to end-users and businesses, but charge the businesses. I think that’s an ideal business model.

But, this is essentially advertising. Pinterest, in a very smart twist, has gotten all of us to create their ads for them. They host a site where we, in a fervor of excitement, create content that advertises products. They then make money off of our ads.

If you are a blogger or a publisher and you put ads or affiliate links on your site, you get paid when people click or purchase. Of course, in this case Pinterest owns the site.

But, so does YouTube. YouTube’s model is similar. People go out and create original content because they enjoy it and like showing off. YouTube makes money from the ads placed on their site. Your videos draw people in. They click on the ad next to the video. YouTube gets paid. YouTube offers a way for the content creators to benefit monetarily, though. People who create a lot of original videos can join their Partnership Program and get a cut of the ad revenue.

So, Pinterest, I’m fine with you making money from my boards. But, where’s my cut?

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