Believe it or not, but Pinterest is a marketer’s dream due to the amount of free traffic that you are able to generate.
Pinterest is one of the biggest platforms in the world, which means lots of opportunities to make money on there!
In this article, I will show you all of the ways you can make money on Pinterest.
9 Ways to Make Money on Pinterest
There are 9 main ways that you can make money on Pinterest, which we will go through in detail below.
1) Become a Pinterest Virtual Assistant
As we said, Pinterest is a huge platform and one that a lot of businesses will want to get on due to the sheer number of people on there.
Any business can go on Pinterest and promote themselves – it’s not just reserved for the food businesses!
It’s not just a matter of chucking up some pins and being successful, however – there is a strategy behind it, and this can be quite time-consuming,
Due to the time-consuming nature, this is something that a lot of business owners are happy to outsource, and this is where you can come in to offer your services.
The kind of services that you can provide as a Pinterest VA include:
- Creating pins
- Keyword research
- Creating boards
- Joining group boards
- Manually pinning
- Scheduling pins with a scheduler such as Tailwind
- Setting up Pinterest ads
The amount that you’re able to earn as a Pinterest VA is pretty good – you should be able to charge $500 per client for the month.
This is one way that you can make money and be paid via Paypal — which is super convenient!
To learn more about it including how to find clients, sign up for the Pinterest VA course which is run by Gina Horkey and Kristin Larsen, who are pros at this.
2) Follow Your Passion and Build an Audience to Sell to
One of the most authentic ways to make money is to monetize a passion of yours.
The reason for this is because you are selling something that you genuinely believe is good and can have a positive impact in people’s lives.
There are lots of different areas that you could choose that would be popular such as:
- Fitness
- Food
- Parenting
- Home decor
- Finance
- Weddings
There’s a huge scope of topics that you can choose from, and then you need to decide how you will monetize. A good way to do so is to have your own product for people to buy.
Once you have decided on what you are going to be selling, it’s time to set up your Pinterest account and relevant boards.
You will want to create pins that are relevant to your topic and what you are selling, and guide people to your site to buy it.
This is perfect if you are a stay at home mom and looking for a way to make some extra money and enjoy doing it.
3) Make Money on Pinterest as a Blogger
To make money on Pinterest as a blogger the main objective is to get people onto your site.
As a blogger, you need to have a monetization strategy. There are a few ways that you can make money as a blogger such as:
- Affiliate marketing on Pinterest
- Sponsored posts
- Products or services
- Ads
We are on Pinterest with our blog, and it brings us hundreds of thousands of visitors each month. It’s safe to say that we love Pinterest!
The best way to use Pinterest for your blog is to make sure that you have boards and pins that are relevant to the topics that you talk about.
If you write about personal finance you may have boards relating to things such as budgeting, making money, paying off debt etc.
You will then want to create pins that showcase your latest article, freebie or product that you offer.
It’s important to create attractive pins with easy to read font and ideally a picture of the subject that it refers to.
Once you have your pins, you can pin them to the relevant board that you have created. You can also pin other people’s pins that you think would fit well on the board.
There are group boards that you can join which is where you will collaborate with other bloggers in your niche and pin each other’s pins.
This won’t make you money directly on Pinterest – but it’s all about using Pinterest as a tool to point people towards your blog.
4) Start Using Affiliate Marketing on Pinterest
Affiliate marketing is a way of making money blogging as we mentioned above, but you can also use it to make money on Pinterest.
Affiliate marketing is where you get paid for referring people to a particular product or service. If they click through and purchase, you will get a small commission for pointing them there.
The best thing to do is to promote things that you have used yourself and can happily recommend. You don’t want to be recommending things that aren’t any good.
If there is a company that you like and want to recommend, see if they have an affiliate program.
The way that affiliate marketing works on Pinterest is that you can lead them directly through the affiliate link when they click through on the pin.
When you create a pin, you can attach a URL to it so that when someone clicks on it, they are taken to the site.
When you are a blogger the general plan is to get them to click through to your site, but in this case, you will be attaching the URL of the affiliate link.
You need to let people know that it is an affiliate link, and you can either put this on the pin or in the description e.g. #affiliatelink.
It’s important to not rely on this strategy alone because platforms always change their algorithms or policies on affiliate links. It’s best to have a strategy that isn’t just on one platform.
We have found success with affiliate marketing, which was largely helped by taking the course Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing, which we highly recommend.
5) Use Pinterest to Drive Traffic to Your Online Shop
We’ve looked at some research that Pinterest has done, and their results found that Pinterest is a huge driver of traffic to online shops.
Not only that, but they are a big influence on what people should buy and provide inspiration for what things they should be purchasing and where from.
With this data in mind, it’s important to make sure that your online shop has a presence on Pinterest.
You can set it up in the same way that you would if you were a blogger – have boards relating to the various things that you are selling, and pins that showcase these.
If you already promote your business using ads such as Facebook ads(a good way of making money on Facebook), there is also the option to use Promoted Pins on Pinterest, which is their version of ads.
6) Use Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
A lot of people think of Pinterest as a social media platform, but it’s actually a search engine. One of the biggest in the world in fact!
If you already know about search engine optimization then you can use this to your advantage to get seen on Pinterest.
Because it is a search engine, there are certain tactics and strategies that you can use. This is great if your competition doesn’t use SEO, because it will give you an advantage.
Start with your Pinterest profile. This is an ideal place to put some keywords which are relevant to your business. Add the keywords to your name and in the description.
Next, you will want to make sure that the boards you have created also have keywords on. You don’t want to stuff them with as many keywords as possible as that will just look spammy.
The next place that you are able to place keywords is in your pin description. Talk about what the article that your pin is leading to is about, and make sure you add in keywords.
The reason that SEO is important is because you want to be found in the search results.
Say someone goes over to Pinterest and types in ‘healthy breakfast ideas’, if you have topics that cover this, you want to be one of the first results that pops up. SEO can help you achieve that.
The best place to learn everything you need to about SEO is taking this FREE 5-Day SEO Bootcamp.
7) Create Contests on Pinterest
A good way to get attention for your business is to create contests. You can create contests on Pinterest as a way to generate traffic and awareness of your brand.
If it is a competition for another brand, they may be able to set you up with an affiliate link to promote the competition.
The only worry with creating contests and promoting them on Pinterest is that people may pin those pins but they are not relevant to them in any way.
On Pinterest, it’s important that the right pins are saved to the right boards and so on.
A good way to try and get around this is to offer a competition prize that is very specific to your brand and not something that anyone would enter such as money or a laptop.
8) Make Money On Pinterest Teaching Others Your Strategies
If you want to make money doing something, they often say that the best way to do this is to get people to pay you to show them how to do this!
When you have used all of the strategies that we have mentioned above you should be pretty good on Pinterest.
Pinterest can be a bit of a tough cookie to crack when you aren’t sure what you are doing.
Everyone knows the potential of Pinterest and will pay good money to learn about how to use Pinterest for success.
Let people know that you have had success with Pinterest and you will have people queuing up for advice.
There are a few ways that you can offer this advice in a way that you can monetize such as:
- Courses
- Books
- Consultations/coaching
Have a look at what is out in the market already and browse through Facebook groups to see the common problems that people have with Pinterest.
This is a great work from home opportunity, and you could even run this alongside other side hustles such as proofreading.
9) Work With Other Brands On A Sponsorship Level
Brand sponsorships are where you work with brands to promote them in exchange for a fee.
In order to generate a decent fee for doing this, you will have to have a successful Pinterest account which you can get from the analytics and Google Analytics.
Brands will want to know that you’re maintaining a decent following to be able to reach a good number of potential customers.
Make sure that you work with brands that fit in with your business and ethics.
Additional Tips and Advice For Making Money On Pinterest
There are some additional things that you can do to make money on Pinterest which we will go through below.
Make sure you have a business account
This is a really important step to take if you want to work with brands.
The reason that having a business account is important is that it gives you access to analytics.
If you work with a brand it is likely that they will ask you for information from your analytics.
Switching to a business account is free and very quick.
Be active and pin often
Pinterest will reward you for being active on the platform and show your pins to more people.
They like to see people using the app by uploading pins and pinning from other accounts.
You will need to be pinning every day and uploading at minimum one new pin per day.
Treat Pinterest like the search engine it is (SEO everything)
A common mistake that people make on Pinterest is to forget how it is a search engine and not a social media platform.
The fact that it is a search engine means that there are different techniques and strategies that you can use to make your pins popular.
Make sure you use keywords (you can always get these from the suggestions when you type in a word) on your pins, boards, and profile.
Create beautiful looking pins
As well as doing SEO well on Pinterest, creating amazing looking pins is hugely important.
Say you are scrolling through your Pinterest feed and a pin makes you stop. Something about that pin got your attention – which is what you want to do with your own pins.
You can use sites such as Canva, Picmonkey or platforms such as Photoshop to create your pins.
Be sure to use a large bold font and stay away from the script looking font which is hard to read.
Describe your pins as a superfan
This is a tip that we find works really well for us. When you are filling in the description of the pin, you can do it from someone else’s point of view.
What I mean by that is that you can make it look like someone has tried out your pin and pinned it for themself.
If you write the description as if a super fan has checked out the article and is recommending it, other people will see this and be more inclined to click through.
Use Tailwind as your scheduler
It’s a well-known fact that pinning manually is great for your Pinterest account, but it means a lot of time on the platform.
One of the best ways to pin continuously is with a scheduler. Tailwind is the best one to use because it is a Pinterest approved scheduler.
Have a great looking media kit
A media kit is a pack that shows all of your business statistics and what you can bring to the table.
If you are doing work with brands then they will probably ask for your media kit.
It’s important that you have a professional-looking media kit. You can create it yourself or ask a graphic designer to put one together for you.
Always disclose your partnerships
This is something that’s really important to note when you are in business. You need to declare when you are working with someone.
This is whether you are working with affiliate links or on sponsored posts. It is a legal requirement that you declare when it is paid for work.
It’s easy to do on Pinterest because you can add the disclosure in the description of your pin.
Follow all of Pinterest guidelines and policies
To continue using Pinterest you need to make sure that you adhere to all of their guidelines and policies.
They are very strict about the people and content that go on their platform. If you want to use Pinterest to make money then it is important that you follow these rules.
Stay on top of trends and changes on the platform
Unfortunately, social media and search engines do not remain working the same as they always have.
There are frequent algorithm updates and changes to how it all works, and it’s important to stay on top of this.
Pinterest may come out and say that they are encouraging you to do something, but then decide a few months later that this has changed.
To stay on top of your Pinterest game it’s important to keep up with all of the changes and perhaps adjust your strategy as you go along.
