Wondering how to make money on Pinterest?
Yes, this is really a thing.
If you love Pinterest and are looking for a side hustle or even regular full-time income there are a number of ways you can monetize your brilliant ideas with Pinterest.
Today I’ll be showing you exactly how to make money using Pinterest and the steps you need to take to get started.
Before we jump in, let me share with you the power of Pinterest…
- Today more than 478 million people around the globe use Pinterest every month.
- Being a visual search engine, Pinterest users are actively searching for ways to be inspired and to plan… As a marketer, this audience is of great value as they are looking to engage with content and take action.
- 64% of pinners described Pinterest as a place to find ideas, products or services they trust.
- Pinterest has a longer pin lifespan than any other social network. High-performing pins can drive traffic for years (honestly) compared to other social networks posts being seen for as little as 18 minutes to 48 hours.
This post contains affiliate links. Disclosure here. This means I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.
Pinterest Q&A:
Table of Contents
How do I monetize on Pinterest?
When you think about monetizing on Pinterest there are a few key ways you can do this:
- Use Pinterest to make affiliate income (with or without a blog)
- Drive substantial traffic to websites and blogs so you can earn more money from ads
- Generate qualified leads for your online business through lead magnets/opt-in freebies
- Use pins to drive highly relevant customers to your eCommerce store, online shop or even Amazon products
- Become a Pinterest virtual assistant by managing businesses Pinterest accounts
How can I make money on Pinterest without a blog?
As mentioned above you can actually make affiliate income on Pinterest – no blog required!
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is the process of receiving a commission for sending a user to an eCommerce or business website. A commission is typically paid to you when the user purchases something within a specific time frame. You will receive a percentage of the total sale.
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To start affiliate marketing without a blog you need to have an understanding of the rules of individual affiliate marketing programs.
Many affiliate marketing programs allow you to promote a product or service in a pin and send traffic from that pin directly to the sales page.
However, one of the biggest affiliate programs out there (Amazon) will not let you do this, so you need to read the rules of what’s permitted.
Check out this extensive list of affiliate marketing programs to start your research.
Can I use my personal account or do I need a business account?
If you already have a personal account with a decent amount of followers you can change this to a business account! This way you can keep your followers.
You only want to change this over if you plan on only pinning content related to your Pinterest monetization strategies. To do this you can make your personal boards (that may not be related) secret.
If you still want to use your personal account as ‘personal’ only, I recommend setting up a separate Pinterest business account.
How To Make Money on Pinterest: Beginner’s Guide
1. Affiliate Marketing on Pinterest
If you have a blog or website the best thing to do is sign up for affiliate programs that are relevant to your niche as well as affiliate companies that offer products or services your readers will love.
Next, you’ll incorporate these affiliate links into your blog posts. Once you’ve done this, you can drive traffic to your affiliate blog posts with pins you publish.
If you do not have a blog, you can still make money with affiliate marketing on Pinterest…
As mentioned in the Q&A above, you can make money on Pinterest without a blog and one of the best ways is through affiliate marketing.
Want to Start a Blog?
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Step-by-step Process to Start Affiliate Marketing on Pinterest (without a Blog)
1. Set up a Pinterest Business Account
The benefit of this is you’ll get access to Pinterest Analytics which you don’t have access to with a personal account.
2. Do Some Research
Determine the type of products or services you’d like to promote on Pinterest.
You can do this research by checking out this list of affiliate programs or by thinking about companies you’d like to be an affiliate for and typing ‘company name affiliate program’ into Google.
Tip:
- I recommend focusing on one niche/category first so Pinterest understands what kind of content you focus on
- If you pin everything under the sun, Pinterest won’t see you as an authority on any topic, so it’s best to focus on a category.
3. Create Pinterest Boards
Once you now know what category you’ll be focusing on, you can create Pinterest boards that relate to this category.
Example: If your category niche is Entrepreneurship, you could create the following boards:
- How to become an entrepreneur
- Courses for Entrepreneurs
- Courses for Small Business Owners
- Small Business Printables
- Passive Income Ideas
I recommend creating 10 boards to get started.
4. Start Pinning & Growing Your Pinterest Account
In order to use Pinterest to make money with affiliate marketing, you need to have a following and be pinning consistently on Pinterest in order to grow your monthly views.
To do this, I recommend you begin pinning other people’s content to the boards you’ve set up. Do this on a regular basis either a little every day or multiple times per week.
You’ll also want to follow other pinners who pin related content to you, so you can easily save their content when it comes into your feed.
5. Sign up to Affiliate Programs
Once your Pinterest account has some momentum going you can sign up for the affiliate marketing programs you’re interested in.
The great thing is most companies will accept you pretty quickly.
To get you started here is a list of affiliate platforms you can join.
- Awin – ideal if you want to promote products on Etsy
- Shareasale – Shareasale partners with over 3900 companies including major leading brands!
- Ultimate Bundles – Ultimate Bundles has a number of digital product bundles perfect for a variety of niches
- Impact Radius – Great for software such as Canva, 99 Designs and Constant Contact
Some of the above affiliate companies are networks that work with hundreds and even thousands of other well-known companies. So, once you get accepted you’ll need to apply separately within the website.
Shareasale is an example of this.
When in the Shareasale dashboard, you can apply for loads of programs.
6. Create your first pin!
To create a pin you need to…
Design the pin
I recommend using Canva to do this. You can use my free Pinterest templates to get you started.
-> Here is also a great article you can read on creating pins that perform: How to Design High Performing Pins
Create a pin on Pinterest
You’ll need to add the image you’ve designed, plus add:
- Pin title
- Pin description
- Alt text – this is for the visually impaired and the text is read aloud by screen readers, so explain what can be seen in the pin.
- Affiliate link
Pin Title & Pin Description
To know what to write, read these Pinterest best practices that show you how to use Pinterest keywords people are searching for in your pin titles and pin descriptions.
Pin this to your most relevant board
Make sure to only pin to one board. For example, the above pin will be saved to my Pinterest Marketing board.
7. Get more traction on your pins with Tailwind
You can increase saves on your pins by using Tailwind.
Tailwind has a feature called Tailwind communities where you share pins you’ve published and others save your pins. In exchange, you will also save their pins. Just make sure to only save 3rd party pins to Pinterest that relate to your niche board’s content.
Get started with a free trial of Tailwind.
8. Create different pin designs
Pinterest LOVES fresh pins as this keeps its audience engaged. This means you can create a few pin designs for the same product or service.
Simply use a different image, change up the text, change the colours and even fonts.
Once you make a pin design look completely different, this could very well appeal to a different audience, so it’s smart to do this and to also keep track of what pins are working.
Related: Check out my shop for affordable pin templates you can easily customize!
Important Rules to follow for affiliate Pins:
- When creating a pin for an affiliate product you must state in the pin description that the pin is linking to an affiliate link. Do this by writing “affiliate link”.
- Do not use a link shortener service like bit.ly or Pretty links, as this is prohibited by Pinterest and can actually affect tracking, which means lost commissions.
- For more information on Pinterest’s affiliate rules, read their community guidelines.
2. Drive Traffic to an Ad Monetized Website
Pinterest is a powerhouse when it comes to driving traffic to a website or blog.
Due to this, if you monetize your website with advertising and are not using Pinterest this can be a big opportunity for you to make even more ad income.
Note: Even if you don’t yet monetize your website or blog with advertising, but you have a goal to, it’s smart to use Pinterest (alongside SEO practices) to increase your monthly traffic.
Related: Check out this post on how to make money blogging, where there is more information on monetizing your website with online ads: How to Make Money Blogging – Tips for Beginners
Here are some areas of focus that will help you make more money by monetizing ads with Pinterest:
Stay up to date on Pinterest’s best practices and strategies
This is important to maximize your traffic from Pinterest. I highly recommend signing up for the Pinteresting Strategies online course to help you stay current.
More info in the course section at the bottom of this post.
Once you begin growing you can set a traffic goal
50K sessions a month is a good place to start and this is the minimum traffic required to apply to an ad network like Mediavine.
There are other ad networks out there (more info in this post), but Mediavine is definitely a favourite with bloggers.
Note: There are also rumours that they are creating an ad opportunity platform for smaller blogs with less than 50K sessions so stay tuned for that.
Add relevant affiliate links to blog posts
You can add affiliate links to your popular posts to increase your earnings, however, for the best performance, I recommend writing reviews, gift guides and tutorials for the best converting affiliate posts.
Add ‘pinnable images’ to your blog posts
A pinnable image is something that will perform best on Pinterest, typically a vertical, 2×3 sized image with a text overlay.
By adding pinnable images to your blog posts you are encouraging people to share your articles on Pinterest. This will help you grow faster and increase your Pinterest account engagement.
- I recommend using a sharing plugin like Grow by Mediavine
Review your Pinterest Analytics every month
This is to get an understanding of what’s working and what’s not, so you can optimize your strategy and drive more traffic with Pinterest
Related: Pinterest Analytics: Metrics to Track Every Month + Free Printable
3. Generate Qualified Leads for Your Online Business
People use Pinterest for inspiration, but also to solve problems and find answers.
You can, therefore, help your ideal target audience with a solution and acquire them as a lead in the process.
How?
By creating a “lead magnet’ (Also referred to as an opt-in freebie).
What exactly is a lead magnet?
As described by Optinmonster.com…
A lead magnet is an incentive that marketers offer to potential buyers in exchange for their email address or other contact information. Lead magnets usually offer a piece of digital, downloadable content, such as a free PDF checklist, report, eBook, whitepaper, video, etc.
You can simply create a lead magnet and promote this on Pinterest. When a person signs up to receive the lead magnet they will be added to your email list.
Examples of lead magnets you can promote on Pinterest:
- Worksheets
- eBooks
- Digital templates
- Journals
- Case studies
- Quiz results
- Checklists
- Calendar
- Cheatsheet
- Tutorials
- Recipes
You can literally create anything that would be seen as valuable to your target audience.
Tip: Do a search in Pinterest under your niche name + one of the lead magnet examples above and see what comes up…“self-care checklist”, “food journal”, “SEO cheat sheet”.
This will show you what is currently on Pinterest and what people are searching for.
How to Deliver Your Lead Magnet
Once you create your lead magnet, you’ll want to deliver this via an email platform.
If you already have an email list, you can set this up by creating an embeddable form or a landing page.
You’ll then need to set up an automation email sequence to be delivered once someone signs up to the free lead magnet via the form.
If you do not yet have an email list or an email company you work with I recommend Mailerlite.
I personally use Mailerlite for both my websites and I’ve been really happy with them.
One of the lead magnets that I use, which is created with Mailerlite… (Make sure to sign up!)
Here’s a snapshot of what I like about Mailerlite:
- Free for your first 1000 subscribers and no hidden fees.
- Easy to use. Setting up lists and forms is straightforward
- Great customer service. If you don’t know how to do something, as someone in their chat feature and get answers immediately.
- Mailerlite has fantastic integrations with all major tech providers – i.e. WordPress & Shopify,
- Once you go over 1000 subscribers their monthly rates are lower than other email providers
-> Sign up to Mailerlite to get started.
4. Use Pinterest to Drive Traffic to Your eCommerce Store
As mentioned, people use Pinterest for inspiration and to find solutions… and Pinterest is highly focused on supporting businesses by connecting them to people who are seeking these solutions.
You can therefore use Pinterest to drive your ideal customer to your store.
Pinterest is a search engine after all and pinners are actively browsing, discovering and buying from all types of brands.
The best practices on how to pin for eCommerce retailers and brands are similar to what I mentioned in the above affiliate marketing section of this post…
- Set up a business account
- Create Pinterest boards based on your products/niche
- Start pinning 3rd party content (related to your niche boards) to grow your account
- Follow others in your niche
- Create pins and save them to your most relevant board
- Be active on Pinterest pinning your own pins + others in your niche. If you have a new Pinterest account it’s good practice to pin approximately 80% 3rd party content (other pinners) and 20% of your content.
Pinterest Resources to help you:
- Grab these tips on how to design a high performing pin that will get clicks
- Read this post to help you write pin descriptions and titles that will be found in Pinterest search
- Try these Free Pinterest templates you can customize in Canva to get you started
5. Become a Pinterest Virtual Assistant
Yes, you can make money this way and it’s ideal for people who are already using Pinterest on a regular basis for their own business.
Of course, it’s extremely important that you understand everything there is to know about Pinterest BEFORE you offer these services.
Pinterest changes on a regular basis so it’s important to know what the best practices are today and stay on top of these.
There is a Pinterest VA course I highly recommend from Megan at LoveFamilyHealth.com. It’s called VA Ninja and it teaches you everything you need to know about becoming a successful Pinterest virtual assistant.
What does a Pinterest VA do?
As a Pinterest VA you can perform a number of tasks for clients:
- Pinterest account set up
- Pin design
- Pinterest keyword research
- Monthly Pinterest account management
- Schedule pins in the Pinterest scheduler or a scheduling tool like Tailwind
- Optimize pins designs and scheduling based on Pinterest analytics and trends
- Pinterest audits
How much money can a Pinterest VA make?
Being a Pinterest virtual assistant can bring you in a regular income – anywhere from $300 to $5000 a month!
If you are brand new you may charge $15 to $25 an hour, but more experienced Pinterest Managers can charge up to $100+hour.
The amount you will make as a Pinterest VA comes down to two things…
- How long you’ve been managing client accounts and overall how experienced you are at helping clients reach their goals.
- The type of clients you work with. What you make can also depend on how much budget your client has. So, if you’re working with a blogger, for example, they most likely will have less budget than a small to medium-size business. So, keep this in mind especially as you grow your skills and experience – you can charge more.
-> You can learn more about how to make money as a Pinterest VA in the VA Ninja course.
VA Ninja includes the following:
- Full online video course with downloadable reference documentation
- Includes package creation, what to charge, contracts and welcome packages you can customize,
- As a student, your VA services will be listed for free in the Pinterest VA database
- Monthly live conversion training in a private student Facebook group
More Courses to Help You Make Money on Pinterest
Below are some popular courses (I have personally taken) that will give you the tools to make money on Pinterest
Pinteresting Strategies
Level: For beginner to advanced Pinterest users
Pinteresting Strategies is an in-depth course from pro blogger Carly Campbell who runs the website Mommy On Purpose and the huge Facebook group Blogging Like You Mean It.
Carly teaches the strategies she uses on Pinterest to make a stellar full-time income as a blogger and affiliate marketer.
The big benefit of taking this course:
- Carly stays closely connected to absolutely everything to do with the Pinterest algorithm, best practices and is constantly trying new tactics to be successful on Pinterest.
- These strategies are shared in-depth in her course so you’ll begin to see a big change in the performance of your pins
- Includes extensive video tutorials explaining everything you need to know.
Affiliate Marketing for Bloggers
It just so happens that my favourite affiliate marketing course is also from the talented Carly Campbell.
I have taken a handful of other affiliate marketing courses that were actually more expensive, however, the skills Carly teaches in her course are what’s helped me to make a consistent (and substantial) affiliate income every month.
Carly’s course, Affiliate Marketing for Bloggers teaches you:
- What niches can make the most money with affiliate marketing
- How to write blog posts and emails that consistently make sales
- The types of links you can promote with affiliate marketing
- and soooo much more!
Final Tips: How to Make Money on Pinterest
- Focus on one area and learn everything there is to be successful.
- Always stay on top of Pinterest’s best practices, which you’ll get in Carly’s regularly updated Pinterest course.
- Pinterest is a long-term game. Remember that pins can drive traffic over time. This means a pin you created a year ago could very well get stronger and drive more traffic year over year.
- Always understand what’s working by reviewing your Pinterest Analytics on a regular basis (at least once a month).
- Get creative with pin designs. Keep trying new fonts, colours, layouts and see what performs best for you.
- Never forget that Pinterest is a search engine, so always do Pinterest keyword research and incorporate these keywords into your pin titles, pin descriptions, board titles and more.
My Personal Experience Making Money on Pinterest
I want to share that all of the Pinterest monetization strategies I’ve mentioned above are areas I currently focus on (and make good money from) today. Some details.
- I offer Pinterest management services to a variety of clients on a monthly basis
- I have a personal growth blog where I make money from working with the Mediavine ad network. Pinterest and SEO are my key traffic drivers.
- I make consistent affiliate marketing revenue every month on both my websites (from a variety of affiliate companies).
- I generate consistent leads on both my websites with the help of Pinterest to grow my email list.
- I have a Shopify store and I also sell on Amazon. I use Pinterest to drive traffic to these shopping platforms where I’m generating sales every day.
How to Make Money on Pinterest: Conclusion
All in all, Pinterest is an extremely powerful search engine platform where you can make money through organic pinning strategies.
Of course, Pinterest is changing and you can also pay for ‘promoted pins’ on Pinterest, but you can still reach your goals by utilizing organic traffic from Pinterest to make money.
In my opinion, Pinterest is the 2nd best place you can spend your time (first being SEO) when it comes to driving traffic and making money online.
Need Help with Making Money on Pinterest?
Book a strategy call with me and we can discuss your Pinterest monetization plan in more detail and come up with a plan to make you more money this year!
Lisa says
Yolanda, this was so helpful! I’d love to ramp up my Pinterest and change things around! I may book a call with you in the future for some tips. I’m bookmarking this post! 🙂
Genesis says
Wow, it never occurred to me that I could use my affiliate links to make sales on Pinterest! I already signed up for a lot of these programs but have only been using them on my blog. This is genius! I will be bookmarking this page to refer to in the future!
Kelly Bolen says
Great advice! Pinterest is a wonderful for tool for anyone who has an online presence!
Linda says
I consider it a win if I manage to write different headlines for my pins. Leveraging pinterest with affiliate marketing in mind hasn’t been on my radar, but I should start doing more to test this out!
Pamela Malu says
Great tips. I like the idea of creating a different pin design for the same product; I never know can do that. Thanks for your tips.
Donna says
Thank you for breaking this down so plainly! I always get so lost when it comes to pintrest. I really need to step up my pinning game.
Ayanna says
Thank you for all these great tips! This definitely encourages me to up my Pinterest game.
Dee says
Thank you, Yolanda. This article is written so well and so many tips. I have been using Carly’s templates and her courses but get distracted from Pinterest. Will apply these tips and get in touch with you for a strategy call. I love how you diversified the income with your own Shopify and Amazon Store.
yolanda says
Hi Dee, So happy you found these Pinterest monetization tips helpful. Diversifying income is so important when you’re working online – I highly encourage it! I’d love to connect. Reach out anytime!