Do you want to make money on Pinterest? This is not only a visual search engine and a social media site, it’s also a platform that allows you to make extra income in many different ways. You will learn which ways from this article!
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Can You Make Money on Pinterest?
Yes, making money on Pinterest is fairly easy.. and it’s free! And you can do it without using Pinterest ads! Especially if you’re a blogger, influencer, or running an online store. There are a bunch of ways to earn some cash on Pinterest, but the approach that works best will depend on your specific business and what you’re trying to accomplish.
If you have an eCommerce store and are trying to lure in customers during their research phase, Pinterest is the place to be. A whopping 85% of Pinners (yes, that’s what they call themselves) start their projects on the platform, eager for some inspiration.
What better way to show off your wares than on a platform full of eager shoppers?
Isn’t Pinterest just another social media platform?
If you’re a blogger or influencer, Pinterest can be really useful for getting more people to visit your website.
You know how we usually think of Pinterest as social media? Well, it’s actually more like Google – a search engine where people find cool stuff. The only difference is that Pinterest is geared more toward visual search results.
What you need to do is mix some SEO magic with eye-catching pins so that people discover your content and click through to your site.
And once they’re on your site, you can get them to sign up for your email list, buy stuff, or whatever else you want them to do.
There are tons of ways to make money with Pinterest, so if you’re interested, I can share some fail-safe tactics to get you started.
Best Ways to Make Money on Pinterest
Unlike other social media platforms, you can make money on Pinterest really easily and for free in different ways.
Unlike Instagram and Facebook where you have to pay for ads or for post boosting. You just have to make a Pinterest business account, and you’re all set.
These are the many ways to make money on Pinterest which helps my business and my blogs:
- Advertising (I use Mediavine ad management company);
- Affiliate marketing and affiliate links in the articles and posts which get traffic mainly from Pinterest;
- Selling my products and services (printables and courses);
- Partnering with brands.
I will talk about these three monetization strategies in detail in this article.
Who Can Make Money On Pinterest?
It could be bloggers, Youtubers, content creators, virtual assistants, marketing experts, life coaches, small business owners, big business owners, and more who want to gain brand awareness or simply help people through their content.
For bloggers, Youtubers, and content creators, Pinterest can help them make money by driving traffic to their blog posts or channel. For virtual assistants and marketing experts, Pinterest can help them drive leads and potential customers on their landing page.
For e-commerce owners, you can easily promote your products and services on Pinterest for free and quickly drive traffic to your e-commerce site.
In a nutshell, Pinterest can help you reach your target audience without spending any money on Pinterest ads.
Can You Earn Money on Pinterest Without a Blog?
Absolutely! You can totally make money on Pinterest even if you don’t have a blog. Here are a few ways to do it:
1. Affiliate marketing
You can join affiliate programs and promote products in your niche. Just create attractive pins with your affiliate links and when someone makes a purchase using your link, you’ll earn a commission.
2. Selling products
If you have your own products, like digital downloads, printables, or even physical items, you can use Pinterest to promote them and drive sales.
3. Offer services
If you provide services like graphic design, photography, or consulting, you can showcase your work on Pinterest to attract potential clients.
4. Sponsored pins
As your following grows and you build a solid presence on Pinterest, brands might approach you to create sponsored pins promoting their products or services, and you’ll get paid for it. You can also partner with brands directly on Pinterest to tag them in your Idea pins (read more about it here).
5. Become a Pinterest Virtual Assistant
If you become really good at using Pinterest, you can make it your skill and start offering a Pinterest Virtual Assistant or Pinterest Account Manager services to other businesses and bloggers.
6. Pinterest Creator Rewards Program
Update: Unfortunately, Pinterest Creator Rewards Program didn’t leave long. Pinterest closed it in Nov 2022.
Learn How to Make Money On Pinterest WITH a Blog and Ads
Here are some of the reasons I recommend focusing on Pinterest for traffic generation if you plan to make money on Pinterest with ads on your website:
First, Pinterest traffic works great for monetization through ad companies like Mediavine or Adthrive, Ezoic and Monumetric.
All these ad companies are looking mainly for traffic from the United States (usually they’ll ask for about 80% of users from the US) – and since Pinterest is particularly popular in the US, that gives you a great free traffic source.
Ezoic accepts sites without any minimum required traffic, so you can try to apply as soon as you have some content on the site (and maybe not much traffic yet). Monumetric requires at least 10,000/mo sessions in your Google Analytics. Mediavine will ask for 50,000/mo sessions and Adthrive requires at least 100,000 mo/ pageviews.
Second, ad income is usually the very first option beginner bloggers think of for monetization. Anything else, like selling your own products and even affiliate marketing looks like a more advanced method to them.
And Pinterest is the one platform that allows you to get the fast results any beginner is craving for.
Just a few quick facts before we dive into all the details:
- So far, I make money on Pinterest through the website traffic I made which is a maximum of $250/ day from one of my blogs (using Mediavine ads);
- On my best traffic day to one of my blogs, I make money on Pinterest through the webpage views I get which sometimes got over 13,000 pageviews (it was thanks to a viral pin of course).
- My best monthly traffic on one of my blogs exceeded 300,000 pageviews.
These are some numbers to give you a quick idea about the importance of Pinterest traffic for my online income and how you can make money on Pinterest. And now, let’s look at the details…
To get 50,000/mo sessions from Google is almost impossible for a new blogger because of the competition and the so-called “sandbox” filter for new sites.
At the same time, nothing stops a new blogger from getting much faster than the required 50,000/mo sessions to get into Mediavine with Pinterest traffic.
So, yes, you can get paid fairly high and make money with a successful blog and by writing blog posts.
By the way, if you have a new blog and not much traffic on it yet, you can still monetize it way better with Ezoic than you could with Google Adsense. Application to Ezoic is free and you might be making 1.5-2 times more than with Adsense even on a small traffic volume.
What About Affiliate Marketing on Pinterest?
You are allowed to add direct affiliate links to your status image pins, to video pins, and even to Idea pins (for now you can only do it by tagging affiliate links to products as a sticker to the Idea pin).
Note: you can ONLY tag links to Idea pins if you create them on a mobile device. And here is the screenshot of the step when you can add it.
You can see on the image below how a pin with a tagged product might look like:
Here are some insider tips for crushing it as an affiliate on Pinterest:
1. Stick to themed boards
Don’t just throw a bunch of random affiliate links together on one board. Instead, organize your pins around a central theme, so people can easily find what they’re looking for and get inspired by your pins.
2. Craft meaningful descriptions
Make sure to explain why your affiliate pins are worth checking out, and include relevant keywords and hashtags so that Pinterest can show them in search results.
3. Keep it real
Nobody likes a constant sales pitch. Be genuine and create pins and boards that truly represent your brand.
4. Invest in top-notch visuals
To really grab people’s attention, use eye-catching images or videos for your pins that inspire or provoke thought.
5. Play by the rules
Don’t risk getting blocked by Pinterest for spamming. Stay in the know about Pinterest’s Affiliate Guidelines and any local regulations, like the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s Endorsement Guidelines, to make sure you’re playing fair.
Follow these tips, and you’ll be well on your way to affiliate success on Pinterest!
Drive Traffic to Your Blog Where You Use Affiliate Links
There is another way to use Pinterest for Affiliate marketing.
What you need to do is create blog posts or pages on your site which describe the benefits of the product or offer you promote.
And your pin will NOT look like an ad, it will have a much lower risk of being marked for spam.
Because it will have a text overlay and a link to your site (and not directly to an affiliate product).
It will look like any other regular informational pin, and you don’t have to add a disclosure to the pin in this case since it goes to your website and you already have a disclosure there.
When people click on the link on your pin and make a certain purchase, then you can earn money or commission from it. You can also earn money on Pinterest through affiliate marketing by making a pin whenever a certain product you want to promote is on sale.
But also, affiliate marketing can be a hit or miss on Pinterest especially if you do not know which affiliate links are banned on the platform.
Yes, there are affiliate links that are dangerous to your Pinterest account especially if they seem spammy or suspicious. But either way, with the right affiliate links and Pinterest strategies, making money on Pinterest with affiliate links and affiliate marketing can still be highly profitable.
How to Make a Pinterest Business Account?
If you are completely new to Pinterest, then before you get started with creating pins, you may want to know that if you want to start making money on the platform, you have to create a business account instead of a personal account.
Why? It’s because there are so much benefits of a Pinterest business account that a personal Pinterest account does not have. What Pinterest says is that a Pinterest business account includes things like the Pinterest Business Hub and Pinterest Analytics, where you can review your Pins’ performance. With a business account, you can also become a merchant and upload catalogs.
Here are the steps on how to create a Pinterest Business Account so you can start to earn money on the platform:
- From the top-right of your screen, click Sign up
- Click Create a business account
- Enter your Email, Create a password and enter your Age
- Click Create account
- Fill out the fields to Build your profile, then click Next
- Fill out the fields to Describe your business, then click Next
- Select if you want to run ads, then click Next
- Select where you’d like to start or click the x icon to go to your new Pinterest business account
If you have several businesses, then you can also create several different Pinterest accounts. And there you have it, you have your Pinterest business account and start creating pins.
How to Sell Products on Pinterest?
You already know that the majority of my blogging income comes from ads and the majority of my traffic comes from Pinterest.
But how about sales of products/services using Pinterest as a marketing funnel?
A common misconception about Pinterest is that it’s a social media platform, people go to Pinterest to entertain only, and so it’s very hard to convert visits from Pinterest.
Pinterest is a visual search engine which relies a lot on social factors.
By social factors, I mean both user interaction with the content (aka click-throughs, likes, comments), and the connection between users (meaning you will see content from people and Pinterest boards you follow more often in the Homefeed).
Users on Pinterest can be in two modes:
- Active search;
- Explore by scrolling the Home feed.
Both ways you can get users who are genuinely interested in your topic and even gain many followers. But if they come from search results, even more so. That’s definitely a positive thing about Pinterest audience compared to social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram.
This sounds like a great theory but I personally learn much better from real-life examples. Today you are lucky, and I decided to invite you into the behind-the-scenes to show you how my Pinterest traffic is converting!
I made a screenshot from my Google Analytics and you can see that in total, Pinterest traffic brought about the same amount of conversions as Google. I’m showing on this screenshot the total for my goals, the highest conversions are of course on my free Pinterest Workshop.
Some of the goals have monetary values, so excuse the blurred parts of the screenshot. I’m not bragging about the money here, I’m just showing you how to track your conversions in Google Analytics 🙂
As you can see, Facebook and Instagram are nowhere close to Pinterest’s input into my conversions. It’s not that I’m happy about it, it’s just a fact.
And I know that to increase conversions from FB and Instagram, I would have to drive paid clicks to my landing page or freebie. The organic reach on both platforms is not an easy objective even for accounts with large following.
Luckily, Pinterest is a hybrid of a search engine and a social media platform which makes our goals more achievable even without an ad budget if you know what you are doing with your Pinterest SEO!
How I Earn Money with Free Pinterest Traffic?
I guess, not everyone reading this post knows who I am and what my blogs are about. I’ll make this story short for you.
- I started my first blog anastasiablogger.com which you are reading now, in Feb 2017 and worked on it part-time while still having a 9-5 job. I decided to focus on my Pinterest account as a traffic source and even though I started from scratch, with 0 Pinterest followers, it worked miracles driving to my blogs organic (free traffic). I get over 90% of all my traffic from Pinterest!
- I quit my job on the 10th-month blogging when I was accepted to Mediavine ad network because traffic was quite high by that time and ad income alone could cover my monthly bills.
- In Feb 2018, one year since I started the first blog, I launched my second blog momshealth.co. I had several reasons for this:
- I wanted to test my Pinterest account strategies on a brand-new blog and see how fast I could grow traffic knowing all that I learned in the first year blogging. This worked perfectly well as in just 2.5 months my new blog was getting 74,000 monthly pageviews traffic.
- Plus, I wanted to have a blog for mom- and health-related posts which didn’t fit much anastasiablogger.com blog.
If you are about to start a blog and thinking, what should be your main focus for the first year – Google, Instagram, Facebook, paid ads (some newbies even think of this option!). My answer is: focus on Pinterest!
When you start a blog, most probably, you are still working full time, your blogging income is not high enough to quit, and you have a limited amount of time to spend on your blog. So, spend it wisely! Spend it on things that really work in 2019!
Tips for a Successful Pinterest Account
Now that I have told you the many ways to make money with Pinterest, let me tell you some strategies and tips on how to have a successful Pinterest account in terms of engagement, Pinterest followers, aesthetics, and overall analytics. This will help you make making money on Pinterest much easier and a walk in the park.
Create eye-catching pins
I will be highlighting this in a later part of my blog post but basically, you have to make sure that your pins are eye-catching and click-worthy for Pinterest users. Otherwise, no one will be able to click through your pins and go to your website.
Use Tailwind Communities (for New Accounts!)
Using Tailwind Communities can be super helpful, especially if you’re new to Pinterest. Here’s why you should consider using them:
- Boost your reach: Tailwind Communities help you reach a larger audience by sharing your pins with like-minded users who are interested in the same topics. This way, your content gets more exposure and can be repinned by others, boosting your overall reach.
- Discover great content: You’ll also have access to content shared by other community members, which makes it easy to find high-quality pins to share on your boards. This can help you keep your boards fresh and engaging.
- Networking opportunities: Being a part of these communities allows you to connect with other bloggers and influencers in your niche. This can lead to potential collaborations, partnerships, or just learning from others’ experiences.
- Save time: Tailwind Communities help streamline your pinning process. You can schedule your pins in advance, allowing you to maintain consistency without having to manually pin them every single day.
- Analyze your performance: Tailwind offers analytics tools to help you track the performance of your pins, so you can identify what’s working and what’s not, allowing you to make data-driven decisions about your Pinterest strategy.
Pin consistently and frequently
Do you know the saying “consistency is the key to success”? Well, that goes for Pinterest as well. To be able to put your Pinterest account and brand out there, you have to keep pinning consistently and frequently.
Consistent and regular posting, like with most other social media platforms, can be the key to establishing an audience and keeping them interested in your Pinterest account and content.
If you find it difficult to login on Pinterest and save pins manually several times a day, you might want to check the best Pinterest scheduler Tailwind (officially authorized).
Use relevant keywords on your Pinterest title and description
A Pinterest strategy I always recommend is to always do your keyword research and then implement it to your Pinterest pins’ titles and descriptions, as well as your Pinterest account bio and boards. It’s because just like Google, when you search a certain keyword on Pinterest and you are using that keyword or relevant keywords on your pins, then your pins will be recommended in the search results!
How To Create Eye-Catching Pinterest Pins?
Now that you know the whys, whats, and hows to make money on Pinterest, you must now then focus on how you can create eye-catching and click-worthy pins on Pinterest so that your target audience can visit your website and/or read your blog posts. With this, I recommend using online graphics editing tools like Canva that can provide you with free Pinterest templates you can readily use and edit to create pins.
If you are not good at designing pins, you might start with my pack of 20 Canva Pin Templates.
These Pinterest templates can range from simple Pinterest image pins, and Idea pins, to video pins! Aside from this, you must also remember to create pins that are vertical because they get the attention of users more quickly and are more eye-catching than pins that are horizontal or square.
The next thing, if you want to create pins, is to use bright and beautiful images that are not too overwhelming. And lastly, make sure to create pins while using big and bold fonts on either the top of the image or at the center.
How I Use Pinterest to Drive Traffic to My Blog
If you are looking for a proven blog growth and monetization formula, which will help you get your first $1000 in about 6 months of blogging (possibly even earlier if you start with at least 20-50 pieces of content ready to publish), then I will show you my blog monetization formula and how I make money on Pinterest.
My exact blog monetization formula tested and implemented especially successfully on my second blog is as follows:
- Grow traffic fast with a broadly niched blog writing about anything that is popular on Pinterest – DIY, recipes, holiday, moms and babies stuff, weight loss, diets, money saving and money making, etc.. Maybe not everything in one blog, but also possible.
- Make sure you do your keyword research. There are several online keyword research tools out there you can use for free so you can reach your target audience very easily. You can also type in your keyword or topic on the Google search bar and look for suggested or relevant keywords on the results page. You can also do the same keyword research on Pinterest and just search your keyword on the Pinterest search bar and look at the relevant keywords and related pins.
- Reach 50,000 sessions a month to apply to Mediavine. You are getting there around $10-15 per 1000 sessions. On the best months (usually, it’s the last quarter of the year) this might reach even $20. With 30,000 sessions, you will make about $300-$600 a month from ads. With 90, 000 sessions you can make about $900 – $1200, depending on the season and your site’s metrics, because RPM varies even within the same niche.
- Start to make money on Pinterest using affiliate links. Add pins that link to affiliate links and create more content with affiliate offers to have an extra income source. In some niches, affiliate income can be higher than ad income.
- Create a digital product, most probably, an eBook, but also could be something like a binder, a checklist, a troubleshooter, a mini-course by email, or a webinar. I would start with a lower price range (up to $20) smaller product that doesn’t take too much time to create. This way I would test on a smaller product if in this niche people are ready to purchase digital products.
I would choose which product it should be based on which topic seems to work the best on my broadly niched blog and what I can learn about fast to become an expert on that topic.
How Many Followers Do You Need to Make Money on Pinterest?
There isn’t really a specific number of followers you need to start making money on Pinterest. What’s more important is having an engaged audience that’s genuinely interested in your content.
Just focus on creating awesome pins, using the right keywords, and being consistent with your posts. As your content gets shared and more people discover it, your following will grow naturally.
Remember, even with a smaller but engaged audience, you can still work with brands, promote affiliate products, or drive traffic to your site to make some cash.
I can easily show you Pinterest accounts with a huge following that haven’t been creating new Pinterest content consistently, so they definitely don’t have high monthly visitors or traffic from Pinterest.
How to Make Money on Pinterest: 3 Ways I make $250+/day (2024)
Instructions
- How Does Pinterest Make Money for My Online Business?
- How To Make Money On Pinterest With Affiliate Links
- How To Make Money Using Pinterest Traffic for Ad Monetization
- How To Make Money Off Pinterest Traffic As An Affiliate Marketer
- How to Sell Products on Pinterest
I’m Anastasia and I’m a full-time blogger, online entrepreneur, and Pinterest marketing strategist. I help digital entrepreneurs and bloggers drive targeted traffic from Pinterest either through my online courses or through Pinterest consultancy.
Comments 18
Congratulations Anastasia. You’re an inspiration to many of us. Keep it up 🙂
Author
Thank you, I’ll keep you posted 🙂
Heyy Anastasia
It was an awesome post on making money on Pinterest. I really surprise about monetization method for Pinterest Thanks for sharing such a wonderful post
Author
Hi Rajesh! I’m glad it’s helpful!
Wonderful post with some excellent tips!
This is the exact post I needed to read! I have been in a slump and I think it’s because I started doing exactly what hindered your first blog. Thank you for this post! Gives me true encouragement!
Cool stuff Anastasia. I have a question, when you don’t write about blogging in this blog, what topic do you write about to attract traffic from Pinterest?
Author
Hi, Victor! I redesigned this site to make it more focused on my blogging for blogging stuff. But I still have content in categories money, DIY, recipes, decorations, holidays. Anything that’s popular on Pinterest or trending, seasonal.
Hi Anastasia! I have been blogging for a couple months and using pinterest for all my posts and still only get about 50-100 visits a day. How would I increase this if I’m already posting to group boards and have only like 10 followers. Thanks!
Author
You need to incentivize your users to share pins you have in each post. Use your site as much as possible to get more Pinterest followers and shares. I checked your site – you have links to your FB and Instagram accounts only. Add Pinterest widget and surely a Pinterest button so people can see which is your account link.
Second, I noticed that under the posts you have social sharing buttons but again no Pinterest button there. Inside the posts you have pins – that’s great. Make sure just above the pin to have a line saying something like this: ïf you liked this post or if you want to save these ideas to check later, save to your Pitnerest board. You can even suggest the name of the board (this way, they might create a board which will be 100% relevant to the keywords you are targeting).
And you need also to use a plugin like Social warfare to add Pin it buttons which show up when a user hovers over the image. This will also increase saves from your site.
You can also add widget code with links to relevant boards at the end of each post. Imagine a user just read a post with Christmas recipes. At the end of the post you can add Pinterest widget code inviting them to follow your specific board called Christmas recipes.
Hope this helps 🙂
I just found your blog via pinterest and I am glad I did. Your blog is amazing.
Author
Thank you so much, Kristen! I’m glad it’s helpful 🙂 Let me know if you have any questions.
Hi Anastasia, I liked your blog, truly great work. I have a question, you’re not building your email list. Is Pinterest Traffic is only valuable for making money from Ads but not from Affiliate Marketing?
Thanks!
Author
Pinterest Traffic is beneficial for affiliate marketing as well especially if your pin is about an article with products or roundup of products with your affiliate links. It also works well if you don’t have a website – just direct them to the product page. However, always do a proper disclosure on your pins. Consumers also use Pinterest for purchasing decisions!
Hi Anastasia, Love your Pinterest tips. I am learning from your videos since some time and have got 1.1 million Pinterest views. Thank you for your valuable videos and posts. I am at around 26000 sessions per month but I feel like clicks to my blog are less as compared with what I listen from others. Is it a good percentage or I need to do something else to get more pageviews. Again Thank you for everything. If it is fine for you, I will be linking to your blog posts wherever possible.
Author
It’s hard to compare. I had a student who was lucky to see 1.1 Million within a few months since starting his account. But most of that million was due to a viral pin he repinned from another account, so it didn’t translate into his blog traffic. Your 26k sessions look pretty normal for the amount of Pinterest viewers but keep an eye on what are your most popular pins linked to – are they linked to your site, or are they repins from other websites?
Insightful and at the same time inspiring. I have been following your YouTube videos and only realized how wrong I was to be letting tailwind do all the pinning work for me.
This is an amazing blog. I’m trying to start blogging, and this has really inspired me and provided me with great tips. Thank you!