Pinterest is one of the most popular social platforms around, but it operates much more like a search engine. Think about it. When you use Pinterest, you’re often searching for something, whether it’s a creative idea, DIY hack, inspiration, or tips and advice on a particular topic.
More and more people are using Pinterest professionally to market their content, and this can help you actually make money on Pinterest.
Yes, you can get paid to do things like create graphics, pin content, and essentially poke around on Pinterest. If this sounds like something you would enjoy, keep reading to learn how you can make money on Pinterest and possibly even earn a full-time income from the site.
1. The Importance of Having a Blog
One of the best ways to make money on Pinterest is by using the site to grow your blog. Many bloggers focus on SEO in terms of increasing their traffic, and this is not a bad idea.
However, SEO does take time to work, and utilizing Pinterest can be a much quicker way to get more eyes on your content. By increasing your traffic, you can earn money on your blog in a variety of ways.
2. Get Paid From Ads
Ad revenue is one of the easiest forms of income you can make with blogging. It’s completely passive and depends solely on your traffic. The more page views you get, the more ad income you can earn.
Every time you share a blog post, create 1-2 Pinterest images to help you promote it. When people see the image on Pinterest, they can click to your site and interact with your ads while learning something new from the content or even become regular readers.
3. Earn Affiliate Income
Affiliate marketing involves you promoting a product or service you like with a unique link. If someone clicks on that link and buys the product or signs up for the service, you receive a commission.
The best thing about affiliate income is that the sky is the limit. You can earn a few hundred dollars in affiliate sales per month or even thousands of dollars depending on how well your conversions are.
Affiliate income is all about the numbers along with the quality of the product and how well you present it. If you have a solid product, are honest and transparent, and have good traffic on your site, you are bound to make decent money with affiliates.
Pinterest can be used as a tool to help market your affiliate posts with eye-catching images and descriptions. I’ll share more on this soon.
4. Market Your Products
If you’re selling something on your blog or website, be sure to use Pinterest to market these products as well. You can create images for your product sales page or even promote content that includes a mention of your product.
If visitors sign up for your email list, Pinterest traffic can easily be converted to sales and a loyal audience.
Pinterest Money-Making Basics for Bloggers
Now that we know all of the ways bloggers can leverage Pinterest to make money, let’s go over how to get started.
Some bloggers may find Pinterest confusing in the beginning, so it’s best to get started and build your presence on this platform at your own pace.
- Start by setting up a business Pinterest profile for yourself and fill in your profile completely.
- Then, create boards that relate to the topic of your blog. You may want to create one primary board to showcase all your best blog posts.
- Keep in mind that Pinterest favors keywords, so you’ll want to research some common keywords for your niche and include them in your profile bio, board names, and board descriptions.
- If you don’t know where to start when it comes to keywords, begin searching specific terms on Pinterest to see what comes up. Also, consider any common keywords that you use in your blog posts.
- Start pinning relevant content to your boards along with your own content.
- Create bold, high-quality vertical images for each blog post. You can even create multiple images for a single post to test out different designs.
- Use Canva to help you create your images and consider using stock photo sites like Unsplash, Pexels, Ivory Mix, and Deposit Photos.
- Consider joining group boards on Pinterest that are relevant to your niche. This will help you connect with other content creators who can share your pins. In return, you’ll share theirs, and you’ll both get more promotion for your pins, which can lead to more clicks back to your site.
- Be mindful that some group boards have specific rules you’ll need to follow before you join. Keep applying and following up until you join the right boards.
- You should be pinning content daily, and to save time on this, try using an automatic pin scheduling tool like Tailwind. Tailwind allows you to schedule your pins out in advance so that you can schedule for a week or month all in one sitting. Tailwind also has tribes (which are similar to Pinterest group boards) that you can join to promote your pins and pin other people’s content in return.
Executing a solid Pinterest strategy may seem like a lot of work, but it’s not that bad when you get used to it. Most bloggers spend only 1-2 hours per week on Pinterest and usually find the work pretty fun.
I strongly recommend that you batch your tasks like creating images, applying to group boards, and scheduling pins to make it much easier overall.
Getting Results
Getting results on Pinterest can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months. You may need to test your strategy a bit and rely on resources from experts.
What’s inspiring to know is that many bloggers have drastically increased their blog’s pageviews and their blog income in the matter of a few months.
Kristin Larsen is a blogger whose monthly page views went from 5,000 to 17,000 in just one month of using Pinterest. After about six months, her page views skyrocketed to 200,000 per month. This contributed to her blog income increasing enough for her to quit her day job and blog full time.
You can learn more about Kristin’s success in this interview with her and check out her course Pinterest Presence, which helps bloggers implement the right strategy to grow with Pinterest.
5. Make Money on Pinterest By Offering a Service
So what if you don’t have a blog, but you still want to make money on Pinterest? Or, maybe you have a blog and would like to help other bloggers and small business owners improve their presence on Pinterest.
Another way to make money on Pinterest is by becoming a Pinterest virtual assistant. A Pinterest virtual assistant, or VA, helps people manage their Pinterest so they can better market their content and get more traffic to their site.
As a Pinterest VA, you could work with bloggers, local businesses, online stores, and many other types of clients. You’d perform many of the tasks I mentioned earlier for bloggers.
Some of which include:
- Setting up a Pinterest account
- Creating custom pins
- Creating boards and board descriptions
- Researching keywords
- Finding and applying to group boards
- Scheduling pins on Tailwind
- Performing Pinterest audits for clients
Some people may not have the time or interest to work on their Pinterest account, and that’s where you can come in. If you enjoy using Pinterest, learn how to master some of these skills, and you can offer a full service to clients or even a la carte services, depending on their needs.
A Pinterest VA can easily charge anywhere from $350-$500 per month per client for a full-service, ongoing project.
Plenty of Pinterest VAs are earning steady, part-time, and full-time incomes. If this business idea sounds interesting to you, check out the Become a Pinterest VA Today! course created by Kristin Larsen and Gina Horkey and hop on the waiting list.
This course helps you learn everything you need to know about becoming a Pinterest VA, along with how to find clients, how to set up contracts, how much to charge, tips on scaling up, and more.
The course also includes a technical training and skills section with videos and screenshots to help walk you through different tasks that you’ll likely perform for clients.
Conclusion
If you’re looking to earn $500+ per month working from home doing something you love, Pinterest is definitely where it’s at. This could be a great way to establish a new, flexible income stream on the side or even break into a new full-time career.
However, you probably won’t learn how to master Pinterest overnight. This is why I’d highly recommend enrolling in a course like Pinterest Presence to help you (if you’re a blogger or small business owner) or Become a Pinterest VA Today! (if you want to help other people with Pinterest).
Pinterest is a phenomenal tool to use, but it’s often changing and updating so you’ll want to stay on top of the latest strategies and skillsets.
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