Pinterest is one of the most popular social platforms around. When you think of Pinterest, what first comes to mind is probably along the lines of recipe posts, inspiring home decor tips, and DIY project ideas.
One thing you may not have realized is that Pinterest is a search engine and this is great for marketers or anyone looking to promote a website, product, or business.
Since Pinterest is a free site, you may be wondering how to make money on Pinterest in the first place.
More and more people are using Pinterest professionally to market their content and this can help you actually make money on Pinterest.
There are people currently making hundreds to thousands per month on Pinterest. Here’s how you can start doing the same and possibly even launch a new part-time or full-time job that you can do from home.
Can You Make Money on Pinterest?
It is not difficult to start making money on Pinterest. You just need to understand how Pinterest works and have a clear strategy.
First off, if you’re not on Pinterest yet, you definitely want to head there today and create a free profile. Getting followers on Pinterest is important, but it’s not the most important thing.
In fact, you can make a decent amount of money from Pinterest without any followers. Still, having some followers will make it easy so create a few boards to pin to and follow other users with similar interests.
a) How Pinterest Works
Pinterest boards are basically collections of your favorite pins that fall into a similar category. Each Pinterest user can create their own boards and pin to them.
Check out more tips to help you get Pinterest followers here. Your followers can see what you’re pinning and repin your pins if they like.
You can pin all kinds of content from blog posts and articles to products from an online shop, videos, and more. Clicking on your pins will normally take you to that intended resource or piece of content.
So, if you pin a recipe image for example, you can click on it and be taken to the blog where the recipe appears. If you pin a product or DIY project you like, click on the pin so you can be taken to the website or business to learn more.
The more people that pin a particular type of content, the more the content will get seen. Then the process repeats itself.
b) How Pinning Can Help You Make Money
It’s no secret that Pinterest is a popular platform. Millions are users are pinning and searching for content at all hours of the day.
If you’re looking to make money on Pinterest, you’ll need to start thinking of Pinterest from a marketing perspective.
You can either create your own pins to be shared on the platform. As people see your pins and re-pin them, some of them will click on the link and be taken to a website or shop where they can learn more. Often times, this can lead to a purchase.
Another strategy to help you make money with Pinterest involves you helping other businesses and marketers grow their Pinterest platform so they can get more clicks and traffic back to their website.
The fact that Pinterest is a free platform that has millions of daily users is huge. This means with the right marketing and strategy in place, lots of money can be made.
Keep reading the next section to learn exactly how to make money on Pinterest.
8 Ways to Make Money on Pinterest
Do you think you’d be interested in creating pins, marketing your blog or platform, or helping someone else grow their Pinterest account?
No matter where your interest lies, there are many different ways to make money on Pinterest even if you’re not too familiar with the platform.
Check out these most popular ways then visit Simple Pin Media for more Pinterest marketing tips and resources.
1. Affiliate Marketing (Best Way to Make Money on Pinterest Without a Blog!)
The easiest way to make money on Pinterest without a blog is through affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing is where you promote 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.
You can post your affiliate links in a number of places to market the products or services you want to promote – including Pinterest.
Start by creating a pin for your affiliate link. Include a picture of the product or an example of the service in your pin if possible. Pinterest is a very visible platform and you’ll want to entice people to click on your pin.
When it’s time to add a link for your pin, make sure it’s your affiliate link and let users know in the pin description that you’re using an affiliate link.
That way, when someone clicks on your pin, they will be using your unique link. From there, if they sign up or make a purchase, you’ll earn a commission and can start making passive income.
A great course I like recommending to my audience is Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing created by Michelle Schroeder-Gardner. It shows you the best affiliate programs to join as per your niche plus amazing affiliate marketing strategies you can use to make more money online.
The best thing about earning with affiliate marketing 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 when promoting it, you can get more clicks from Pinterest to your affiliate links.
Once you set up your pins you can pretty much automate your strategy and keep repinning different pins that promote your affiliate links.
You don’t have to spend time on this every day and can start to earn money from sales you refer without even thinking about it.
2. Blogging (Make Money on Pinterest Easily with a Blog)
You can easily make money on Pinterest as a blogger, because that’s how I started my blogging journey.
I have explained, in detail, everything that I did on Pinterest to achieve such great results in this blog income report. And that’s why we have tons of bloggers on Pinterest.
Pinterest can help you grow your blog’s traffic tremendously just like it did for me.
Whether you’re a new blogger or have had your blog for some time, start establishing a Pinterest presence and creating pin images for each post.
Consider using a pin scheduling tool like Tailwind to help you schedule pins out each week so you’re not pinning manually.
You can also join Pinterest group boards with other like-minded bloggers to increase the number of eyes that see your pins and reshare them.
Group boards are just like regular Pinterest boards only they allow multiple people to pin to them at once. Typically group boards will have rules in order for you to join.
You may have to follow the creators of the group board or get invited by someone who’s already in it.
From there, there may be rules to follow regarding when to pin to the group board and how many times you can pin your content per day or week.
Popular group boards require that you repin other people’s content and they will do the same for you. This can be a great way to grow your Pinterest traffic and get more clicks back to your blog.
The key is to join group boards that are relevant to your blog’s topic so that people who come across your pins are generally interested in checking out your blog.
Similar to Pinterest group boards, Tailwind has a feature called Tribes where you can join a ‘tribe’ with other content creators and repin each other’s content.
All these strategies for helping you get more traffic from Pinterest to your blog can help you monetize your blog in various ways.
With more visitors coming to your blog, you can make money from display advertising and affiliate marketing.
Display ads provide an easy way to earn passive income and the more blog traffic you receive, the more you can earn each month.
You can also make money from sponsored content if you’re getting a lot of blog traffic. Brands and businesses want to work with bloggers who have a following and influence and you can easily make hundreds of dollars or more just from one sponsored blog post.
Related:
How to Make Money Blogging with Affiliate Marketing
How I Made $4789 in One Month Blogging
15 Best Tailwind Tribes For Bloggers
3. E-commerce Store
Thinking about starting an ecommerce store? Maybe you have some awesome ideas about a great product you can sell but one of the most important aspects of successfully running an e-commerce store is marketing.
Even if you have the greatest product in the world, people won’t know that it exists if you don’t market your products to potential customers.
This is where Pinterest marketing can come in handy. If you’re running an ecommerce site on Etsy, Shopify, or your own self-hosted website, you can use Pinterest to generate traffic to your store.
Create pins for your products and write detailed descriptions to catch the attention of your audience.
Make sure you link the pin to your specific store or product link so people can easily shop your store and make a purchase.
Pinterest is also a great platform to run ads for your products on. These ads are called ‘promoted pins’ and require a little investment, but can help you reach your target customer quicker.
4. Grow Your Email List
If you have a blog or sell products online, it’s a good idea to start an email list. Email lists are a top tool to help you market to your audience and get to know them better.
When you think about it, people who sign up to join your list are already very interested in hearing more from you, receiving tips, and learning about products or offers.
You can use your email list to:
- Sell other people’s products with affiliate marketing
- Sell your own products or courses with a sales funnel
- Offer a freebie or tripwire which is a low-cost product or offer that will provide a lot of value to your audience
- Provide a paid newsletter where members pay a subscription fee each month to access exclusive content
- Host a webinar
- Host sponsorships
- Offer a service
Your email list is also something that you own outright unlike your social media following. Social media sites change algorithms often and can even deactivate your profile if you knowingly or unknowingly don’t follow guidelines.
This won’t happen with your email list since people manually opt in to hear from you and no one can take those email addresses away.
The general rule of thumb is that each person on your email list is worth around $1 – 2 in revenue.
This means if you have a great email marketing plan in place, a list of 2,000 to 4,000 people could earn you $2,000 to $4,000 per month.
Of course, the challenging part can be growing your email list to that amount. Growing your Pinterest presence can help. Use Pinterest to share pins for content from your blog or links to your products or services.
As Pinterest users click on your pins and are taken to your site, have a sign-up form ready and prominent so people can join your email list to hear more from you.
5. Get Clients
If you’re a freelancer offering a helpful service, consider creating a Pinterest account to help you connect with more clients.
You can create pins that lead users back to your website or official blog so they can learn more about what you do and potentially hire you.
Whether you’re a freelance writer, graphic designer, photographer, or editor, some of your future clients could be on Pinterest and it’s also a great way to build your network in general or get people to sign up for your email list so you can contact them in the future.
Pinterest allows you to create a business account instead of just a personal account and this will allow you to see certain analytics and stats that can help you grow your reach.
You’ll also want to pay close attention to your pin descriptions to help get more content on your eyes. Pinterest allows the use of hashtags and keywords so be sure to take advantage of this when filling out your profile details and write detailed pin descriptions.
Similar to platforms like Twitter, users will be able to search hashtags and certain keywords to find your account.
6. Become a Pinterest VA
One of the best ways to make money with Pinterest is by becoming a Pinterest virtual assistant or Pinterest VA. The role of a Pinterest VA is to help someone grow or start their Pinterest account.
Pinterest VAs work with a variety of clients ranging from bloggers and online business owners, to brick and mortar local shops, influencers, and more.
If you learn how to use Pinterest properly and drive traffic to a website or email list with your pins, you could make an excellent Pinterest VA with these skills.
Some people want to grow their Pinterest presence but don’t want to do all the work themselves. Maybe they don’t like the idea of creating pins or don’t have time to schedule pins on Tailwind.
This is why they consider outsourcing the job to an expert. Some of the services you can offer as a Pinterest VA include:
- Designing new pin images
- Scheduling pins
- Researching and joining group boards
- Creating new boards
- Adding pin and board descriptions
- Researching relevant keywords
- Setting up and optimizing new accounts
If you’re already playing around on the platform and creating boards for yourself, you could be on Pinterest making money by helping others grow their platform as well.
Even if you don’t have much experience, you can still learn by enrolling in programs like Become a Pinterest VA Today! This course will teach you everything you need to know about becoming a Pinterest VA, finding clients, and launching your own successful Pinterest management business.
The course comes with training on Promoted Pins, creating eye-catching graphics, and the tools needed to successfully onboard new clients.
As a Pinterest VA, you can offer a full service which would include completely managing your clients’ accounts each month. Some other Pinterest VAs offer consulting instead.
Most beginner Pinterest VAs can make anywhere from $250 to $400 per client to manage their account each month. This work often takes only a few hours per month and it’s flexible so you can create your own schedule.
Related: 17 Best Business Ideas For Women in 2021
7. Make Pinterest Graphics
Around 62% of millennials prefer to search by image. This is a huge amount and only contributes to the growing popularity of Pinterest.
If you’re looking for an easy way to make money on Pinterest, try creating Pinterest graphics for others and charging a small fee per image.
You don’t need to be a graphic designer in order to successfully create your Pinterest images. Instead, use free tools like Canva which already provide pre-sized templates and tons of features like fonts, different colors, graphics, and more.
Canva has automated features that help you properly space your design and size different elements like the fonts and image you’re using.
Take a look at your Pinterest feed and narrow down some of the best images you see. Which ones are really eye-catching or urge you to want to click on the pin? Then, determine why these images look so good.
To help you out, here is a brief list of some of the important elements that make up a good pin:
- Clear and legible font – script and cursive fonts are fine so long as people can read the words on the pin
- Good contrast of colors between the font and image – Bright and bold colors are great but not always required. So long as your colors are cohesive and contrast (between the image and font) your pin should turn out great
- Properly sized image – Canva will help with this since you can simply select to start designing your pin with a pre-sized Pinterest image
- Unique branding – It’s not uncommon to see a pin and automatically identify with the brand because it uses a similar color scheme and font. When you start design pins for others, go over their brand’s color scheme, logo, and other unique features to help the pins stand out.
Below are a few examples of quality eye-catching pin designs.
You can expect to earn around $5 to $7 per pin design but creating Pinterest images is a task you can easily do in batches if your client wants a certain number of images per month.
Increase your earnings by taking on multiple pin design clients who may need anywhere from 10 to 20 images created per month.
Related: 28 Fabulous Places For Free Feminine Stock Photos
8. Pinterest Consulting
With Pinterest consulting, you can share your knowledge and strategy with others in steps that are easy to follow instead of actually doing the work yourself. In other words, you can get paid to teach people how to grow their Pinterest accounts as well.
Once you learn the ins and outs of Pinterest VA work, you can start consulting others who may want to learn how to properly set up their Pinterest account, create pins, and schedule them.
While some clients may prefer that someone does all the work for them, others may want to do the work but need instruction on how to get started.
Offering a mix of Pinterest VA service work and consulting can be a great way to balance your workload especially if you’re short on time.
Consultants can easily earn $50 to $100+ per hour and you can even create video templates, worksheets, and more to help clients learn how to manage their own Pinterest accounts.
It’s Possible to Make Money on Pinterest!
Now that you know how to make money on Pinterest, you can start trying out some of these strategies and earning money from home on your own terms.
Your first impression of Pinterest may not have lead you to think you could make money on the site before, but becoming a Pinterest virtual assistant or using Pinterest to help you monetize your blog or email list can be well worth the effort.
Pinterest is not going anywhere any time soon, so if you’re looking to earn $500 or more per month, now is the perfect time to start making money on Pint
