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With all of the time that you spend on Pinterest, wouldn’t you love to actually get paid for that? I mean you’re probably wondering how to make money on Pinterest considering you landed on this article.

Let me tell you, it’s definitely possible to earn money with Pinterest.

 

With some background knowledge, a good understanding of Pinterest and some initial setup, you can start taking your Pinterest-loving hobby to a more exciting side hustle for some extra money every month.

 

In this article I’ll walk you through the basics of what it means to make money on Pinterest, what ways you can use Pinterest to actually make money and any important must-haves or tips to implement that will set you up for success.

 

How to Make Money on Pinterest 2020

Think about what Pinterest is, and you’ll realize that it’s actually an amazing place to promote products or services as well as a blog that you might need some extra traffic for.

 

Pinterest is a visual search engine that is used for people who are looking for ideas or are looking to buy things! Which means that promoting something on Pinterest will actually be incredibly helpful and a lot easier than you might think.

 

Because Pinterest is based more on visuals and “keywords,” your followers won’t matter as much as other social media sites like Instagram or Twitter. Great content and targeted keywords will help you drive traffic to promoted products (affiliate marketing) or a site that you build (a blog or online store).

 

We’ll touch on these different methods for how to make money on Pinterest, so hang tight.

 

How much money can you make off of Pinterest?

This answer is all going to depend on how much time you have to commit to your newfound side hustle and which side hustle you decide to go with.

 

For those who are interested in affiliate marketing on Pinterest, you can make hundreds of extra dollars every month depending on your niche and how many people on Pinterest are looking for the things you’re promoting.

 

For bloggers, I’ve seen bloggers making hundreds, thousands and even six figures! This won’t happen overnight, but it’s a motivator isn’t it?

 

Pinterest VA’s can earn $50 an hour or more depending on experience.

 

How do I monetize on Pinterest?

So you know what Pinterest is, you know how much you can potentially earn from it, but how do you actually make money from it?

 

For the purposes of this article, I’m going to split out how to make money on Pinterest into two separate, but distinct, categories: with a blog and without a blog.

 

Let’s take a look at these different methods in more detail.

 

1. | Making money on Pinterest without a blog

If you’re not sure about starting a blog right now, that’s okay! You can still get started and make money without one so don’t let a blog hold you back.

 

How to make money on Pinterest with affiliate links

Affiliate marketing is all about telling someone about a product or leading them to the product. If a user makes a purchase from your link, you get paid a commission. Seem crazy? It’s worth a lot more than you think to get products into the right hands.

 

What you’ll need is an understanding of what affiliate marketing is, an understanding of who your target audience is on Pinterest, affiliate products to promote and a strategy for your followers to click through and purchase a product.

 

If you’re ready to learn about what affiliate marketing is and how to really develop your strategy to make money, check out the course “Paid by Pinterest” by House of Brazen. You’ll learn all about how to find products that fit your audience, how to create graphics and pins and then how to get your pins to go viral!

Sign up for Popular Affiliates

An important step to get you started will be to find and choose which affiliate programs will work best for not only you but for your audience. You want to make sure that you’re posting relevant and quality items on Pinterest.

 

Some of the most popular affiliate programs for Pinterest include:

 

  • ShopStyle 
  • ShareASale
  • FlexOffers
  • Impact Radius

 

These are what are called Affiliate Networks. Once you sign up for the network, you can individually apply to a huge selection of programs to promote within their platform.

 

It’s important that you read the Terms of Service for each affiliate program that you want to apply for as not all programs allow Pinterest as a means to advertise their products. An example of this would be Amazon. Don’t use Amazon links on Pinterest.

 

Become a Pinterest virtual assistant

Entrepreneurs struggle with all of the tasks on their plate to keep their businesses afloat. There is a lot to keep up with and a serious lack of time. That’s where you become essential.

 

As a Virtual Assistant you offer up professional services for a variety of tasks that they desperately need to have completed on a regular basis. One such service is Pinterest Management. Some of the tasks of being a Pinterest VA include:

 

  • Creating graphics (pins)
  • Researching and implementing proper keyword research for titles and descriptions
  • Creating new boards
  • Scheduling consistent pins every month
  • Analyzing traffic results

 

Depending on how much time you have to offer, you can make this side hustle both a full time or part time business. Rates you can charge depend on your experience level and can range from $50 an hour to hundreds as your experience grows.

 

 

Interested in learning about how to become a Pinterest VA without experience? Check out “Pinterest VA“ by Gina Horkey and Kristin Larsen, two largely successful entrepreneurs who have direct experience with being a Virtual Assistant. This is a complete course where you’ll learn it all A to Z, and they offer a free workshop if you’re just starting and need more information before you want to invest any of your hard-earned money.

 

Sponsorships with Promoting brands

Receiving sponsorship from promoting brands involves you pinning about their products or services to your following. It won’t happen overnight that you’ll find sponsors who want to work with you, but if you follow the right steps you can work your way up to it:

 

  • Find a topic that you’re passionate about, or at least you can see yourself pinning about consistently
  • Build an audience that enjoys following this topic
  • Apply to brands that have products surrounding this topic (or “niche) that your account relates to

 

A good example would be to choose home decor as your niche topic. Once you build an account that consistently pins good content, grows an audience, and you have irresistible stats to back it up, you can reach out to brands that will want to work with you.

 

Drive traffic to your e-commerce site

Now if it makes sense to get paid to promote the products or services of others on Pinterest, it should come as no surprise that you can and should promote products or services of your own as well. 

 

This is your chance to be an entrepreneur and to offer whatever products or services that you have always wanted to! Some ideas might be:

 

  • Ebooks
  • Courses
  • Printables
  • Services such as graphic design, writing, or web design

 

Sign up with a storefront like Etsy or Shopify to drive the targeted traffic that Pinterest already has to your shop or website and find new clients. 

 

Related: Find other ways to make money

 

2. | How to make money on Pinterest with a blog

Starting a blog is the most popular method for how to make money on Pinterest. And for good reason. If you build a blog, what do you need in order for it to be successful? Readers. Which come from advertising or word-of-mouth. And where can you get advertising? Pinterest! 

 

Now it’s not as easy as just slapping a couple pins up on Pinterest and then watching the traffic rain in. I don’t want to disappoint you. It takes a lot of setup, writing, creating graphics and finding your Pinterest groove to market well. 

 

But all of that to say, it is definitely possible for you to start a money making blog and use Pinterest to bring in visitors to your site every month.

 

Drive traffic to your blog

Bringing in traffic from Pinterest to your site is one of the fastest ways to find new visitors as a new blogger or entrepreneur. It’s the avenue that most bloggers focus on when they start because the speed of potential success is faster than trying to please the Google search results from day 1.

 

For obvious reasons, if you’re driving traffic from Pinterest you want to make sure that you have content on your site already. Otherwise, you’ll have all of these visitors land on your site with absolutely nothing to look at when there.

 

Depending on the quality, subject and number of content that a new blogger has on their site, I’ve seen all types of success rates. From thousands of page views within the first month to just scraping the hundreds. It all depends on content and consistency. 

 

Write relevant and helpful content

It’s important to note that you must focus on writing both relevant and helpful content for your reader no matter which type of search results you’re targeting. At the end of the day, your quality of content and ability to answer the reader’s questions or problems will determine whether they stay on your site or leave entirely.

 

Don’t write “filler” content just to start promoting your site on Pinterest faster. It’s not a lasting strategy.

 

Make money on your blog with Ads

One of the most passive ways that you can make an income stream from your blog right away is putting up ads. If you place ads in the right spots and gain a significant number of new visitors to your site daily or monthly, this is a great form of revenue to start with.

 

It will depend on your level of traffic which ad network that you are able to join. If you’re a new blogger, many find success with Google Adsense. Once you progress to the larger amounts of traffic, many bloggers choose to use display ads with Mediavine or AdThrive.

 

All of these programs will have a different rate per every million visitors. A standard rate that many bloggers hang tend to find is $5-$25 for every 1,000 visitors.

 

Make Money on your blog with Affiliate links

Another favorite way for bloggers to make money is through Affiliate Marketing. We touched on this with Pinterest and how to do this on there, but affiliate marketing is far more powerful and there are many more options to choose from on a blog.

 

For starters, you can use Amazon affiliates on your blog, whereas on Pinterest you can’t. Amazon is a trusted name and brand among many buyers, which increases the click through rate for your audience.

 

With that in mind, here are some of the most popular affiliate networks to join when you start a blog:

  • Amazon
  • ShareASale
  • FlexOffers
  • Impact Radius
  • SkimLinks
  • VigLinks
  • Awin

 

This is just a short handful of networks that you can choose to sign up for and start promoting products or services for income.

 

 

Looking to find out more in-depth information about affiliate marketing for blogging? One of the most popular and successful courses is Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing by Michelle Schroeder. She has taught thousands of students how to discover the best practices and strategies for affiliate marketing and doubled or tripled the sales of her students. It’s an investment but it’s more often than not paid for itself with her students.

 

 

Set up a Pinterest Account

 

Understanding Pinterest

In order to start using Pinterest, what will help you the most will be to gain a thorough foundation in how the site works, how it sees your pins, and how all of these pieces will help you in getting your pin(s) out to the right audience.

 

There is an insane amount of information out there on the internet for free to learn about Pinterest, and I think this is just fine for a very basic understanding. If you want to go a little further into the deepest parts of understanding the game that is Pinterest you’ll want to take a course.

 

It might cost you upfront but the time that you’ll save on research will save you in the long run.

 

One of my absolute favorite Pinterest courses that I’ve invested in for my site is called Pinteresting Strategies by Carly Campbell. She truly is a mastermind with Pinterest, and I learned so much more about Pinterest and how it actually works and what I was doing wrong with my pin design from her course than I ever learned on Google.

 

How to create a pin on Pinterest

It’s actually rather simple to create a pin. It’s harder to make great pins. While there are dozens of fantastic courses explaining how Pinterest works and how to create well-designed pins, here’s a very basic guideline for pin creation:

 

  • Create text that makes the reader want to click through
  • Use cursive font less and regular fonts more for important words
  • Use unique photos that haven’t been used before
  • Don’t steal pins!

 

Navigate to the upper right hand corner of Pinterest for the “+” sign. Select this and click new pin. Now you can upload the image that you create and fill in titles and descriptions with your Pinterest SEO keywords (see section below).

Create a pin in Pinterest

 

Create Eye Catching Pins 

One of the most critical pieces of using Pinterest is in your graphics. If your pins flat out suck, you won’t get any click through’s to your site or the product or service you’re advertising for. It’s a must to create eye-catching, well-designed pins that capture your audiences’ attention and makes them want to know more.

 

I would recommend you create your own graphics. There are a lot of free resources out there that you can use that will give you a professional looking design. Canva is one of the most popular ways that bloggers and online entrepreneurs create graphics, and it’s the way that I create mine. You can use the free version or upgrade to premium for special pictures or designs.

 

Learn how to Describe your pins

It’s important to note that Pinterest is more of a search engine than it is a social media platform. As a search engine (like Google), the way to find your pin will be the same: using the words that your target audience is typing into the search bar.

 

Learn how to properly optimize your Pin Titles, descriptions, and boards with well-researched and topic-based SEO keywords. Don’t underestimate the power of Pinterest SEO on your success with pins and re-pins.

 

Finding good Pinterest SEO based keywords can be done by searching for your topic in Pinterest and noting what comes up. If your topic shows a ton of little boxes with other words relating to the search term, then take note of these words. An example when I searched “Fitness Motivation” into the search bar:

 

Create pins with SEO in Pinterest

 

 

You’ll want to use these different terms and phrases throughout your Pins, your boards, and your descriptions.

 

How to set up a Pinterest page

Make sure that your Pinterest profile is set to a Pinterest business account. This will be important as you’ll want to track your stats within the Pinterest platform but also have the ability to verify your website (if you have a blog) or market products. 

 

Create Pinterest boards and pins monthly

Coming back to the previously mentioned section about keywording your boards properly, it’s important to note that you should be creating relevant and topic-based boards that make sense to the pins that you’re posting.

 

If you’ve chosen the fitness niche, you’ll want to create boards such as “Health and Fitness” or “Workout Ideas,” etc. Make sure that you’ve found the Pinterest SEO keywords that you need to get these boards found.

 

Try to create 1-2 new boards every month and make sure you’re pinning to all of your boards consistently.

 

Join Group Boards 

This topic is actually a bit outdated, but I do think it’s important to still find relevant and quality group boards that you can join and get your pins to reach “farther.”

 

Group boards are basically a collection of bloggers who are all a part of the same board, surrounding one topic. You pin a relevant pin on this board and it can be seen by another member of the board who then pins it to one of their boards and their followers see it. This is the purpose behind the group boards, or was at one point in time.

 

The Pinterest algorithm has all but put group boards to death as it’s based more on proper keyword research and pinning to appropriate boards, organic re-pins, and allowing “good” pins to circulate further on their own to the right audiences.

 

How many followers do you need to get paid?

It depends on what your goal is for how to make money on Pinterest. If you’re looking to start a blog or monetize with affiliate marketing, your followers don’t matter as much as they once did due to the Pinterest algorithm updates. Good content (pin graphics & keywords) will reach a bigger audience than they might have previously.

 

Pinterest is now less about how many followers you have and more about how good the content you’re putting out is, how consistent you are in pinning, and how often you’re creating new content.

 

If you’re looking to work with brands on Pinterest you should aim to have over 1,000 followers. There isn’t really a hard and fast rule here, more about how “loyal” your fan base actually is rather than the numbers themselves.

 

Tips for Making Money on Pinterest

Start using Pinterest properly, and you’ll see great results! Here are some of my tips for you to make sure that you set yourself up for success.

 

Use Tailwind to schedule pins

Most of us don’t have the time it takes to keep up with manually pinning every single one of our pins and re-pins on a daily basis. And that doesn’t allow us to stay consistent, which is a key factor to being successful with Pinterest.

 

If you don’t have the time to keep up with manual pinning on a daily basis, then grab Tailwind as a Pinterest approved scheduler that all bloggers (including myself) swear by. Sign up through my link and you’ll get an instant $15 discount towards whichever plan fits you best!

 

Create a Media Kit

Whether you’re looking to find brands to work with or you’re offering your own professional services, it’ll be important to create a media kit. This is essentially a resume of sorts that shows your strengths, your stats, or the services you provide and why you do them well. It can, and potentially should, also show your pricing.

 

A media kit is a key tool in marketing yourself well. Pitch it to brands or show potential clients more about you and your services.

 

Be Transparent about your Partnerships

If you are selling something or promoting a product or service, you always need to disclose this. You should disclose any kind of partnership, affiliate, or ad in your pin’s description. Did I say always?

 

The FTC created a Disclosure how-to guide for influencers for when and how to disclose partnerships in posts if you’re looking for more information on how to stay safe.

 

Follow Pinterest guidelines 

Read up on the complete Pinterest guidelines and rules before posting. They can and will suspend accounts if they find you breaking any of these rules. I’ve heard more horror stories from other bloggers and online entrepreneurs than I care to admit.

 

Keep up with Pinterest changes

It’s crucial to stay up to date with all Pinterest changes, updates, and best-practices. Just as Google updates its algorithm occasionally so does Pinterest. This is key to success.

Some important links or blogs to follow:

 

 

To quickly recap, here is a quick but helpful list for some key resources I’ve referenced throughout this post. I absolutely love this list. It’s been a massive help to me and so many others for Pinterest and affiliate marketing:

 

 

 

Pinterest is a gold-mine for anyone looking to make extra income or even to replace their full-time income.

 

Your homework is to figure out how to make money on Pinterest in a way that you enjoy. Once you have that, start researching or find a course that helps you get there! So, what do you think? Are you ready to start making money on Pinterest?