How to Make Money on Pinterest

Launched in 2010, Pinterest has helped millions find DIY projects, such as garden landscaping, interior design and wedding planning. Besides being a source of inspiration, people can use this creative outlet to share their own products or artwork. But do you know Pinterest is also one of the best money-making apps?

The platform counts 433 million monthly active users. What’s more, its audience is unique in terms of demographics, consisting of high-spending cohorts. In fact, 45% of Americans with a household income over $100K are on Pinterest. And there are plenty of opportunities for marketers to reach this audience and promote their products on the platform.

Keen to learn more? In this post, we will tell you how to make money on Pinterest. Keep reading!

Can You Get Paid to be on Pinterest?

Pinterest users don’t necessarily get paid to be on the platform the way Instagram or YouTube pay their users. However, there are specific ways that you can get paid through Pinterest as an entrepreneur or influencer.

Pinterest offers powerful ways to drive traffic to websites, gain leads, and boost your sales. The monetizing strategies you can use on Pinterest are:

• Driving traffic to your Etsy page, e-commerce site or blog
• Setting up shops on Pinterest
• Getting into affiliate marketing
• Becoming a Pinterest Virtual Assistant

But let’s start with the basics.

How do Beginners Make Money on Pinterest?

The easiest way for beginners to make money from Pinterest is by blogging or driving traffic to your website.

While Pinterest itself doesn’t directly pay you, you can create pins that link back to your online store, Etsy page, or blog. Increasing the traffic to your e-commerce site can boost sales. In addition, your advertising strategy will finally pay off with the improved visits and engagement.

But what are the practical steps to take?

First, you need to sign up. It’s quick, easy and absolutely free. You can create a personal or business account. The latter is the way to go if you intend to monetize your Pinterest boards. With a business account, you’ll get access to custom analytics, special content formats, and more.

Your second step is to determine who your audience is so you can create content or sell products relevant to your target audience. If you’re yet to come up with an idea for your own personal blog or e-commerce niche, you may want to check what boards on Pinterest are trending so you can cater to popular topics.

Here is a list of popular boards you can create on Pinterest:

• Arts and crafts
• Home decor
• Travel
• Weddings
• Photography
• Food and recipes
• Humor
• Fashion

Researching trending topics with high earning potential could be valuable. But the best advice here is to go for something you have a genuine interest in. This way, you can monetize your hobby, skills or expertise. Don’t we all dream of getting paid for what we love to do? Besides, the audience can recognize the true enthusiast and appreciate the extra value of content created out of interest.

Once you know who you want to target, it’s time to develop a strategy to grow your following. It’s easier to grow a following on Pinterest compared to Instagram or YouTube. The more followers you have, the more money you can make. To grow your followers, you can:

• See what’s already performing well on Pinterest and use it to your advantage.
• Join boards that are relevant to your business.
• Post original content that resonates with your audience.
• Create aesthetically pleasing visuals with high-resolution images.
• Include detailed descriptions under each pin.
• Add relevant keywords and hashtags for SEO purposes.
• Name your Pinterest boards strategically.

Pro tip: Consider using Pinterest’s Promoted Pins feature to increase your reach and grow your following. 

How Many Followers do You Need on Pinterest to Make Money

You don’t need millions of followers to make money on Pinterest. You can make decent money from Pinterest with 500 to 1000 followers. But you could even make money if you have as few as 20 followers. With quality content, you can attract millions of followers.

But the money you earn from Pinterest can increase the more followers you gain.

The Most Popular Pinterest Influencers

If you’re looking for inspiration as a beginner Pinterest user, we’ve added the top most popular Pinterest accounts below. The influencers from this list have massive followings and we bet they are making some good money off Pinterest:

• Joy Cho / Oh Joy!, with 77 boards and 15.2 million followers
• Poppy Talk with 133 boards and 10.5  million followers
• Maryann Rizzo, with 168 boards and 9 million followers
• Jane Wang, with 98 boards and 7.7 million followers
• HonestlyWTF, with 96 boards and 7.2 million followers
• Bonnie Tsang, with 26 boards and 7 million followers
• Evelyn, with 185 boards and 6.8 million followers
• Pejper / anna k., with 61 boards and 6.8 million followers

Some of these influencers use Pinterest to promote websites or online stores. But most of them use various other means to earn money from Pinterest, such as affiliate marketing or selling templates through the platform.

How to Make Money on Pinterest with Affiliate Links

Pinterest offers a large opportunity for developing a recurring revenue stream from affiliate sales. The social media platform is an excellent traffic source, making it the ideal site to boost sales through affiliate marketing. For example, if you become an affiliate on Pinterest for Shopify, you can earn between 5% and 50% of the sale price of products.

To assist you, we’ve provided a guide on how to make money using Pinterest through affiliate links.

Familiarize yourself with the rules

Pinterest has specific rules when it comes to affiliate marketing. It’s important to know them so that you don’t get penalized after building up your network.

• No cloaking: According to Pinterest’s Terms and Conditions, the platform forbids disguising links. Your followers have a right to know where your links will lead them.
• Disclose affiliate links: You must state that your content is sponsored or affiliated in your Pin descriptions. The same statements must be made on your landing pages that your followers are redirected to.
• Use one Pinterest account: Operating multiple Pinterest accounts for affiliate marketing is against the platform’s guidelines. You may have your account reported if you are caught using more than one Pinterest account for affiliate marketing.

Sign up for an affiliate program

Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to monetize your Pinterest account. If you choose this road, you need to answer one key question:

What type of Pinterest boards do you want to advertise to your audience?

There are many different companies with affiliate programs that will suit your niche. For example, if you have a fashion board, you can become an affiliate for a brand such as SHEIN, where you can earn between 10% and 20% commission on each referred sale.

Create boards and pins relevant to your affiliate program

Once you’ve chosen your preferred affiliate program, you can start creating pins relevant to the products you want to promote.

For example, if you’re an affiliate for a pet store, you’ll need to create pins and boards associated with pet accessories, food, and toys.

Some affiliate programs allow you to use images from their product line. On the other hand, you can create your own images through tools such as Canva. Or look for relevant images through sites such as Unsplash or iStock. Use high-quality images that are aesthetically pleasing to attract new followers.

Quality images will get more likes and repins. The number of repins on an image will give you an indication of how popular it is. What’s more, your affiliate links will reach a wider audience when it’s repinned.

Include multiple images in one pin

Pinterest now has a feature where you can add multiple images under one pin. This feature is called a carousel, and you’ll need to add 3 to 5 images for it to be accepted. Use the carousel feature to show multiple angles of the affiliate product you’re promoting.

For example, if you’ve included an affiliate link to a winter outfit, you want to show multiple images of how the outfit looks in different poses or lighting. Using the carousel feature also allows you to advertise more than one product on a single pin.

Include affiliate links strategically

The benefit of affiliate marketing is that it doesn’t require an investment. But it will require some strategy on your part. Earn money on Pinterest by including your affiliate links in your pin’s description. Consider adding keywords and hashtags for broader reach.

Additionally, you can include your affiliate links in blogs you write on your website and then post the blog on Pinterest to drive more traffic to your post. You can also write informative product reviews on the items you’re promoting and include affiliate links to each product you feature.

Post consistently/schedule posts

To attract more followers to your Pinterest boards and pins, you must post consistently. You must post at least three times a day. And if you want to increase your engagements further, consider posting 11 times per day.

Additionally, consider automating your posts, so you don’t have to sit on Pinterest every day posting pins. Pinterest allows you to schedule posts and publish them on a day and time that suits you.

How to Make Money on Pinterest Without a Blog

Not everyone has the time or skills to write lengthy blogs or product reviews. Fortunately, there are ways you can make money from Pinterest without a blog. Take a look at the tips we’ve provided in this section if you don’t want to spend all your time writing to make money.

Sell photographs or advertise your work

Pinterest is a visual platform, so it’s the perfect place to sell your photographs or advertise your photography skills. Provide various boards of the different types of photography you do, such as weddings or wildlife, and allow people to buy your work.

Ensure you add details to your descriptions on each pin, such as:

• The size of the image
• The camera you used to take the image
• Links to similar images
• Keywords and hashtags relevant to your image

You can also connect your Pinterest to your website and other social media platforms to drive more traffic to them. For example, add links to landing pages, other images or subscription forms in your pin descriptions.

Sell digital products

Another way to earn money off Pinterest without blogging is selling digital products such as:

• Clothing patterns
• Knitting patterns
• PDF templates
• Digital art
• Premade website templates
• NFTs
• eBooks

Simply add the link to your digital product in your pin description and inform your visitors about where the link will take them. Being transparent about your links will increase your clickthrough rates and potentially boost the sales of your digital products.

Feature courses

Pinterest is also the best place to feature online courses and tutorials because it’s the least known place to advertise your E-learning site. This means you won’t have many competitors to deal with.

Pinterest isn’t simply a platform for images. You can also feature videos making it the best platform to add snippets to your online courses. While you can post videos up to 15 minutes long, it’s recommended that you add videos between 6 and 15 seconds long. Shorter videos may pique your viewers’ interest, increasing your click-through rates.

Include physical products

People who make handcrafted items can advertise their products and sell them on Pinterest. The platform has a shopping tab on which you can feature all your items with pricing and descriptions of each product. Shoppers can then browse and shop in-stock product pins such as:

• Paintings
• Pottery
• Clothing
• Shoes
• Accessories
• Make-up
• Hair dye
• Clothing dye
• Baking accessories and decorating kits
• Home decor items

Keep in mind that Pinterest users are mostly lovers of art, home decor, fashion and wedding ideas. So to make decent money go into a niche that sells products Pinterest users are more likely to buy.

Become a Pinterest Virtual Assistant

If you don’t want to sell products or write blogs to make money off Pinterest, you can become a virtual assistant. PVAs (Pinterest Virtual Assistants) are in high demand because more entrepreneurs are discovering the power of visual search engines like Pinterest.

As a PVA, you’ll get paid for helping small businesses drive traffic to their boards. You’ll be responsible for creating pins, relevant descriptions and scheduling posts for Pinterest accounts. Essentially, you’ll manage Pinterest accounts to increase followers and engagements for your clients so they can boost their sales and revenue.

Final Thoughts

Now that you know how to make money on Pinterest, you must start building your network by creating high-quality pins that will attract your target audience.

Whether you want to do affiliate marketing, become a PVA or sell your products through Pinterest, use this article to guide you in the right direction.