Whether you’re considering chasing your passion for Pinterest and turning it into a part-time money maker or are considering making it a full-time business, there are many legit ways how can you make money on Pinterest that you can count on one hand.
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Unlike most other social apps, Pinterest is the home of creatives. It is a giant visual pinboard and search engine all in one! You can’t help but fall in love with this app. It’s easy to start out searching pins that relate to home décor but end up drooling at chocolate muffin recipes! Why? Because Pinterest is an addictive and beautiful black hole of ideas and all things creative.
With over 459 million active monthly users as of Q4 2020 and over 240 billion pins, monetizing Pinterest is a worthy thought. In fact, 2020 Pinterest statistics show that 98% of users tried something new they found out about on Pinterest, and 84% of users go to Pinterest when they need supplementary details on what to buy. Plus half of Pinterest users earn $50k and above per year, to the cherry on top of the cake, over 10% of Pinteresting households are making more than $125K per year. This means you can make money from home either as the main business or as a side hustle.
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So, can you make money on Pinterest? what does it take?
Organic traffic is the name of the business. The more traffic you can drive to your board, website, or blog, the better it will be. And with over 250 million active monthly users, Pinterest has a plethora of customers searching for the next fashion trend, recipe, health, and beauty tip, or DIY craft project.
What this means is that the industries that align themselves with the most popular Pinterest categories will definitely benefit the most from this surging traffic. The most popular categories are craft and hobby companies, apparel companies, gifts, food, drinks, and flower companies.
So, how can you build your Pinterest account to gain sufficient traffic?
Here Are Some Awesome Tips and Strategies on How to Increase Your Pinterest Traffic
Pinterest is a great tool because it can help you gain rapid growth in your website traffic as well as grow your email subscriber list. It’s a free market for your business and so here are ways to boost your following.
i. Define Your Niche
The first and most important thing for you is to identify your niche of interest and understand how fellow users in the same niche use and interact on the platform. From your own point of reference, you might want to identify what you look for in a pin and the type of content that captures your attention and apply these same ideas.
This information will be a good guide on where to start and what decisions to make.
ii. Build Some Authority
So, having identified your niche and understood how Pinterest works isn’t enough, the next thing to do is create a great following and prove to them that you’re an expert with something fresh to offer. And like all other social platforms, more followers mean more credibility and consequentially more authority. So, how can you gain more Pinterest followers? Read the next tip.
iii. Be Active and Engage Your Followers
Being present and engaging your followers are always a winning combination that can promote your ranking on Pinterest. By manually pinning on a regular basis, you become familiar with your followers. Other ways of showing activity include using the “Explore” and “Trending” pages to re-pin your content there for more visibility. You can also re-pin what others in your niche are pinning and follow the relevant boards.
iv. Follow Your Competitors Followers
This is a simpler way of telling them that you also exist and have fresh content to offer. Your competitor has the audience you’re targeting, so when you follow her, chances are if they follow your competitor then they’ll follow you too.
v. Maximize on Keywords Use to Rank in the Visual Search Engine
As said earlier, Pinterest is a visual search engine, so for your images to rank higher and appear in people’s searches, you need to use relevant keywords in the description of your images. It’s the same way your website or blog requires keywords to rank with Google. So, be strategic when creating pins and using keywords, and make it easier for users to find you.
This also applies to your profile name. Users can easily find you through the search bar. So, research and consider 2 to 3 keywords that you can incorporate into your profile name and use them.
vi. Organize Your Boards Based on Your Product Categories
You can appeal to your users by keeping your account organized and neatly structured by creating a board for each product category you sell or are promoting.
For instance, if you’re selling home décor, you may create a board for each type of accessory such as flower vases, modern cushions, and so on. This makes it easy for users to follow and even share the boards that are relevant to them.
vii. Make Use of Group Boards
Sometimes you have to go where everyone else is to get some action. If you’re not getting any new followers or pins, you can share your content on group boards.
All you need to do is identify relevant group boards and request access, once accepted, you can share your best pins that will eventually draw followers to your boards. Besides just earning you followers, group boards can earn you views up to three times the number of your followers.
Pinterest group boards brilliantly increase your visibility.
viii. Make the Most of Peak Times
There are times when the majority of people seem to be on the app, perhaps in the evenings or weekends, you can take advantage of this through the use of a few third-party tools to schedule your pins and post them at the most essential times.
A tool such as Tailwind allows you to schedule pins during peak times. This makes sure your pins get more eyeballs.
If you don’t wish to use third-party tools, you can do it manually, all you need to do is test the best time when your pins get more views and pin at these times.
ix. Let Users Buy Your Product Without Leaving the App
Allow your users to go through the payment process without leaving the platform, why? It’s a fast-paced world today and people appreciate easily accessible products.
Buyable pins are a quick gratification method where the purchase process has seamlessly been made fast and efficiently without having to leave the platform. When your users get to know this, they will flock to you, I mean, who enjoys endless purchase procedures?
x. Keep Up with Pinterest Algorithm Updates
It’s pretty critical to keeping abreast of any changes or updates in order to maximize the app’s full potential. It’s really that simple.
So, keep yourself up to date on what dictates Pinterest’s algorithm to stay ahead.
xi. Branding! Branding! Branding!
Dedicate a good chunk of your time to creating eye-catching content. After all, Pinterest is a visual search engine. Focus on having a clear professional profile photo, let your board covers be as consistent as possible, and use attractive Pinterest graphics.
To help make your pins stand out, use more white spaces in your images, stick to not more than 3 fonts that go well together, and always brand them with your logo or website URL.
xii. A/B Test Your Pins
There’s no better way to know what works for you than by use of an A/B test. Learn how to do one here. Through testing several options, you’ll quickly see the pins that resonate best with your audience. The more effective your pins are, the more eyeballs, shares, and conversions you’re going to get.
You can test different variations on headlines and keyword impact, fonts, colors, images (e.g. with or without faces), and so on.
So, having pinned all the important strategies at the top of your mind, the next thing you want to know now is how to earn money on Pinterest.
How to Make Money on Pinterest? Here Are the Best Ways:
Sell Your Own Products
If you’ve been using Pinterest, you’re probably using your personal profile account. For you to leverage the business aspect of Pinterest, you need to have a Pinterest Business Account. This will offer your brand image more credibility while ensuring you can access a myriad of options that are only available to business users. Switching from a personal account to a business is pretty easy, in your settings options; you’ll find the “Switch to Business” button. That’s it.
So, selling your own product on Pinterest as a way to make money from home is quite straightforward. You can pin your own product e.g. artwork, e-book or recipe guide, etc. And thanks to the Buyable Pins stated above, people can instantly purchase your items right there on your Pinterest page.
To add this Buyable Pin to your account, go to Shopify and click on the “Pinterest/Shopify” page and click on “Add”. With your account all setup, the pins with the sale items will have either a blue “Add to Bag” button or a red “Buy It” button.
The key thing to remember is that general category pages won’t display as Buyable Pins, so you’ll have to link to the real product you’re selling.
Source: Pinterest
How to Make Money on Pinterest – Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is when you get paid a commission from the sales you drive through a promotion you run for a company. You promote products by pinning them on your boards, using your affiliate’s links. Each time a purchase is made through this link, you earn money.
Here are a few awesome tips before getting started on Pinterest Affiliate Marketing
a. Pinterest and the affiliate networks require you to disclose affiliate links when you’re adding them to your descriptions. You can put it at the end of the description. It’s a basic rule.
b. Create specific boards for affiliate products to make it easier for the shoppers to get direct access to the products rather than have to comb through countless pins.
c. Avoid using short links on Pinterest because this is forbidden. Short links include “Pretty Link”, “Bit.ly” and more.
You might be asking yourself how you’re going to get affiliate deals. Well, there are quite a number of Pinterest affiliate programs from which you can pick. Here is a short list:
- Tailwind
- Shareasale
- Unique Rewards
- Freshbooks
- Earn Easy Commissions
Remember, what you promote or endorse must be a product or service whose quality you can vouch for. This way you won’t have to lose followers for leading them to the bear’s mouth.
How to Make Money on Pinterest – Sponsorship as an Influencer
If you’ve earned yourself a large following on Pinterest and have an equally high engagement rate, then you’re an influencer and brands are looking for someone just like you. (It’s ok if you’re still building that following, Rome wasn’t built in one day).
By collaborating with these brands, you can make money on Pinterest by showcasing their products, writing reviews, wearing their brands and so much more. You can also re-pin their pins or create bomb pins for them. There are really many ways of doing product sponsorships and often depends on the brand.
A key thing to note though is that, unlike social media platforms where images are seen on the users’ pages immediately after they’re posted, pins stay on the board until they are found by anyone who searches. This means for your pins to be seen quicker, you have to maximize optimizing your keywords and ride with the hashtag train. In the end, what counts is the increase in traffic to your sponsor’s site and actual sales driven by you.
Use Pinterest as a Funnel for Your Blog or Site
You can monetize Pinterest by making it a part of your sales funnel. This is where all your creativity should come to play. You need to create unapologetically beautiful pins with catchy and optimized descriptions that will leave the users with no other option but to visit your site or blog.
There are 2 ways to make money on Pinterest through this method. One is using ads on your site or blog. If the funneled traffic clicks on the ads on your site, you earn money from your ad supplier both for the clicks and for the views. The second method is that you’ll be able to gain more potential buyers on your site for your own products with the possibility of creating your own email list through this.
Earn Money on Pinterest via Consulting
There are brands or companies that have not quite grasped the whole Pinterest concept while others don’t really have the time to use it but are interested in monetizing it and so they opt to outsource. And having used Pinterest for a while and having developed your own strategies to make it work, this becomes your chance to monetize your hacks by consulting for these brands.
One brilliant way to convince your prospective clients about your successful Pinterest skills is by highlighting the best work that you’ve previously done. You can create a board with your current or previous client’s projects as well as some data (if possible) on how much traffic you’ve driven into their sites.
Whether it’s designing pins or managing the entire Pinterest account, there are numerous ways B2B’s and B2Cs can leverage Pinterest and gain great exposure and traffic to their sites.
As a Pinterest Consultant, there is plenty of work you can offer clients.
So, there you have it.
As Pinterest went public, it continues to attract a significant number of advertisers as it maximizes its visual uniqueness especially since its users are people looking for specific things.
So, wonder no more about “can you make money on Pinterest” and instead get working on those pins.
