*Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase using one of my affiliate links, I will receive a commission at no additional cost to you. Thank you for your support!
As making money online becomes a more popular source of income, you may have found yourself wondering, can you make money on Pinterest?
How great would it be if you could publish a pin and make pretty passive income from it for months or years? Or if you could promote your favorite products and get PAID to do it? The list goes on and on.
This post will show you all of the many ways that you can monetize on Pinterest!
Let’s dive in.
Please note: Pinterest is always changing, and while I try my best to update my posts, not all information may be up to date. If you’re looking too see the most updated tips, strategies, and information, check out this resource page.
Can you make money on Pinterest?
First of all…can you even make money on Pinterest? The answer is yes! And luckily, there are a variety of different ways that you can make money on Pinterest.
How much money can you make on Pinterest?
Of course, there are so many factors that play into this and there is no exact answer. Some people are able to make a few extra hundred dollars a month, while others, like Oyin Edogi, a member of the Pinterest Creator Fund, have been able to make thousands of dollars! (You can read her story here.)
Making significant money on Pinterest can be possible if you have the right strategy!
How to make money on Pinterest
Here are the many ways you can potentially start earning money on Pinterest:
1. Pinterest Creator Rewards
IMPORTANT UPDATE: As of November 30, 2022, the Pinterest Creator Rewards program has been closed.
While you can no longer make money through this program, there are many other ways you can make money using Pinterest.
2. Working with brands
Working with brands is an exciting new way to make money on Pinterest. Yes – you can actually become a Pinterest influencer and work with your favorite brands, promote your favorite products, and make money doing it!
In fact, some influencers now include Idea Pins in their media kits!
Pinterest released a paid partnership tool that allows you to tag brands that you’re working with.
Once they approve the request, their brand name will show up on your Idea Pin. Brands can also choose to promote your Idea Pins as ads, boosting your reach to even more people.
Pinterest brand deals are often formed outside of Pinterest. However, some people have connected with brands through Pinterest by creating an Idea Pin, talking about a product they love, and then tagging that brand! Brands can also turn your Idea Pins into ads, which can help you to get more exposure too.
To increase your likelihood of working with brands, focus on follower growth, growing an engaged audience, and getting more impressions.
Suggested: How To Become A Pinterest Influencer (26 Tips)
3. Pinterest Creator Fund
The Pinterest Creator Fund is a program that provides a select group of Pinterest Creators in underrepresented groups financial and educational support to help with their content creation on Pinterest (Source).
Pinners in the Creator Fund receive:
- A 5-week workshop program
- Personalized Pinterest strategy consulting
- A financial grant
- Pinterest ad credits
While the Pinterest Creator Fund is very selective, Pinterest has reported great results, so it never hurts to apply!
Apply for the Pinterest Creator Fund here! (If applications are closed, you can join the Pinterest Creator Newsletter, and you will likely be sent an email when and if applications open again.)
Read more: What Is The Pinterest Creator Fund? (And How To Apply)
4. Affiliate marketing
Did you know that you can do affiliate marketing on Pinterest? That’s right – you can promote affiliate links directly on Pinterest and make a commission from any resulting sales!
You can link Standard and Video Pins to affiliate links and you can even tag products in Idea Pins using affiliate links! This way, you can make all of your Pinterest pins monetizable. Amazing, right?
One of the most important things to do if you are considering Pinterest affiliate marketing is to familiarize yourself with the rules and guidelines. For example, you want to:
- Make it clear that all pins with affiliate links are disclosed (such as by including #ad)
- Be sure your affiliate programs and networks allow you to promote their links on Pinterest
- Don’t use URL shorteners like bit.ly
There are more rules that you should learn about before getting started in order to protect you and your Pinterest account. I recommend checking out the post below and Pinterest’s Community Guidelines.
Read more in my post Affiliate Marketing On Pinterest: A Complete Guide to find out exactly how to choose what products to promote, how to add affiliate links to pins, how to correctly disclose affiliate links, tips for getting your affiliate links seen and clicked, and more!
5. Growing blog traffic
Pinterest can be a great source of blog traffic. In fact, there are some bloggers who get enough Pinterest traffic to join premium ad networks! (And this is one of my favorite Pinterest courses from a blogger who has done just that!)
Luckily, there are ways that you can use blog traffic from Pinterest to make money!
- Ad income – If you are able to get enough people from Pinterest to your website, ads can be a great way to make pretty passive income! Some ad networks require a certain number of monthly pageviews or sessions, but some you can get into early on. My first ad network was SHE Media, which I believe I got into with about 5,000 monthly pageviews. While Pinterest traffic may not pay as well as traffic from other sources (especially Google), it can still bring in decent income!
- Affiliate income – Once you are able to get Pinterest traffic to your blog, another way you can make money is through affiliate links on your blog. When you talk about a product you like, you can include an affiliate link to it, and if someone makes a purchase using one of your affiliate links, you will make a commission for the sale! This can be a very effective way to make money.
- Growing an email list – If you get Pinterest traffic to your blog, some of these viewers can turn into email subscribers, such as if they fill out an opt-in form. Email lists can be incredibly profitable because they provide direct communication to people who are interested in what you have to say and offer!
6. Selling products
Promoting products on Pinterest can be a great way to generate more leads and sales.
Pinterest has been increasing their focus on ecommerce – even coming out with new integrations for Shopify and WooCommerce. Many people have also seen success linking their pins to their products on Etsy.
Pinterest also introduced the Verified Merchant Program to help pinners find new, trustable brands to shop from.
Pinterest even says that:
“Merchants in the program see a 17% higher conversion rate, compared to merchants who don’t participate.”
All this said, it’s safe to assume that Pinterest will only continue its ecommerce efforts in the future, which means that now more than ever is a great time to get started!
There are a variety of ways that you can effectively promote your shop on Pinterest. If you’re interested in doing it, I recommend learning more here.
7. Become a Pinterest VA
Do you love using Pinterest? Do you want to help others get results on Pinterest? Consider becoming a Pinterest VA (virtual assistant).
Pinterest VA’s can take on many roles from scheduling pins to doing keyword research and more.
However, you can get clients to pay good money if you see results!
If you want to become a Pinterest virtual assistant or learn more about it, I recommend finding active Facebook groups or taking courses to learn about the ins and outs of Pinterest.
Before becoming a Pinterest VA, you should have a solid understanding of Pinterest and how the algorithm works. This is one of my all-time favorite Pinterest courses and I thoroughly believe it teaches you everything you need to know about the Pinterest algorithm to see results!
8. Sell Pinterest templates
People are always looking for gorgeous, high-quality pin templates to save them time during pin creation!
You can create your own set of Pinterest templates and sell them to your audience or even somewhere like Etsy.
Pin templates can be quick and easy to make and you can absolutely get recurring income for them if you get them in front of the right audience!
Related: How To Easily Create Pinterest Templates In Canva (For Free)
Will Pinterest directly pay you?
Out of all of the ways to make money with Pinterest, the only ways to get paid directly by Pinterest are if you are in the Pinterest Creator Fund or make money through Pinterest Creator Rewards.
In other situations, the money will come from elsewhere.
If you make affiliate sales, the money will come from the affiliate program. If you work with brands, the money will come from the brands. If you sell products, the money will come from the customer. And so on.
Tips to make money on Pinterest
Now that you know a variety of ways to make money on Pinterest, here are some tips to help you hopefully get better results:
1. Have a strategy
Having a Pinterest monetization strategy is really important if you want to see results.
For example, if you wanted to work with brands, you may want to create more Idea Pins to increase impressions and followers.
Or if you want to grow blog traffic and make money through that, you may want to write more blog posts with buying intent and use more Standard Pins (since as of right now, Standard Pins tend to be the easiest pin type to get outbound clicks from).
Having a strategy is going to be essential to get the results you are aiming for.
2. Be consistent
Consistency on Pinterest is really important for seeing growth.
The more you pin, the more chances you have to get traffic, grow your following, get impressions, get sales, and more.
I suggest you publish at least one new pin per day. Some Pinterest marketers will say more, and some will do less. (But if you can do more, that’s great!)
Suggested: When And How Often Should You Pin On Pinterest?
3. Have a niche
Having a niche is not essential for success or making money on Pinterest, but not having a niche may make certain things more difficult.
For example, it may be easier to secure brand deals with certain brands if you consistently make content within their niche versus miscellaneous niches.
Or, if you have a loyal and niche audience, it may be easier to make affiliate sales by promoting products you know they are interested in.
Do you need a niche? No. But it can help!
Related: 35+ Best And Most Popular Pinterest Niches
4. Do keyword and trend research
Keyword and trend research is important for Pinterest because they help you find content ideas and to ultimately optimize your pins for Pinterest SEO.
Keyword and trend research is not as intimidating as it seems. In fact, there are so many ways that you can find keywords right on Pinterest.
My in-depth Pinterest keyword research guide will show you 7+ methods you can use to easily find Pinterest keywords!
There are also other tools that you can use to help you with Pinterest keyword and trend research. One of my favorites is Pin Inspector – an all-in-one, innovative software that makes finding amazing keywords easy! From my own experience, this tool has helped me find some and uncover really great keywords that I don’t think I would’ve found on my own.
Tip: Don’t be afraid of long-tail keywords on Pinterest! Long-tail keywords are more specific keywords, and although they may get less searches, they are often easier to rank for and get more targeted traffic. I have seen some of my best results from targeting these keywords!
Similar: 3 Useful Pinterest Keyword Tools For Keyword Research
5. Optimize for Pinterest SEO
Pinterest SEO is essential for getting your pins seen. Pinterest SEO is the process of optimizing pins, boards, and your profile with relevant keywords so Pinterest understands exactly what your content is about and distribute it accordingly.
This can seem intimidating at first, but once you know exactly what to do, it is actually very simple.
My free 20+ part Pinterest SEO checklist will show you exactly how to optimize your pins, boards, and profile step-by-step. Download the checklist for free below, or read the post instead here!
6. Know your target audience
Knowing your target audience is important because that will help you create content and a strategy aimed at reaching them.
For example, if you are selling water bottle stickers, you may want to create more content geared towards girls that are teens to young adults.
Your target audience should absolutely shape your approach to Pinterest marketing.
7. Use Pinterest Analytics to help form your strategy
Pinterest Analytics can really help to create an effective Pinterest strategy. When you look at Pinterest Analytics, you can see what your most popular content is – content that is engaged with most, that has the most saves, most outbound clicks, most impressions, etc.
In other words, you can see what content users like.
You can then use this valuable information to create more content like this.
Maybe you notice that your audience likes Idea Pins the most, so you create more Idea Pins. Or maybe you see that pins with the color pink perform better, so you create more pins with pink. Maybe you notice that your top pins show your face, so you create more pins showing your face.
This Pinterest tip can help you supercharge your growth!
How many followers do you need to get paid on Pinterest?
There is no exact answer for this. Since you don’t need a ton of followers to get your pins seen on Pinterest, you could start making money with affiliate links, selling products, etc. with a small amount of followers!
But, if you want to work with brands, brands may want to work with pinners who have a larger following.
However, you can start your monetization efforts with no followers!
Of course, this can be different for everyone!
How long does it take to make money on Pinterest?
Again, there is no exact timeline for how long it takes to make money on Pinterest, and it will likely be different for everyone.
Most Pinterest marketers believe that it takes at least 3 months to begin seeing growth on Pinterest and even up to 8 or 9 months to see significant results.
With that said, you can definitely expect it to take some time. Pinterest is not an overnight success type of platform. Instead, it’s more of a long-term game, but don’t give up too easy because the results can be worth it!
Conclusion
I hope that this post has been helpful in showing you some of the many ways that you can make money through Pinterest!
If you have any questions, be sure to leave them in the comments below.
If you want more valuable Pinterest information so you can skyrocket your success, read more on my blog or join my email list (I provide some of my MOST VALUABLE INFORMATION to my email list!)
I hope to see you around again soon. Thanks for reading!
Leah Marie
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