How to Make Money on Pinterest

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This post contains affiliate links, which means I may receive a small commission, at no cost to you, if you make a purchase through a link.

If you thought Pinterest was just for finding recipes and home décor, think again! You can learn how to make money on Pinterest with these 7 different methods.

Yes, Pinterest is for more than just recipes. You can literally find anything you want on there. Which is why it is the perfect place to start (or continue) making money.

There is a HUGE audience on Pinterest, and once you understand what your particular audience is looking for, you can learn how to make money on Pinterest whether you’re a blogger, marketer, virtual assistant, etc. Anyone can do it.

How to Make Money on Pinterest

You can make money on Pinterest with or without creating a website or blog. While I recommended having a website for the best results, both methods work and are discussed below.

Make Money on Pinterest Blogging

My favorite way to make money on Pinterest is through blogging. I run several blogs, all with Pinterest business accounts, that make money through Pinterest traffic.

By creating content, and advertising that content on Pinterest (see below for some Pinterest tips), you are bringing more readers to your site. The more readers you have on your site, the more advertising income you make.

I have Mediavine ads on three of my four blogs, and that is how I make a majority of my income. Ad income allows you to make money on the road while blogging, which is just awesome!

So in short, more readers=more ad revenue. And if you do Pinterest right, it can drive a substantial number of readers to your site!

Affiliate Marketing on Pinterest Without a Website

You can do affiliate marketing on Pinterest without a website, which is convenient if you are not looking to start a website.

Affiliate marketing is when you work with a brand to market their product(s), and receive a commission with every sale. For instance, I promote the product Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing by Michelle Shroeder-Gardner. It’s a program that helps you learn how to use affiliate marketing to make a living.

Learn more about how to start affiliate marketing and some of the affiliate marketing program available.

So every time someone buys that product as a result of my marketing efforts, I get a commission. That’s how affiliate marketing works – and it’s great because once you set it up, it’s almost totally passive.

Now, you can make this work on Pinterest even if you don’t have a website to send traffic to. You can create a PIN(s) with the affiliate link, driving traffic to that product. When you do this, you will need to keep a few things in mind to make sure you’re following all the rules:

1. Make sure the company allows you to use the affiliate link on Pinterest – some companies don’t;
2. Pinterest does not allow shortened or masked links on their platform. Be sure to use the full link, no matter how ugly it is!
3. ALWAYS disclose your relationship with an identifier like #ad, #advertisement, #paidlink, #affiliate or #affiliatelink. Check with the company as well, they may have a certain way they want it disclosed.
4. As far as images, I typically prefer to make my own as some companies don’t allow you to use theirs. Again, this is a situation where you need to check with the company.

Pinterest is a great way to get started with affiliate marketing without having to create a website.

Affiliate Marketing on Pinterest With a Website

My personal preference is to use affiliate marketing with a blog. Pinterest can help to drive traffic to certain affiliate posts where the readers can then choose to purchase the product (earning you a commission).

If Pinterest changes their stance on affiliate marketing directly on the platform (they did this is 2015 when they banned affiliate marketing temporarily), you can still earn affiliate income from traffic driven to your blog from Pinterest.

Plus, if you have a blog, you have the option of earning ad revenue as well, so you’ll have 2 streams of income.

The best way to learn how to use affiliate marketing on your blog is to sign up for Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing. I’ve taken it and it has provided so much incredible information on affiliate marketing.

I personally make over $1,000 (often, much more than that) a month with affiliate marketing using tips from Michelle’s class.

Become a Pinterest Virtual Assistant

Once you become well versed in Pinterest, you can learn to become a Pinterest virtual assistant (VA). A Pinterest VA typically takes care of these types of tasks:

1. Creating beautiful PINs (more on the importance of this in the Pinterest tips below);
2. Scheduling PINs using the Pinterest native schedule or Tailwind (typically what I use);
3. Using Pinterest to perform keyword research (different than Google keyword research);
4. Creating and managing promoted PINs (paid advertising on Pinterest).

You can learn more about becoming a virtual assistant in this 10K VA class by Kayla Sloan, a very successful virtual assistant that makes more than $10K/month as a VA.

When you start your business, you’ll want to create a virtual assistant website. Once you have a website, you can start marketing to potential clients.

Pinterest VA’s are extremely helpful to content creators, especially with the new Pinterest guideline for creating fresh PINs (constantly). Hiring a Pinterest VA for content creators has almost become a necessity.

Becoming a Pinterest VA is a great way to make money on Pinterest!

Teach Pinterest Strategy

If you’ve really got Pinterest down (I mean like really down), it may be a good idea to teach what you’ve learned to others. I will recommend you make sure you have really had the time to learn all the ins and outs of Pinterest.

I think it’s important for those teaching to really understand what they are teaching, and have a good amount of experience in it. Not someone who has done Pinterest for 6 months, had some success and then decides to teach a class.

Really get the knowledge. You can create courses (Udemy is a great place to offer your class), ebooks, personal coaching, etc. to provide all your learned knowledge to others!

Use Pinterest for Advertising an Ecommerce Site

Pinterest is a great place for free advertising for a site such as Etsy or Shopify. I know I am on Pinterest all the time finding PINs for Etsy shops (I love to shop for dishes for food photography on my other blog Went Here 8 This).

Much the same way you can use Pinterest to generate traffic to a website, you can also use it to send traffic to an ecommerce site such as Etsy or Shopify.

Like we discussed above, there are more and more people looking to Pinterest for products to buy. It’s a great place to market your products to your ideal audience.

You’ll want to follow the Pinterest tips below to get the most traffic to your ecommerce site. 

Start a Podcast

Another great way to use Pinterest is to drive traffic to your podcast. And if your podcast is monetized, this means more money for you!

The subjects for podcasts are unlimited! You can literally start a podcast on any top you are interested in. Learn how to start a podcast.

Once your podcast is up and running, you can send traffic to it much like affiliate marketing and/or blogging. Just follow the below Pinterest tips for the best success.

This is not an all-inclusive list, but a great way to start learning how to make money on Pinterest!

Pinterest Tips for Success

In order to effectively use Pinterest to do any of the above money-making methods, you need to get people to click on your PINs. Your PINs need to be getting in front of people, and there are several Pinterest tips you can employ to ensure that happens.

Expert Tip: Make sure you have a Pinterest Business account before you do anything!

Make Beautiful Eye Catching PINs

PINs should be bright and beautiful to attract the users eye. You want to use buzzwords to speak to the emotions of your audience. For instance, words such as “easy” or “hacks” can make your PIN more clickable.

add photo of a PIN that is doing very well with high CTR.

I personally use Canva to create high quality PINs. It’s super easy to use (I am not technical or design savvy at all). I actually subscribe to a monthly service where I get 10+ PIN templates to use. It makes it SUPER easy!

Click here to subscribe to the monthly PIN Templates!

Use Pinterest Keywords

Users on Pinterest are searching for different things than on Google. Keywords that work on Google may not work on Pinterest (and vice versa).

People search on Pinterest much the same as they do on Google, myself included. So when a user searches, you want your PIN to come up in the results.

Once you understand who your audience is, you want to write your PIN titles and descriptions using keywords they are searching for.

Simple Pin Media has more in depth information on how to keyword for Pinterest. 

Create Fresh PINs

Pinterest has let bloggers know that fresh PINs will be given priority. They no longer want to see re-pins. These Pinterest templates make it easy to quickly make batches of PINs.

Simple Pin Media has more in depth information on creating fresh PINs for Pinterest.

Schedule PINs

You can use the Pinterest scheduler to schedule PINs for free, but you can only schedule a few weeks at a time. Plus, it’s kinda clunky and you can only do one PIN at a time.

I personally prefer to use Tailwind to schedule all my PINs and you can do as many as you want at a time. It’s really a time saver.

If you want to learn a little more about Pinterest marketing, check out this Pinterest Marketing class.  

Wrapping Up

Pinterest is a great way to add an additional revenue stream to your business. I believe it is very important to diversify your income so if one method of marketing starts to fail, you can fall back on your other revenue streams.

If you want to diversify even more, you can learn how to make money with Facebook ads as well. In addition to Facebook ads, there are other ways you can make money from Facebook.

Did you find these tips helpful? Have you had success making money on Pinterest? Leave a comment below and let me know!