Pinterest is an extremely popular platform, especially among creatives and those looking for some creative ideas.
You can find almost anything on this well-known platform, from handy tips and tricks to unique DIY ideas.
But did you know it’s also possible to make money using Pinterest?
Many businesses use Pinterest to promote their products and services and thereby increase their revenue. While not as popular as Facebook or Instagram, Pinterest still boasts a staggering 444 million monthly active users that you can target to grow your sales numbers.
On top of that, earning money directly from Pinterest is also a viable option. There are a number of ways to use Pinterest to boost your regular income.
So, if you’re interested in increasing your revenue using Pinterest, this guide is just what you’ve been looking for.
Let’s learn how to make money on Pinterest!
How to Make Money Using a Pinterest Business Account
The easiest way to make money with Pinterest is by using a Pinterest business account. A Pinterest business account lets you create and market pins that you can link back to your website.
Pinterest business accounts are excellent not only for promoting your products but also for engaging the audience. Here’s how you can maximize your benefits from a business account.
1. Set Up an Attractive Pinterest Business Account
One of the fundamental things you should do to increase your Pinterest revenue is set up an attractive Pinterest business account.
When you sign up for a business account on this platform, you can insert your company name and description and even include some relevant links, such as your website URL or links to accounts on other social media platforms.
You should also pay attention to including specific keywords that’ll attract the right audience
2. Stick to One Niche
Once you have your business account set up, it’s necessary to find your niche. Your Pinterest account is more likely to attract the desired audience when you focus on a single category instead of dabbling in multiple ones.
This way, you’ll avoid the situation where you get countless profile visits but very few followers.
Whether you’re creating pins on fashion, food recipes, home decor, DIY content, or anything else, the possibilities are endless. But when you find a niche, it would be best to stick to it. That’s the best way to expand your reach among any type of Pinterest audience.
3. Research Your Target Audience
Finding a niche often includes researching the market to find your target audience.
Your target audience could be stay-at-home moms, professional bloggers, teachers and kindergarten workers, new homeowners, etc.
Whatever the case may be, you’ll need to tailor your content to your profile visitors. By doing so, you’ll be more successful at attracting Pinterest users with similar interests and growing your target audience.
If you have a Pinterest business account, you can examine your blog niche and research your current customer demographics to get more information about the target audience.
4. Improve Your SEO
If you want your Pinterest marketing efforts to be successful, you should do everything you can to increase the visibility of your Pinterest business account. The most important thing you can do in this regard is to work on your SEO.
Most Pinterest users use the Pinterest search bar or Google to find the content they’re looking for. So, including some keywords is a must to optimize the content you’re publishing for search engines.
Look at the integration of keywords inside the caption, description, and image in this pin.
If you aren’t sure which keywords you should use, you can browse the popular content in your category to get some ideas and find out how other businesses are using keywords to promote their brand and increase their online presence.
5. Examine Pinterest Analytics
Improving your Pinterest SEO isn’t the only way to optimize your Pinterest account for visibility. You should monitor all key stats and follow their performance to see what works best for your business and followers.
If you notice some pins perform better than others or are better received by the audience, analyze what these pins bring to your followers.
Once you find what your top-performing pins have in common, you can focus on that content style in the future. For instance, many creators find that a Pinterest quiz helps them engage with their followers, which brings us to our next point.
6. Leverage Quiz Marketing
Quiz marketing is a uniquely powerful yet underutilized way to promote one’s brands and its products and services. Online quizzes can be highly interactive and hence, work great in marketing for people who aren’t intrigued by passive forms of content, such as blog articles and videos.
While you can publish your quizzes anywhere on the internet, they work especially well on image-sharing platforms, such as Pinterest. There are a number of ways to use online quizzes to bring in more customers and revenue. For instance, you can—
- Create trivia or BuzzFeed-style personality quizzes to engage your audience
- Add attractive titles and pin images that will attract visitors to take the quizzes
- Plugin the recommendations for relevant and/or new products and services in the results of your quizzes
- Organically include lead generation forms in your quizzes and integrate them with email automation tools
- Ask your audience questions that lend valuable insights into their buying behavior and preferences.
- Insert subliminal advertising messages in your quizzes for unconscious branding
Of course, all of this is possible only if you’re using excellent quiz software. So, make sure you pick the right quiz maker for the job.
7. Join Group Boards
Pinterest group boards are collaborative boards where different Pinterest accounts can share ideas and upload content. Although they look like regular boards, multiple creators can join the community and contribute to these group boards.
These group boards are trendy among Pinterest users, especially if they’re focused on a particular niche and regularly updated.
Find a group board you’d like to join and start contributing. Don’t forget to be consistent with the content to increase your reach and attract as many Pinterest users as possible to your business.
Also, it would be a good idea to check which collaborative boards your competitors are contributing to before you select one. Here’s how you can do it.
Step 1: Go to a competitor’s Pinterest page.
Step 2: Click “Saved” to view their Boards.
Step 3: Look for boards featuring multiple profile icons.
8. Sign up for Affiliate Programs
Signing up for affiliate programs is among the easiest and most profitable ways of earning money through Pinterest. It entails using your unique affiliate link to refer followers to other online sites and platforms.
Affiliate marketing is becoming a highly influential type of marketing, so you should include it in your Pinterest business account.
Amazon and RewardStyle are some of the most popular sites used for affiliate marketing. Many online businesses use these two popular platforms to earn extra money through affiliate links placed on pins.
Other Ways of Earning With Pinterest
While an excellent idea, marketing your business using a business account isn’t the only way to make money with Pinterest. There are many ways to earn money directly with a regular Pinterest account too. Let’s check them out.
1. Become a Pinterest Virtual Assistant
Many online businesses don’t have the time to focus on building their Pinterest presence but have the resources to pay someone to do this for them.
This is where Pinterest virtual assistants come in. The job of these virtual assistants is to run accounts for other companies and brands. They schedule content, create pins, and even promote them.
Getting started as a virtual assistant at Pinterest is fairly simple. All you need to do is create a personal account where you’ll show your Pinterest talents and abilities. Then, you can advertise your services or simply contact the brands you’d like to work with.
To help you with your Pinterest account management, you can use a comprehensive social media scheduling & marketing solution, such as SocialPilot. It lets you schedule pins for multiple Pinterest accounts from a single dashboard.
2. Become a Pinterest Consultant
Suppose you don’t have the creative skills required for a Pinterest virtual assistant but have the general know-how to help businesses achieve better results on Pinterest. In that case, becoming a Pinterest consultant might be a better fit for you.
Pinterest consultants offer consulting services to other Pinterest users, typically brands and companies, and devise marketing strategies for them.
Just like Pinterest virtual assistants, Pinterest consultants also need to advertise their skills and services to reach the businesses they’ll work with. But, unlike virtual assistants, consultants are more focused on analytics than on coming up with creative pins.
3. Sell Templates for Pinterest
Pinterest is a website known for its atmosphere of creativity and imagination. Many of those on Pinterest use the platform because they need creative solutions and ideas.
An easy way to earn some money from Pinterest is to create unique templates and sell them to other users. Some digital artists even create long-term partnerships with famous brands that regularly need to publish fresh content.
4. Sell Online Assessment Quizzes and Courses
Templates aren’t the only thing you can sell on Pinterest. You can also use Pinterest to promote and sell your online learning material, such as assessment quizzes and tests, flashcards, and full-length courses created with a learning management system.
All you need to do to sell your courses and quizzes on Pinterest is share relevant links in the description of your pins and market your offerings with a compelling image, preferably from the learning material itself.
5. Teaching Pinterest Marketing
Pinterest professionals who don’t feel like working directly with Pinterest anymore or are looking for a job that’ll bring them some extra money can consider teaching Pinterest marketing.
Whether you choose online or in-person teaching, organizing Pinterest marketing courses lets you share your knowledge with those who need it and earn some money from doing so.
You can create different courses and modules that fit all business sizes and skillsets on Pinterest.
You can even categorize your courses by topic, so the attendants can gain detailed knowledge in a particular field, such as effective creation of pictures or how to use a quiz maker.
6. Establishing Partnerships With Brands
Pinterest users who are already successful on the platform and have a fairly large follower base can establish one-time or regular partnerships with brands to earn money. They typically do this by promoting the company’s products and services to their followers.
By leveraging the large following of these users, brands can market their products to a wide audience. Also, since they’re focusing their marketing efforts on a specific audience, they get better website traffic and a higher number of sales.
The Bottom Line
All in all, there are several ways of making money using Pinterest. Whether you’re a business owner or just a basic Pinterest user, you have many options to start earning money via this popular platform.
While we’ve tried to be comprehensive in the ideas and strategies we’ve shared in this article, we know that we’ve only managed to scratch the surface. So, feel free to try out your own ideas as well and have a successful business journey with Pinterest.
