The first time I heard that someone could make money on Pinterest, I was like, WTF is that real?? Sign me up! 

Nothing sounds better than pinning to my heart’s content and earning the dollars while I do it. Am I right?

Unfortunately for me, I was quickly grounded with the earth-shattering revelation that…. (drumroll please) …. It’s not that easy.

Damn. 

But it is TOTALLY POSSIBLE and actually so, so easy! Pinterest is such an incredible marketing tool to use and it’s totally free, WHY NOT use it to make yourself some money?!

I’ve built a business using Pinterest as the catalyst to launch my success and have learned how to effectively earn money on Pinterest. How? Through research and a whole lot of experience. (Want to learn how I get over 8-10 million views a month on pinterest? Find out here!) 

So I thought I’d put together a list of all of the best tips for earning money through Pinterest for you!

Alrighty, pop some popcorn and get comfy, this is going to be kind of a long post with a bunch of information, let’s get you earning money on Pinterest! 

First things first… you’ve got to set up your account the right way! 

Not the left way, and not the wrong way (hehe, bad dad jokes…) but for real, you want to make sure your account is optimized for earning! If you didn’t already know, I actually have a full Pinterest strategy course that goes over Pinterest strategy and setting up your account for success in depth, but here is a good place to start!

Make sure your account is set up as a business account!

You definitely need access to those analytics so you can see what you’re doing that is successful and track the progress.

Make sure your profile is updated!

You will want to have your main website listed, a strong bio, and a good photo. Having these things helps establish your brand and helps narrate your story as a business. You want people to consider you an authority and take direction from your recommendations. Additionally, having a well-established profile improves likelihood for others to follow you and grow your audience.

Get yourself a website if you don’t have one!

With Pinterest, it’s all about directing traffic to your channels to help you grow your brand and earn money. It’s best to own your own site if you can. You can, however, use a free website or even just link your Instagram profile in the meantime until you decide to own your site. Just a note of advice though, if you plan to create a business that earns money, you’ll need to invest in a site for yourself at some point. Even if it’s just basic. 

The more views you have, the more times your content will be seen by others which leads to more clicks on your pins.

Focus on pinning consistently (I use Tailwind to help me with this) and using good SEO strategy when you pin. This will improve the number of views your account and pins get. 

Make sure when you create your pins, that you are using good principles of design.

You want to create strong pins with good design and enticing captions. Having a strong pin makes all the difference! Instead of just pinning random things, intentionally create pins to convert.

Alrighty, do you have your account basics all squared away? Awesome! Let’s get earning! 

There’s two types of ways to earn money on Pinterest. Each way can be broken down into multiple faucets to help you earn.

First, you can create monetized content. The second way is to use your knowledge and/or experience with Pinterest as a tool for earning. 

By the way, are you following me on Pinterest? I’d love to connect, find me here!

How to monetize your content on Pinterest

So the first thing that’s important to understand is that Pinterest is a SEARCH ENGINE. Not social media, not a store, not a blog. Think of it like Google. People are going to Pinterest to search for ideas, and the results pop up in the form of pins. Pins lead to other sources, so in our case, we are using our pins to lead to money-earning sources. 

These money-earning sources could be anything, you can get creative with it! But most commonly, some strong money-earning sources include affiliate links, blog posts, and products.

Affiliate Links

Affiliate links are great because there are so many ways to earn! Whether you are a part of a big affiliate program like RewardStyle or Shopstyle Collective, or you are part of a small, local brand that has an affiliate program (like I am part of Shine Cosmetics!), there is a lot of potential to earn money this way. 

One way you can use affiliate links is by using your personal link directly on the pin. For example, say you have an affiliate link for a cute pair of earrings. You could create a pin using a cute photo you snapped of yourself wearing the earrings. Then write the description and be sure to focus on the earrings. Be sure to leave a call to action, such as “click through to check out these earrings and purchase,” or something like that.

Then when you put the pin onto Pinterest, you can use your affiliate link as the link that the pin goes to, so anyone that clicks on your pin is going through your affiliate link. 

Now a word of caution with this, and this is really important…

There are several programs that do not allow you to use your affiliate links on Pinterest. A big example is Amazon’s affiliate program. You can get reported and be removed from the program, and negatively impacted on Pinterest. Be sure to check your affiliate program rules before using any links to make sure you’re within the guidelines. 

The good news is, there is a great work around! If you have an affiliate link that you can’t put on a Pinterest directly, put it into a blog post or an instagram post instead! Then use your Pinterest pin to link to that post instead!

For example, I have a link for my very favorite ice packs to use after surgery. It’s an amazon link, so I can’t put it directly on Pinterest. Instead, I wrote a blog post about breast reduction surgery, and I included the affiliate link for the ice packs there. Then I created a pin for the blog post on Pinterest, and I use Pinterest to get traffic over to the post.

The more traffic I get over there, the more clicks/sales I make from that link. 

Blog Posts and Articles

Writing your own blog posts or articles is like having a little GOLD MINE because there are so many ways to make money, and Pinterest helps with that by getting more people to your blog. The more people you get to your posts, the more they’re worth! 

As I mentioned before, a great way to earn money is to have Pinterest direct traffic to a blog post where you are sharing affiliate links. Another way to use those links more effectively is to write specifically about a product that helps solve a problem in some way. Writing a blog post that solves a problem using a product will explode the amount of money you can make from a blog post. It’s much more effective than just a post that for example, just has links to the outfit you wore in the photos (and not much to do with the post).

Let’s take a look at a really good example of how this works.

Say a blogger takes my Pinterest course and decides that they want to use the affiliate link. (I have an affiliate program set up.) Instead of just sprinkling it into posts wherever, they could write a whole post featuring the course as a solution for a problem.

For example, maybe they write a blog post called, “best courses for bloggers to take” or “how I started making thousands using Pinterest”or something similar, and they specifically talk about the course they took and how it helped solve a problem for them. A viewer is much more likely to be clicking on the link to purchase when they read a full article supporting the product. That makes these types of blog posts bigger money-earners.

Another great way to earn money using Pinterest for your blog is by using it as leverage.

Pinterest helps you drive traffic to your blog, which makes your blog content more valuable and desirable for marketers! You can work with brands and earn more money based on the amount of traffic you have. The more people you can direct to your blog from Pinterest, the more site traffic your website gets. This ultimately means you can charge more to do sponsored posts, ads, reviews, etc. 

Selling Products or Services

If you’ve got a product, SELL IT! And get that sh*** on Pinterest immediately so you can make more sales! Pinterest can drive so much traffic to your website to help you sell your products! If you sell a service, it’s also a great way to get awareness about your business and to book clients.

Focus more of your time creating pins specifically to drive sales to your product, no matter what it is! 

If you don’t have a product… .it’s time to get one.

Selling your own products or services is one of the fastest ways to bring in more money, and potentially a LOT of it. It doesn’t matter what you seel! Whether it’s hand-made products, or digital services, or anything else. You can use Pinterest to sell your product and get it in front of potentially millions of people. 

Now, I’m personally not into sales and didn’t really want to make a physical product and have to figure out shipping and stuff. Instead, I opted to go for the digital product route and created an e-course. The great thing about e-courses and e-books is that they are typically low cost (or free!) to create and so easy to manage. 

Every single person has something of value they can share, so USE THAT to create your own product.

Love photography? Take some photos and sell them as stock photos. Are you a creative writer? Write stories or sell your services as a freelance writer. The possibilities go way beyond tangible items.

You’ve got brilliance inside of you that needs to be shared! 

Get that brilliance into the form of a product you can share with the world. Then use pins on Pinterest to direct traffic to your sales sites where they can purchase your products, and cha-ching, cha-ching! You’ll be earning in no time. 

How to earn money on pinterest using your knowledge or experience as a tool (instead of creating monetized content)

Monetized content is basically everything we just talked about, but there are many more ways to make money using Pinterest that aren’t just linking to money-earning content! These ideas for earning money on Pinterest are more service-based and definitely great ways to bring in the dough!

Pinterest Virtual Assistant services

As a Pinterest BOSS with great strategy, you can take that knowledge and sell it as a service!! You can offer your services to help businesses or bloggers manage their pinterest profiles and improve their sales through Pinterest. This is especially great for people who want to expand their brand using Pinterest, but don’t have time to do it themselves. 

If you’re not quite a boss on Pinterest yet, don’t worry! You can get there! You can still offer services once you’ve got a good grasp on the subject and learn as you go. The more expert level you become, the more you can charge!

Sponsored Pins

Guess what girl, you are a badass and companies WANT YOU. They really do. They want you to promote them, they want your audience, they want what you have to say. Once you’ve started to build up a little bit of an audience and reach, you have very significant value to brands! This is because you can pin their products and share their content to such a huge number of people! 

You can pitch to companies, or they may even reach out to you. There are a lot of ways that sponsored pins and collaborations can work. Most typically, there will be some kind of requirement for you to pin their content, or create your own content using their products. Then they’ll pay you for pinning and/promoting that content to your Pinterest audience. 

If you want to work with a company, consider reaching out and don’t be nervous! You have a lot to offer! Start by pinning their content regularly in a way that feels authentic to your brand, and start engaging with their pins and content. Then get your email pitch ready and hit SEND! Sponsored posts are a great way to earn money with Pinterest.

Use Pinterest as leverage to earn more

If you’re working with brands to create sponsored content, whether it’s on instagram, blogs, etc. you can add Pinterest to your services to help improve your worth to the company. Add your Pinterest reach (and other relevant statistics) to your media kit when you are pitching so you can show off your stats, that is a huge selling point! 

When you create content, offer to pin what you’ve created for the collaboration, or to create additional pins for the content, as a service that a business can purchase from you. It might just be a one-time thing that you can offer to pin the blog post you wrote for them. But you could also think bigger, such as promising to pin several of their pins a month each month for an extended time.

Just make sure that if you have any kind of compensation for this agreement, that you have a contract in place to protect you and the business. 

Pinterest Consulting

So this is something that kind of falls into the “virtual assistant” category, but I wanted to give it its own section. There is so much that you can do with consulting! As a virtual assistant you would just be doing the actual pinterest work for the person that hired you, but as a consultant you can help guide others to do it themselves.

For example, I personally sell consulting services where I’ll review the client’s Pinterest account and review their strategy. (If you’re interested in a Pinterest review by me, please email me at heysunnyjess@gmail.com) Then I give them recommendations to help improve their strategy and grow their brand.

It’s a one-time service, though I’ve done a handful of clients that have come back to me after for a second consultation or private training. It’s a great way to use your skillset on Pinterest to earn money! 

Related: 8 Huge Pinterest Marketing Mistakes that are Sabotaging Your Growth

I hope this post helps you with earning money on Pinterest!

I know I mentioned it a few times thorughout this post, but I have created a full Pinterest strategy e-course that dives deep into Pinterest marketing. It walks you through, step-by-step, how to be successful using Pinterest to grow your brand and business! It’s super inexpensive (because I know what it’s like to be frugal!), and full of info! I would LOVE to help you launch your business growth to the stars through Pinterest!

If you found this post helpful, be sure to check out my course and share with your friends!

As always, I am so grateful to have you in my corner, and I love you!

XX Sunny