How to Make Money on Pinterest

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Pinterest might not be the first social media network you think of for people trying to monetize their content, but don’t be deceived, there are many opportunities to make money on Pinterest. With a highly engaged audience and a strong visual focus, Pinterest offers unique opportunities to generate revenue. It is more than just a place to search for ideas and find inspiration. Additionally, Pinterest can be a powerful tool for driving traffic, building brand awareness, and generating revenue streams for your business.

In this article, we’ll cover everything you need to know to start monetizing your Pinterest account. First, we’ll first dive into some important metrics to consider when growing your Pinterest account for monetization purposes, such as engagement, impressions, and follower growth rate. Then, we’ll discuss the different approaches you can use related to how to make money on Pinterest. This includes strategies such as affiliate marketing, creating sponsored posts, or offering exclusive content, each of which can help you improve your strategy on the platform and, therefore, increase the likelihood of making money. 

Who can Make Money on Pinterest?

If you are looking into how to make money on Pinterest for beginners, then you should pay attention to what approaches best correspond to your overall content plan and what you do well. Even if you are a Pinterest pro, it is always good to reassess your overall strategies and performance. Success on Pinterest isn’t just about publishing visually appealing Pins, but also having a clear well-planned strategy, analyzing the key metrics and adjusting them to your strategy. You should also keep in mind that metrics are more than just numbers. Understanding their meaning and what they represent is essentially to building a successful strategy.

Although it shouldn’t be the only important you should care about, follower count is one of the first metrics you should look at when tracking our Pinterest metrics. This is because it shows how many people are interested in your profile. Your follower growth rate reflects how quickly your audience is expanding, and targeting the right audience with resonant content can help increase your followers over time. Ultimately, the number of followers you have and how fast you are gaining new followers are good initial indicators of the ability to make money on Pinterest.

Metrics such as impressions and reach can also tell you how many people you are reaching and the visibility of your content. Impressions represent the total number of times your content has been displayed, while reach counts the number of unique users who have seen your pin. High impressions and reach indicate that your content is gaining visibility, which can give you a good idea about how many people may be actually seeing your content.

Engagement rate and post interactions are important key indicators of how actively your audience is responding to your content. Engagement includes actions such as clicks, saves, and comments. In reality, high engagement rates indicate that your content is resonating with viewers. This level of interaction is especially important for monetization, as it proves that users are not only viewing, but also engaging with what you are sharing. 

Metrics such as repins or saves represent how many times users have saved your Pins to their own boards which helps you to organically expand your reach. A high number of repins shows that your content is considered valuable and shareable, allowing it to reach new audiences naturally and also increase your views. Closely tracking your repins generally gives you a good overview of your performance and can also provide you with an idea of how your strategy is working. 

Of course, constantly monitoring and analyzing these metrics can give you insights into what’s working, helping you build a profile that engages and grows your audience over time. Keep in mind that if you are not performing up to your expectations, you should look for new approaches to grow your presence. In fact, there are overall strategies to implement in order to find the best times to post on Pinterest, increase your views, and gain more followers which can help you boost your overall performance. What is most important, though, is that you have a clear and implementable long-term plan about where you define your goals and understand exactly how you are trying to monetize your account. 

In looking through different approaches relates to how to monetize Pinterest, you need to keep in mind that there is more than just simply hoping a certain approach works for you. In reality, you need to understand what is important to make each strategy a success. Below, we will provide an overview of 5 primary approaches for how to make money on Pinterest and explain what to pay attention to: 

  1. Affiliate Marketing
  2. Sponsored Posts
  3. Utilize the Pinterest Shopping Tool
  4. Boost Traffic to your Website
  5. Offer Exclusive Content
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1. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is one of the first strategies you may want to consider if you want to monetize your Pinterest account due to its relative simplicity. Affiliate marking is the promotion of third-party products or services in exchange for a commission on each sale made through the affiliate link. If you are researching how to make money with affiliate marketing on Pinterest, keep in mind that making engaging Pins that drive interested users to products they might buy is essential. Ultimately, you need to demonstrate that you can drive traffic to a particular product page or website.

When brainstorming about how to make money with affiliate marketing on Pinterest, you can start by selecting products that naturally fit into your niche. Additionally, authenticity is key, so create honest, relatable reviews or recommendations around products you’d use and that align with your audience’s interests. Knowing what resonates with your audience allows you to select products they’ll find useful, increasing the chances of engagement and sales.

Trust is also one of the keys when contemplating how to make money on Pinterest with affiliate marketing. That’s why it can be crucial to build a community that values your opinions and is willing to consider your recommendations. Being transparent and letting your audience know that you’re using affiliate links, and that you’ll earn a commission if they purchase a product, can also help you build trust with your audience. Product recommendation can also make your followers to be grateful because they might have discovered something new that might be useful for them. 

2. Sponsored Posts

You might have wondered how to post on Pinterest and make money simply by talking about products you are interested in. If this is you, then you should consider utilizing the sponsored posts approach. This involves partnering with brands that pay you to promote their products with your posts. Unlike affiliate marketing, where revenue is tied to product sales, sponsored posts offer compensation for brand visibility and exposure even if no direct sales result from the campaign. However, brands typically consider several factors, such as your engagement metrics and audience insights, before committing to a partnership. As a result, it is important to regularly track and optimize your Pinterest performance and be able to show brands that you can bring about the desired results.

Although a large number of followers can help you first attract brands, the quality of those followers is what might make brands be willing to choose you for a collaboration. Most of all, these brands want to make sure they are reaching the right people who are willing to make a purchase because they also trust your opinion and describe why a product is right for them. To build trust with your followers, it is helpful to have a good community management strategy. Therefore, if you want to know how to make money by posting on Pinterest with sponsored posts, you should start by getting to know your target audience well and establishing a strong relationship with them. This way, they will be more willing to listen to your recommendation and maybe buy the products you recommend. 

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3. Utilize the Pinterest Shopping Tool

One of the best e-commerce-related ways to make money on Pinterest is by using the Pinterest shopping tool, a feature that allows users to purchase products directly through the platform. This makes the buying process easier, faster, and more efficient. Moreover, promotion can play a key role by helping you drive more traffic to your product pages. You can use special offers, count-downs, or even ads to increase the reach of your products. Pinterest even has an analytic tool with which you can analyze your campaigns and Pins. This can also help you track costumer’s interaction and the performance of your products and adjust your strategy if needed. 

When looking at how to monetize on Pinterest with the Pinterest Shopping Tool, there are two primary ways to use it. First, you can pin products directly from your website, ensuring that product details and prices stay up-to-date automatically. This hands-off approach keeps your content accurate and appealing without requiring constant adjustments. Alternatively, you can create Pins and tag up to 12 products within a collection, offering users a variety of options for potential buyers to explore.

4. Increase Traffic to your Website

Another approach related to how to make money posting on Pinterest is to use your profile as a conduit to drive traffic to your website and convert Pinterest followers into potential customers. You can start by setting up a Pinterest business profile, as this unlocks additional tools and insights that can help you optimize your content for monetization. Adding the blue verification checkmark to your profile further establishes credibility and gives new users confidence in your brand. 

If you are going to effectively implement this approach, you will need to include clear calls-to-action (CTAs) and direct links in your Pins to make it easy for followers to take the next step and effectively drive traffic to your site. While the primary goal should be to create engaging, informative content, encouraging users to explore your website can be a natural outcome when they connect with your content. For example, sharing Pins that showcase valuable content or highlight product benefits can pique curiosity and encourage users to click through to your site.

Lastly, one important metric to measure here is link clicks. Ultimately, you want to be driving traffic to specific pages on your website to potentially convert your Pinterest visitors into paying customers. Therefore, you should constantly monitor and track the way different Pins perform at driving traffic to your website. 

5. Offer Exclusive Content

When thinking about ways to make money on Pinterest, one last approach to consider is to offer exclusive content to your audience. This approach sees you developing a content subscription option for your most engaged followers in exchange for them paying a weekly, monthly, or yearly fee. Subscribers will receive special benefits such earlier access to content or access other types of content that normal users cannot get. This can be a steady source of revenue while building a deeper connection with your audience. 

This approach generally takes some time to fully implement, since you need to build up your audience. Moreover, if you want to be successful with this strategy, you have to make your audience feel that your content is worthy enough to pay for it and that they receive something valuable for that price. By understanding what resonates most with your audience, you can refine your offerings to ensure they provide genuine value and inspire people to subscribe. A good approach is to regularly post valuable and interesting content, so they want to come back to your profile to see more of it. You can also get inspiration from trending content as well as research other profiles in your niche to find out what is working for them.

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Final Thoughts on How to Monetize Pinterest

After exploring these 5 ways to make money on Pinterest, you should now have a clearer idea of how to leverage the platform to create a workable strategy. From using the Pinterest Shopping Tool to offering exclusive content, each strategy provides unique methods to engage your audience and monetize your content. If you are researching how to make money on Pinterest, you may want to consider using a social media analytics tool that can be an invaluable addition in helping you monitor your progress and refine your approach. 

If you’re looking for a tool to help you improve your Pinterest strategy and support your monetization strategy, you can try Fanpage Karma’s free 14-day trial. This all-in-one social media tool allows you to benchmark an unlimited number of profiles and gives you a host of other analytical capabilities. Fanpage Karma has integrated features for community management, publishing, and research. 

Additionally, you can book our free weekly webinar where we show you how to use Fanpage Karma to improve your social media performance. 

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