How to make money on Pinterest
Summary/Overview
Pinterest has a reputation for being a source of inspiration and ideas, particularly when it comes to shopping in key industries such as home décor, fashion, crafts, and beauty. Furthermore, as a social media platform that has made big strides in recent years when it comes to ecommerce features, Pinterest is becoming an excellent platform where small businesses can thrive, as more than 25% of time spent by active users on Pinterest is spent shopping.
However, making money on Pinterest isn’t limited to just businesses. Pinterest is also a place where influencers and creators can benefit from Pinterest’s ecommerce features to earn revenue through common social media money-making tactics, such as affiliate marketing, advertising, and sponsored content.
Let’s get into the details!
How to make money on Pinterest:
- Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is a common tactic that many influencers use to make money via social media channels. Affiliates are those who team up with brands to peddle the brand’s products and services for a share of the profits. Those who have managed to build a large Pinterest following will now have access to an audience that they can influence to make purchases from this specific brand by publicly recommending their products. The influencer will usually have a specific link for their audience to purchase from to ensure that the brand knows to reward their ambassador for the sale.
Further reading: 10 Pinterest ideas for posts and marketing effectiveness
- Partner with brands
Like on other social media channels, if you can grow a loyal following, there will be the opportunity to partner up with brands to create sponsored content. Sponsored content is when a brand will pay you to talk about or recommend their products or services to get exposure to your audience. The bigger your audience, the more brands will be willing to pay to get featured on your page. Regardless of whether you’re being offered money, it’s important to never recommend products that you wouldn’t genuinely use or recommend in real life — this way, you’ll remain a trustworthy source for your audience and won’t lose followers as a result.
- Advertising
When organic posting just isn’t hitting the spot, there’s always the option to put some money behind your Pins to get additional reach. Pinterest has one of the lowest cost per clicks in social media advertising versus other social media channels, so while you will have to spend money to make money, you’re likely to get a good return on investment.
There are many different types of Pinterest ads that you can create:
- Idea Pins: Similar to Instagram Stories, Idea Pins allow you to add a short-form video or up to 20 images.
- Try-on Product Pins: These Pins make use of augmented reality to “try on” your products (this works best for beauty and accessories brands). Business profiles will need to contact their Pinterest account manager to get started with Try-on Product Pins.
- Collection Ads: Collection ads feature one large video or image with three supporting images. If somebody taps your ad, you can then show up to 24 supporting images (collection ads can only be viewed via mobile).
- Carousel Ads: Carousel images display two to five images that users are able to swipe through.
- Promoted Pins: A Promoted Pin is essentially a regular Pin that has been boosted. These are single image or video Pins.
- Shopping Ads: Much like collection ads, these are pulled from your product catalog. These ads feature only one video or image and are incredibly easy to set up as Pinterest will use your product data to automatically target the most interested audience.
Check out Pinterest’s guidance on advertising best practices.
- Use Product Rich Pins
Rich Pins allow you to include much more detailed information versus your standard Pins, which makes them perfect for product-centric marketing. A product Rich Pin will display an individual item, including information on pricing, stock availability, title, and description, all pulled directly from your website. It will even automatically update if the information on your website changes. To set up product Rich Pins, you’ll need to add some metadata to your site and apply for Rich Pins (see the full instructions here). These types of Pins will appear in the “Shop” section of Pinterest search results (Shopping Ads show up here too). Statistics show that 85% of users have bought something based on Pins from brands they saw on Pinterest, so don’t be shy when it comes to displaying the details around your product offerings.
Further reading: Pinterest trends and customizable templates for 2024
- Make Pins shoppable by product-tagging
Use Idea Pins to subtly tag all of the products used or featured within your Pin, allowing your audience to immediately shop your look. You can also use Idea Pins to tag products that you want to recommend to your audience, like if you wanted to share a round-up of your favorite products for summer — an incredibly useful feature for influencers and businesses.
- Allow shoppers to purchase from you in-app
One of Pinterest’s greatest features is the ability for users to shop and checkout without leaving the platform. To make use of Pinterest's in-app checkout, you must meet the following criteria:
- Your Shopify store has a U.S. billing address
- You only have Shopify feeds (Meaning you don’t have active non-Shopify feeds uploaded to Pinterest)
- You use the Shopify app integration and have at least one feed with the country set to “US” and the locale set to contain “en-US”
- You accept returns
- You have an email address for customer support inquiries
- You exceed the monthly checkout conversions threshold
- You are a member of the Verified Merchant Program
Once approved, your organic Product Pins (created from your catalog) will now feature a “Buy” button where users can click to pick product details and then be redirected to a checkout page, all within the Pinterest app.
How to increase your chances of earning on Pinterest
Pinterest SEO
Expanding your reach means more eyes on your content, and more opportunities to make money. Optimizing your Pinterest content for search is a great way to increase your reach and ensure your content gets put in front of the most relevant people. Be sure to include keywords in your descriptions, text overlays, board titles, board descriptions, and profile descriptions to help Pinterest understand what your content is about and show it to the audience it suits best. After all, nearly nine in 10 users are on Pinterest to plan their purchases, so showing up in search results can go a long way to making a sale.
Prepare an influencer media kit
When opportunity comes knocking, you’ll want to be prepared. A media kit is essentially a document that summarizes why you are a valuable creator to collaborate with that can be presented to interested brands and businesses. Featuring information about your followers and engagement levels, an influencer media kit is a must-have if you want to look professional and increase your chances of landing a beneficial partnership.
Schedule your Pins
Consistency is important when it comes to building a social media following, and it’s hard to be consistent without the right tools. Adobe Express’ Content Scheduler allows you to connect your Pinterest account to a visual calendar interface where you can plan and publish Pins directly to Pinterest at your chosen times and dates, allowing you to keep your Pinterest thriving, even when you’re offline.
Further reading: The importance of consistent posting for social media creators
Create beautifully Pin-able content with Adobe Express’ template library
Make content worth pinning with Adobe Express’ range of professional and aesthetically pleasing Pinterest templates.
Check out what’s on offer:
Pinterest presents a wonderful opportunity to make money via social media, especially for those with more visual niches. However, don’t lose sight of what’s important: creating valuable content that your audience will enjoy. Although Pinterest is a social media channel where you can be more direct about your intention to sell products, there is still a limit. The most successful Pinterest accounts will be those that maintain a steady balance between authentic and valuable content versus more promotional Pins.