I know what you’re thinking, ‘making money on Pinterest, as if!’. Well, think again! What if I told you that most of the traffic that I get on The Inspired Boss comes from Pinterest? What if on top of that, most of my income has also come from Pinterest?
Surprised?
I know I was! I had heard that there’s the potential to promote your blog or business on Pinterest but I really didn’t realise how much is possible!
When I first got started, it was all a bit overwhelming. I wasn’t sure where to direct my energy within the business but I quickly realised that Pinterest was referring way more traffic than other sources. The potential is huge!
So, to help save you all the hours that I spent researching, I thought I’d create a guide to making money on Pinterest.
Here are the steps I’ve taken to start producing an income on Pinterest. In this post, I’ll be outlining Pinterest basics to help get more viewers to your business or blog and how to send traffic directly to your affiliate products.
Set up your profile – the right way from the beginning.
Getting your profile optimized from the beginning is important. There are a few things that you can do to make it easier for others to find you. Remember that Pinterest is primarily a search engine so you need to make sure you’re using your keywords.
Profile: this is where you write what you’re about and how you can help the viewer! Using your keywords, write a bit about your business and don’t forget to include a bit about you. Even though it’s a search engine, there is also that social component and I know I always like to see a bit of personality!
Boards: start by setting up about 10 boards. You can always add to this but it’s a good place to start. Think about what your ideal audience wants to know about and create boards that suit. Make the name of the boards keyword heavy and straightforward. You want the search engine to recognise them but you also want to make it easy for potential readers to understand what the board is about. Another important point is to make sure you have completed your board description section filled out, again using your keywords.
This post contains affiliate links, meaning when you click through and make a purchase I receive a commission. This occurs at no cost to you
The image below shows you the board description.
Create your pins.
Create beautiful pins that people can’t help but repin! This takes a bit of trial and error but it’s worth it!
I recommend creating 2-3 pins for each post (and affiliate product – more on that later!). Here are a few things that I have found to work, remember that every business and blog are unique so these might not work for you!
- Use easy to read font. I still like to have some more fancy font on them (I have a weird font addiction) but most of the text is in a plain, easy to read font. I save the fancy font for a couple of words only.
- Use unique photos. I have found that paid stock photos (my two favourites are Her Creative Studio and Ivory Mix) or photos that you’ve taken seem to perform better. Maybe people are sick of seeing the free stock images, the most popular ones do get used a lot!
- Make sure you include your URL on the images from your website. Sometime spins get ‘stolen’ so it’s always good to have your URL on them.
I create my own images in Illustrator but if you don’t have access to it, then Canva is perfect and to make your job even easier, I’ve created 20 Pinterest Templates that are 100% customizable within Canva.
Once you have your pin (and hopefully pins), load it up to your blog post or directly to Pinterest.
Affiliate Products
Did you know that you are able to create pins for affiliate products? Meaning, the person that clicks on the pin will be directed straight to the product. I was totally unaware that this was even an option but it is a huge component to making money on Pinterest.
The only thing that you need to be mindful of is that you have to use your actual affiliate URL, not a shortened or altered one. I usually create a link with the Pretty Links plugin on my website but this would breach the Pinterest T&Cs.
Technically this would mean that you don’t even really need a blog to start earning affiliate income!
I know that it might sound easy, it is to some extent but the challenge is that you need to mindful how you promote your affiliate pins. The last thing you want to do is spam every board, group board or Tailwind Tribe that you’re a part of. This would get you booted in a heartbeat!
When I upload a new affiliate pin, I place it on a relevant board of mine first. For example, I might be promoting the Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing course (this is a must for affiliate marketing by the way). I would first pin it to my ‘Affiliate Marketing Tips’ board. I then would schedule it my group boards (the ones that allow affiliate pins) and start putting them in my Tailwind Tribes.
If you want to learn more about this, my go resources are the ‘Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing’ course and the course from Elise at House of Brazen, Paid By Pinterest.I love them both and both have given me tools to start making money on Pinterest fairly quickly.
Join group boards.
Group boards are the BEST! Seriously! They are valuable always but even more so when you’re just starting out. When you join them, you are essentially getting a much larger audience than your own. Instantly!
Here’s how I find them. I go to other accounts that are doing really well in my niche. I scroll through their boards, take screenshots of the boards I want to join and then later I sit down and go through all the photos and start the process of joining the ones that are great fits.
If you want to see the ones that I below too, head over to Pinterest and have a scroll through. I am working on belonging to 50 quality boards.
Group boards play a huge roll in making money on Pinterest. Using them can really get you making money from the beginning.
Start using Tailwind.
I resisted Tailwind for a while. I was all like ‘I can pin manually and save the money’. And you know what, you probably could. I got some great results in the beginning by only pinning manually.
Then I thought I’d investigate and see what all the fuss was about! By golly, I’m glad I did!
Here’s a graph of my monthly viewers. I joined Tailwind on the 13th May and the results are mind-blowing really! Since using it, I’ve made back the money I’ve spent!
Within Tailwind I have 10 pins scheduled a day to my group boards but I also continue to pin throughout the day manually to my boards. I have been finding that this works well and I believe that Pinterest likes it if you actually spend time in there regularly.
To sign up and start getting more traffic to your blogger (and make more money!), sign up here. You get your first 100 pins to get a head start on making money on Pinterest.
Tailwind tribes.
When I first started using Tailwind, I spent my time figuring out how to schedule posts and didn’t really worry about the Tribes. To be honest, I found it a little overwhelming!
I soon realised that the Tribes function is great for two reasons.
- They give you more content to schedule to your Pinterest account.
- They get your pins in front of so many more people that then save them to schedule them to their own Pinterest account.
I love Tribes because the people there are within the same niche and are potentially your target audience. So, you’re getting your pins in front of the right people.
Tailwind makes it super easy to schedule from your Tribes and keep your scheduled posts coming. I plan on outlining how I use Tribes in more detail so!
If you want to try it out, sign up for free here.
Conclusion.
I hope that gives you a good idea about making money on Pinterest. Like always, it takes time to get the momentum happening but I’ve found it to be the fastest way to make money from affiliate links and your blog.
Remember to be consistent, create great content and give value to your audience!
Happy Pinning!
