How To Make Money On Pinterest

Do you just love Pinterest and now you’ve discovered you can actually make money on Pinterest?

How exciting!

This could be the perfect side hustle for you!

In this post I’ll show exactly how to make money on Pinterest. And besides showing you how to monetize Pinterest with a blog, I’ll also give you detailed steps on making money on Pinterest without a blog so you can start today!

Let’s dive in!

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I may earn a small commission for affiliate links in this post at no extra cost to you. Please read my disclaimer  for more information.

First things first:

Can I earn money from Pinterest?

Yes! Definitely! Making money on Pinterest is a totally legit way to earn an income.

Online shops promote their products on Pinterest all the time, bloggers drive traffic to their sites with Pinterest and affiliate marketers use Pinterest to send customers to their affiliate products.

Making money on Pinterest is very much possible and anyone can learn how to do it!

How to Make Money on Pinterest

The easiest way to make money on Pinterest is with affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing means that you promote products for other businesses with your affiliate link. If someone clicks on your link and buys this product you get a commission.

You can make money on Pinterest with affiliate marketing in 2 ways:

1. You create pins that go straight to a website that sells an affiliate product
2. You create pins that go to your own blog where you recommend affiliate products

With both ways you use affiliate marketing to actually make money. Pinterest doesn’t pay you, the affiliate programs do.

The first approach is more direct, your pin links straight to an affiliate product. This approach is quicker and easier to start with.

The second approach would send someone to your blog first, where you recommended the affiliate product. This approach would obviously take a lot more effort, but you could also make more money this way because:

1. Not many people buy an affiliate product without a recommendation by someone they trust. Having a blog is your way to build a relationship with your readers. More people will trust your opinion and more people will buy your affiliate product.
2. When you have a blog you can also make money by adding other income streams, like writing sponsored posts, displaying ads, offering services, or selling digital products like ebooks, printables, courses etc.

Related Reading:

How to start a blog (that makes money)

Blog Niche Ideas (That Set You Up For Success)

Let’s have a look at both these approaches in more detail.

How to make money on Pinterest without a blog

If you don’t have any desire to start your own blog, you can make affiliate sales on Pinterest directly.

Follow these 14 steps to monetizing Pinterest without a blog:

1. Pick an affiliate product you’d like to sell
2. Sign up with an affiliate program that has this product
3. Set up a Pinterest business account
4. Create Pinterest boards that are relevant to your affiliate product
5. Fill these boards with some relevant pins of similar products
6. Create a pin image for one of your affiliate products
7. Upload your pin to Pinterest
8. Add your affiliate link to your pin
9. Add a keyword rich title and description to your pin
10. Add relevant hashtags to your pin and include #affiliate
11. Pin this pin to a relevant Pinterest board with similar pins
12. Create several different pins per affiliate product
13. Consistently pin 15-20 pins per day
14. Use a scheduler like Tailwind to pin at optimal times

Let’s have a look at these steps in more detail.

1. Pick an affiliate product you’d like to sell

Decide on an affiliate product you’d like to sell. To be successful without a blog, you need to pick products that sell itself with one photo or video pin.

Products that might work well:

• Clothing
• Accessories
• Jewellery
• Home Decor
• Kitchen Appliances
• Outdoor/Camping Equipment
• Car/Bike Accessories
• Dog Accessories

I’m sure there are plenty of other categories that would work well. Just imagine scrolling through Pinterest and what you’d be willing to buy, just by seeing a photo.

2. Sign up with an affiliate program that has this product

Once you’ve decided on a product, you need to find an affiliate program that offers this product.

You can do this 2 different ways:

1. You Google your chosen product and see what websites come up. Click on a website and scroll to the bottom of the page. Most websites that have an affiliate program have a link in the footer like this:

Click on the link and sign up to the program. (Some affiliate programs require you to have a website and might not approve you if you don’t. Just check out other websites to find one that doesn’t have this requirement.)

2. You join an affiliate network. Affiliate networks are like the middle man between the companies (merchants) selling the affiliate products and the publishers/affiliate marketers (you). Affiliate networks are great, because you only have to sign up once and you get access to lots of merchants.

Examples of affiliate networks are:

• Share-a-Sale
• Awin
• FlexOffers

3. Set up a Pinterest business account

To be able to sell on Pinterest you need to set up a business account.

Having a business account has several advantages:

• Account Bio with keywords
• Pinterest Analytics
• Rich Pins
• Promoted Pins
• Product Pins

If you need some guidance on setting up your Pinterest business account correctly, please grab my free guide: Pinterest Set Up For Success. This guide will not only help you set up your account correctly, you’ll also learn how to implement SEO and best pinning practices.

Get My Free Pinterest Guide Here.

Here’s an example of my Pinterest business account with keywords in the account name and description.

Go to Pinterest and set up a business account.

4. Create Pinterest boards that are relevant to your affiliate product

Try to create at least 20 Pinterest boards that are relevant to the products you want to sell.

Give your boards relevant board titles and descriptions. It’s important to use keywords because Pinterest is a search engine and using keywords will help your pins get found.

To find keywords that people are actually searching for on Pinterest, you can use the Pinterest search bar.

Type in your product or category and Pinterest will finish your sentence with words that people actually search for, like this:

From these results you could create board names like:

• Dog accessories
• Dog accessories to make
• DIY dog accessories
• Dog accessories for the home
• Dog products
• Dog collars

Once you hit Enter, Pinterest shows you another list of keywords that get a lot of searches, like this:

With these keywords you can create a whole lot more board names like:

• Girl dog accessories
• Small dog accessories
• Luxury dog accessories
• Boho dog accessories

You can find endless ideas like this. But don’t go overboard, your Pinterest account will be more successful if you niche down and focus on a particular target audience.

5. Fill your Pinterest boards with relevant pins

Use the Pinterest search bar to find relevant pins that you can pin to your boards. Don’t pin too much at once or Pinterest might flag you as a spam account. Pin several times a day and gradually build up your pinning until you reach between 15 and 25 pins per day.

6. Create a pin image

To entice people to click on your pins, you need to create stunning pin graphics that shows off your product. Your pin image should be vertical, the best size is 600 x 900 pixels or a bit taller. If you want text on your pins you can try editing tools to create your pins like Canva or RelayThat.

Related reading:

RelayThat Review – Create Social Media Graphics Fast

7. Upload your pin to Pinterest

To upload your pin, go to the top right corner on your Pinterest account and click on the red plus icon and then click on Create Pin.

A box like this will pop up:

Click on the image area and select your image file.

8. Add a keyword rich title and description to your pin

Add a title in the Add your title area and make sure to add your main keywords. Next you need to add a description. Tell a bit more about your product in the description and try to add a few keywords in a natural way. Try to sell the product here so people will click through to the website.

9. Add relevant hashtags to your pin and include #affiliate

Add a few hashtags at the end of your description. Make sure you research your keywords for this (as shown in step 4). Also add #affiliate, because you always have to disclose if you’re using affiliate links.

10. Add your affiliate link to your pin

Go to your affiliate dashboard and find the affiliate link for the product on your pin. Copy the link and paste it in the Add a destination link area.

11. Pin your pin to a relevant Pinterest board with similar pins

Click on Select in the top right to choose a board from the dropdown. Make sure to pin it to the most relevant board (with the same keywords). This will help Pinterest understand what your pin is about.

If you want to pin your pin to all your relevant boards in one go, I highly recommend you use Tailwind. Tailwind is a Pinterest approved scheduler that lets you upload your pin to 10 boards at once. And the best thing is, it will space them out so you’re not spamming your followers. It also chooses the best times to pin, when your audience is online. This will give your pin more reach which will result in more re-pins, clicks and sales.

Try Tailwind for free for 100 pins.

12. Create several different pins per affiliate product

Pinterest loves fresh pins so it’s important to create several different pins for each of your affiliate products and upload at least 1 new pin per day.

How to Create Tons of Pinterest Pins Super Fast

13. Consistently pin 15-25 pins per day

It’s very important to be consistent on Pinterest. Pinterest recommends pinning between 15 and 25 pins per day. This includes other people’s pins. When first starting out, you’ll pin more from other accounts. But once you build up a collection of your own pins, you’ll pin more of your own. Pinterest seems to favour your own pins so creating lots of new pins will get you the best reach. I pin about 90% my own pins and 10% from others.

Never pin all your pins at once, use Tailwind to space them out throughout the day.

14. Use a scheduler like Tailwind to pin at optimal times

Consistently pinning every day would be very time consuming without a scheduling tool. This is why I use Tailwind, it makes my pinning process so much more productive. Tailwind will pin your pins day and night when your audience is online. It’s also great for pinning on auto pilot because you can schedule your pins weeks or even months in advance.

Receive 100 free pins and a free month of Tailwind with this link.

These are the steps you need to take to make money on Pinterest without a blog.

If you’re serious about making money with affiliate marketing, I recommend you start a blog. Affiliate marketing through a blog has a much higher success rate than marketing directly on Pinterest.

Let’s have a look at how to monetize Pinterest with a blog.

How to make money on Pinterest with a blog

To be able to make money on Pinterest with a blog you need to take the same 14 steps as as shown above but instead of linking your Pinterest pins straight to your affiliate product, you link them to your blog posts.

So besides setting up a Pinterest business account you’ll also have to set up a blog.

This is easy to do, you can read my step by step guide here.

The main steps to starting a blog are:

1. Choose a blog topic and target audience (find inspiration here)
2. Name your blog
3. Buy web hosting (I recommend Bluehost because they do all tech stuff for you)
4. Install a WordPress theme (Divi and Elementor are great for beginners)
5. Install these must-have plugins
6. Build your site (this step by step WordPress course can help you with this)
7. Write helpful blog posts and add your affiliate links where relevant
8. Promote on Pinterest as described above

If you’d like detailed step by step instructions on how to start a blog, you can sign up to my free course:

The advantage of making money on Pinterest with a blog

If you start a blog you can create a following of people that love your content and trust your opinion. They’ll see you as a friend that recommends quality products and because of this they are more likely to buy from you.

Other ways you can money with your blog

Besides affiliate marketing, you can add additional income streams to your blog. You could display ads, sell digital products like ebooks or courses and if you have a particular skillset you could offer this on your blog as a service.

Services you could offer:

• VA (virtual assistent)
• Social Media Manager
• Accounting
• Web Design
• Graphic Design
• Coaching
• Writer
• Editor

As you can see, starting a blog can bring you lots of opportunities to make money online and be your own boss.

This is how you make money on Pinterest!

You’ve learnt how to make money on Pinterest in two different ways. I hope you found this article helpful, if you have any questions, leave a comment below. And if you want to start a blog make sure to sign up for my free blogging course. 

And to start your Pinterest business account correctly, grab my free Pinterest Set Up For Success below.

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