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How to make money on Pinterest
Pinterest is a quiet giant of social media. It drives more traffic to retail websites than Facebook. And if you’ve got the time to build a following, or if you already have one, you can make money on Pinterest, making it one of the most popular side hustles around. There are several ways to go about it, but they break down into two major categories: helping your own business or helping someone else’s business. (And sometimes that someone else is Pinterest.)
Links are an essential part of making money on Pinterest. You can include special links to products in your pins, and collect a commission when someone clicks on the link and makes a purchase. You can also include links to your own e-commerce site or blog. If you sell products, you can even include links that let people buy your product without leaving Pinterest. You can also make money off Pinterest by managing Pinterest accounts for businesses that do not have an in-house social media staff. We’ll go into more detail below.
QUICK ANSWER
To make money on Pinterest, you can put links in your pins that will help either your business (with links to your website or shoppable pins) or someone else's (through affiliate linking). You can also make money off the content itself by agreeing with a company to produce pins about their product.
JUMP TO KEY SECTIONS
By including affiliate links in pins
An affiliate link is a link given to you by a company to include in your social media posts. When someone clicks on the link and proceeds to make a purchase, you receive a commission. Pinterest does not pay you for affiliate links; you are paid by the company that sent you the link. You insert an affiliate link into your Pinterest content by creating an Idea Pin (a specific kind of pin with more media options) and including an image of the product. Then add a sticker to it by tapping the Stickers button on the lower right.
By driving traffic to your website
If you already have your own business, you can drive traffic to your website by creating engaging content on Pinterest. Just create an Idea Pin and include a link to your blog or e-commerce site when posting the pin. Pinterest also lets you create a Shoppable Pin, which includes much more extensive information on a product (size, color, and so on), and lets you buy the product without leaving Pinterest.
By creating a Pinterest Business account
You don’t need to create a business account to post affiliate links or links to your e-commerce site. But since it’s free, and access to your Pinterest analytics alone makes it worth the trouble, you should strongly consider it if you want to make money on Pinterest. A business account also lets you run ads on the site and promote pins, which puts your content at the top of search results pages. It also gives you access to rich pins, which have much more information about your product and even a click-through Shop button. If you’re serious about monetization, a Pinterest business account is a no-brainer.
By partnering with a brand
Brand partnerships are established outside of Pinterest. When you have your relationship with the brand in place, you can create Idea Pins with content related to the brand. When you add the paid partnership label to the pin, the company in question will be notified. If they approve your post, their name or logo will appear on your pin, and you will be paid in accordance with the agreement you made with the brands’ owners. Pinterest does not pay you for brand partnerships; the brand pays you directly.
By becoming a Pinterest virtual assistant
Making money on Pinterest doesn’t even have to involve having a Pinterest account. You can help other people with their accounts. Virtual assistants help small businesses across all business sectors with online tasks, such as running their social media. Specializing in Pinterest makes you especially valuable to retailers who lack the time or the online savvy to do it themselves. You could simply maintain the posting schedule for a business, or take a more active role in determining the brand’s strategy on Pinterest. If you can write, writing brand-related content for a company’s Pinterest posts is yet another opportunity.
Through Pinterest Creator Rewards
As you can see, most of the money-making methods we’ve listed here involve being paid by a third party. Pinterest has recently introduced a new program called Creator Rewards, wherein the pay comes directly from Pinterest. It will work by Pinterest posting goals for your pins, like a certain number of saves, or a certain number of comments. The idea is for you to create content that will reach the posted goal. If you do, you’ll be paid the next month. This is a brand-new program, however—so new that it’s still on an invite-only basis, so information on how much it pays, or on specific goals, is not available.
FAQs
Most of the time, no. The company you partner with or post affiliate ads for will pay you directly. Only the new Creator Rewards program pays you direct from Pinterest, and that is presently a pilot program.
Some people do just that. These people are highly skilled. They usually work for many different brands and companies, so their skills include excellent time management and scheduling, in addition to an understanding how Pinterest works. You can also upgrade your side hustle to a full-time income by promoting it with ads or promoted pins on Pinterest.
Yes, you can. In fact, most affiliate programs expect you to post the link in as many places as you have accounts. There are restrictions, however, and they vary from program to program, so check before you post.