How to Make Money on Pinterest (With or Without a Blog)

Do you want to know how to make money on Pinterest and why it can be a very lucrative side hustle?

In this article, I am going to show you exactly how to make money on Pinterest with or without a blog step by step.

With over 478 million monthly users and 2 billion searches, Pinterest keeps growing, making it ideal for anyone wanting to make money online.

Pinterest is used daily by bloggers, businesses, and creators because it’s a powerful way to drive free organic traffic to their sites.

In fact, many bloggers have joined MediaVine just from Pinterest traffic and they now make $5000 or more per month.

On the other hand, there are ways to make money on Pinterest without even having a blog.

So let’s see what Pinterest is and how you can make money on Pinterest, leaving behind the 9-5 grind once and for all.

What is Pinterest and how does it work?

Pinterest is not a social media platform as some people think. It’s a visual search engine where you can find ideas and things that interest you.

That means that whoever has the most beautiful/stunning pins will be able to drive the most traffic to their website or whichever destination they want.

There are two types of accounts on Pinterest, an individual account and a business account.

Most people start with a Pinterest business account because it offers more features and benefits than a personal account.

Some of the perks of having a business account include things like pin analytics, running ads, and more.

Everyone can start a Pinterest account and start pinning pins on their boards, but how can someone succeed and make money on Pinterest? Is it possible?

The short answer is YES!

The long answer is yes, but you’ll need to have an optimized profile, create beautiful pins and pin consistently.

Consistency on Pinterest means you should pin every single day.

Not only that, but you’ll have to interact with other users and spend time on the platform as well.

Pinterest loves when users spend time on their platform and, as a result, rewards them with more exposure.

Alright, enough of the pep talk. Let’s see how you can make money on Pinterest starting today.

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How to make money on Pinterest with a blog

1 Start a blog for cheap

Blogging is hands down one of the most profitable things you can do to make money on Pinterest.

Have you ever heard of people that make $2000, $5000, or even $10,000 a month blogging by driving tons of free Pinterest organic traffic to their blogs?

What if I told you that they are ordinary people like me and you and not some kind of experts, gurus, or you name it.

My point is, that anyone with the right mindset and strategy can start a blog and make money on Pinterest.

Nowadays, starting a blog is the easiest thing ever.

If you are thinking of starting a blog but you haven’t done it yet because you don’t feel ready then you are missing out.

Start first, then learn. Stop overthinking everything, instead start by taking it one step at a time. And the first step is to actually start a blog.

My advice would be to start with an affordable and trustworthy solution like Bluehost.

If you want, you can check out my step-by-step guide on how to start a blog the right way by clicking the button below.

2 Select a niche and start creating valuable content

After starting your blog, you’ll have to choose a niche.

Do you want to know a secret? If you want to make money on Pinterest with a blog, you’ll have to choose a profitable niche.

Not every niche out there is profitable, and I am sure you don’t want to lose time, money, and effort by choosing a bad niche.

Some of the most profitable niches on Pinterest are:

• Home Decor
• Travel
• Food
• Beauty
• Lifestyle
• Health and Fitness
• Personal Finance & Making Money Online
• Personal Development
• Fashion
• Parenting

After you’re done choosing your niche, start creating helpful content around what people already search for.

You can easily do this by checking out the Pinterest search suggestions.

For example, my niche is Online Business & Marketing.

I would type things like “make money” and let Pinterest autocomplete my phrase with search suggestions.

As you can see, one of the search suggestions is “make money from Pinterest”.

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That means that people search for that phrase because they want to know how to make money on Pinterest.

And that’s why I made this article. I already knew that people are searching for this, so I gave it to them.

Remember, it is super important to write content that people search for to be successful.

If no one searches for what you write, how can you expect people to find you? It only makes sense, right?

3 Create and optimize your Pinterest profile

After you have published at least 10 articles on your blog, it’s time to create a Pinterest business account.

You can do that by going to Pinterest and clicking Sign Up at the top right corner.

Then choose “Create a business account” and fill out your personal information.

Next, you need to claim your website by going to Settings → Claim.

Once you’ve done that, you’ll have to start optimizing your Pinterest profile by including keywords relevant to your niche.

In other words, you want to show Pinterest what your account is all about so that it can show your pins to more people interested in that topic.

You’ll have to optimize the following:

• Profile name
• Profile description
• Board names and descriptions
• Pin titles and descriptions

Don’t worry. It’s not complicated at all. The only thing you’ll need is the right keywords from the Pinterest search suggestions.

Simply start typing something relevant to your niche, and it will show you what people are searching for the most.

My blog is all about helping others start a blog/business, work from home, and make money online, so I included as many relevant keywords as I could.

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Try including as many keywords/phrases as possible in your Profile name and description in a natural, non-spammy way.

After that, you’ll have to create at least 10 boards relevant to your niche. The secret here is to name the boards with phrases that users search for.

You can easily find those keyword phrases by doing a quick search using the Pinterest search bar.

Pinterest says board names can make or break your success, so choose them wisely instead of using random names that come to mind.

With that in mind, I searched for phrases relevant to my niche, and let the Pinterest search bar show me what people search for the most.

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Then, I chose a handful of those phrases and named my boards accordingly. Simple but super effective.

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Don’t forget to add optimized descriptions for your boards and pins as well, by adding relevant keywords from the Pinterest search suggestions.

That’s it. After you’ve done all that, you’ll have a perfectly optimized Pinterest profile awaiting your pins.

4 Create eye-catching pins and pin consistently

Your pins will play the biggest role when it comes to making money on Pinterest.

Pinterest is a visual search engine, so you need eye-catching pins to grab attention, boost engagement, and get people to click through to your blog.

My #1 recommendation for creating beautiful pins without spending too much time is Canva.

The free plan is more than enough when you’re starting out but there is also an affordable paid plan if you want more customization.

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I honestly love the simplicity of Canva and I use it every single day to create my pins. It has everything you’ll ever need for creating pins all in one place.

Photos, graphics, background images, thousands of fonts for text, video, audio, and many effects, all for creating the best graphics possible.

Below is a preview of some of the pins I made with it.

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You can create your own FREE Canva account and start designing today.

Moreover, If you don’t have time to pin every single day I recommend Tailwind.

Tailwind is the best online Pinterest scheduler.

You can simply schedule your pins for the next week or even a whole month in advance and just focus on writing quality content.

5 Join group boards related to your niche

After you have published a couple of pins, and your Pinterest profile doesn’t seem empty anymore, it’s time to join some group boards.

Group boards are a great way to maximize your reach and gain followers faster.

With that said, I would highly recommend you to join group boards related to your niche and not just any topic you find.

When you pin your pins on someone’s group board, you will get noticed by that person’s followers.

That is really helpful, especially when you don’t have many followers yourself.

For example, let’s say you have 100 followers and you join a group board related to your niche that has 25,000 followers.

That means your pins have the potential to get noticed by 25,000 people, even if you only have 100 followers. Cool right?

A great way to find group boards is to check your competitors’ boards or search directly on Pinterest to discover ones in your niche.

6 Keep writing content and repeat the cycle

The key to bringing more Pinterest traffic to your blog is to keep creating new content every week.

Aim for at least one high-quality article every single week. If you can create more than one article per week that’s going to help you grow even faster.

One of the latest Pinterest algorithm changes favors new content and fresh pins over repining other people’s stuff. So keep that in mind.

The more fresh content you pin the more traffic you’ll bring. Consistency is really the key to success in every business and that’s no different here.

7 Monetize your blog

If you keep doing all the above with consistency, your pins will eventually start ranking on Pinterest and your traffic will increase month by month.

And that’s where the monetization of your blog really takes place.

I would recommend you only start monetizing your blog with ads if you have at least 10,000 pageviews/ month.

Putting ads on your blog with less than that amount of traffic will not bring in much income and it will only slow down your blog for nothing.

There are plenty of ways of monetizing your blog but let’s take a quick look at the most common ones.

• Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to monetize a blog when you’re first starting.

You can promote products that you love from various companies and get paid a commission from them when someone purchases from your link.

The cool thing about affiliate marketing is the fact that you can start earning money even before joining an ad network.

• Advertising

Advertising is the most common way of monetizing a blog. You can make lots of money from ads on your blog with Pinterest traffic.

Below, we’ll see the best and most known ad networks and their traffic requirements.

• Google AdSense: No minimum traffic requirement.
• Ezoic: No minimum traffic requirement.
• Monumetric: Minimum of 10,000 monthly pageviews.
• Journey by Mediavine: Minimum of 1,000 sessions per month.
• Mediavine: Minimum of 50,000 sessions per month.
• Raptive: Minimum of 100,000 monthly pageviews.

Having ads on your blog is one of the best passive income streams you can have.

Once you have enough traffic, ads can literally make you money while you sleep.

• Selling your own products/services

Another great way of monetizing your blog is by selling your own products or services.

This can include eBooks, online courses, and pretty much anything you can imagine.

Selling your own stuff can be the most profitable thing you can ever do when it comes to making money online.

You’ll have to build some authority though if you want people to start purchasing your products. It’s only expected that they need to trust you first.

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How to make money on Pinterest with an eCommerce site

As you have probably noticed, Pinterest is a great place for eCommerce sites.

I am sure you have stumbled upon many ads with clothes and women’s accessories, right?

If you run an eCommerce store on Etsy, Shopify, BigCommerce, or your own site, Pinterest can drive tons of traffic and boost your sales.

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It’s truly a fantastic platform for reaching a new audience.

It can help you gain brand awareness, get pin clicks/saves, and even help your rankings on Google.

Since over 70% of Pinterest users are women, stores selling clothing, beauty, and similar products can be very profitable on the platform.

Pinterest users are buyers. As a matter of fact, more than 85% of users have purchased a product they found on Pinterest.

In recent years, Pinterest has added excellent eCommerce features for online stores. Some of the key ones include the following:

• Verified Merchant Program
• Conversion Insights
• Products Pins
• Shop the Look Pins
• Catalogs

If you have an eCommerce store, I highly recommend you start a Pinterest business account.

If you do it right, you can double or even triple your current sales in a short period of time.

So, let me show you how to make money on Pinterest with an eCommerce site step by step.

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1 Create and optimize your Pinterest profile

Again, you can create your Pinterest business account by going to Pinterest and then clicking Sign Up on the top right corner.

After that click on Create a Business Account and fill in your information.

After that, you will need to claim your website by going to settings.

Now, it’s time to optimize your Pinterest profile for SEO. It is like telling Pinterest what your account is about so that it can show your pins to the right people.

Use the Pinterest search suggestions to look for keywords related to your topic and see what people are searching for.

For example, let’s say you have an eCommerce store selling women’s clothing.

First, you’ll have to optimize your Pinterest profile title and description with keywords from the Pinterest search suggestions.

When it comes to optimizing your boards you would probably search for something like “women outfits”.

You can then see the search suggestions and check what keywords can be used for your store.

For example, you can create a board called “Women outfits casual” or “Women outfits with sneakers” if you sell clothes of that category.

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It is important to name your boards with keywords/phrases that people already search for.

That way your pins can be found in the search results and get noticed by people.

Create at least 10 boards, and then make sure to create optimized descriptions for each one of them using the right keywords.

2 Start creating pins with your products

Nice work. You have completely optimized your Pinterest profile, and you have created your boards. Now it’s time to start creating your pins.

Creating product pins for eCommerce stores is usually much easier than creating pins for blog posts.

And that’s because you can literally make a product pin with the product photo itself as seen below.

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As a matter of fact, pins like wallpapers, products, clothes, stickers e.t.c get the most clicks compared to pins that have text on them.

You can of course include text in your pins if you want. That depends on what you prefer but in general, pins with clothes don’t need any text in most cases.

For example, if you were to create a product pin selling women’s pants you could just upload the original product photo and put the link to the product.

When someone clicks on this pin they will be taken directly to your sales page as shown below.

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From there they can check out the product, and if they like it enough, buy it.

Again, I recommend Canva for the creation and organization of your pins as it is truly the best online design tool in my opinion.

Check it out and create your FREE Canva account today.

Moreover, if you don’t have the time to pin every single day, you can use an online Pinterest scheduler like Tailwind.

3 Join group boards related to your niche for maximum reach

Joining group boards can really help you bring more people to your store.

This way you can get more exposure to your products through other people’s boards.

You can either find relative group boards by searching on Pinterest or by checking out your competitors’ Pinterest group boards.

Once you find group boards you like, request to join by emailing the creator or clicking the join button if it’s available.

4 Advertise your product pins for more reach (Optional)

Advertising your product pins can give you a big boost, especially if you are just starting out on Pinterest.

The pins you choose to advertise will be shown to a targeted audience that you choose.

There are many types of ads on Pinterest such as Promoted Pins, Promoted Video Pins, Carousel Ads, or Shopping Ads.

Shopping ads are a great way to advertise your stuff on Pinterest if you own an eCommerce store.

If you don’t have the budget to advertise yet, don’t worry.

Keep on creating great pins, pin consistently and your Pinterest profile will keep growing day by day.

On the other hand, if you can invest some money in advertising your products, I would recommend you do it.

Below you can see what a promoted pin looks like in the search results.

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You can learn more about how Pinterest advertising works by reading the official Pinterest page.

To create an ad you simply need to click on Ads → Create Ad from the top menu.

From there, you can choose the campaign objective and the audience you want to reach.

If you want to know more about how to create an ad campaign on Pinterest you can watch the video below.

How to make money on Pinterest without a blog (Affiliate Marketing)

If you don’t have a blog and you are not interested in starting one for whatever reason, don’t get discouraged.

You can still learn how to make money on Pinterest without a blog.

The simple thing that you are going to use to make money on Pinterest without a blog is called AFFILIATE MARKETING.

Affiliate marketing means promoting products or services you love to others and earning a commission when they buy through your affiliate link.

So basically, I will show you how to make money on Pinterest with affiliate links.

In this digital era, affiliate marketing is growing day by day and it can make you lots of money if you do it right.

According to PayScale, the average Affiliate Marketer makes around $51,779/ year.

Pinterest users are buyers and all you got to do is show them good quality products that will really help them with something.

If you manage to get those products in front of other Pinterest users there is a pretty good chance that someone will buy from your link.

But enough of that. Let’s see how anyone can make money on Pinterest without a blog.

1 Choose a niche that sells

First, you will have to choose a profitable niche.

Your main goal is promoting products in your niche, so choose one that’s profitable and in high demand if you want to make real money.

Again, some of the most profitable niches on Pinterest are:

• Home Decor
• Travel
• Food
• Beauty
• Lifestyle
• Health and Fitness
• Personal Development
• Fashion
• Personal Finance & Making Money Online
• Parenting

There are literally millions of products being sold every single day.

The only thing you have to do is choose the right niche so that you can take a share of that money.

For example, there are thousands of products you can promote related to Health and Fitness, Parenting, Beauty, and Lifestyle.

You can do market research online and see what types of products sell more in the last years if you want to make the best choice possible.

2 Create and optimize your Pinterest profile

After choosing your niche, you’ll need to create a Pinterest business account and optimize it with the right keywords for better results.

You can again use the Pinterest search suggestions to find the best keywords for your niche.

Try searching more product-related phrases to see what’s already ranking and also take some ideas for what products you can promote as well.

3 Join group boards

Joining group boards will help the products you promote get seen by a lot more people.

Make sure to join group boards that are relative to what you are trying to sell. This way you will ensure that the audience is interested in the products.

Group boards will really help your Pinterest account gain followers much faster too.

The more followers you have, the more people will see the products you promote when you pin them.

4 Find and join affiliate programs in your niche

After you have fully prepared your Pinterest account, it is time for you to apply to affiliate programs.

Generally speaking, the more affiliate programs you join, the more money you are going to earn by the end of the month. But that is not always the case.

There are literally thousands of affiliate programs out there, so there is no limit to the number of programs you can join.

When you have successfully joined an affiliate program related to your niche, grab your custom link and start creating your product pins. It’s that simple.

Below you can see some of the most used affiliate programs as of today.

• Amazon Associates
• CJ Affiliate
• Fiverr
• ClickBank
• ShareAsale
• Awin
• Rakuten Advertising
• eBay Partner Network

Warning: Not all affiliate programs accept people without a blog. Still, many programs allow you to apply and start earning even if you don’t have one.

5 Create compelling pins with products that solve people’s problems

As mentioned earlier, Pinterest is a visual search engine. The most eye-catching pins will get the most clicks.

That’s a hardwired Pinterest rule no one can defy.

Canva can really help you create amazing pins with as little effort as possible.

The best part is that Canva’s free plan is more than enough, so definitely check that out.

If you want to have more chances of succeeding, make sure to create multiple graphics for each product pin.

That way you are going to increase your impressions and thus your pin clicks.

Here is an example of pins that promote affiliate products.

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Make sure to pin every single day if you want your Pinterest profile to grow fast. Consistency is key to making money on Pinterest as in every other business.

6 Repeat the cycle to increase your earnings

As time passes, your Pinterest account will keep growing, and the more it grows the more people will see your pins.

That’s why consistency is so important.

Keep doing all the above and as your Pinterest followers increase, so will your impressions and your overall reach on the platform.

At the end of each month, check your Pinterest analytics to see which product pins perform best and create more like them in the future.

How to make money on Pinterest as a VA (Virtual Assistant)

Becoming a Pinterest virtual assistant is another great way to make money on Pinterest without a blog.

Pinterest looks simple enough on the surface but it is actually more complex when it comes to making it work for you and seeing great results.

That’s where Pinterest virtual assistants (aka Pinterest VAs) come into place.

A Pinterest virtual assistant is a freelancer who helps entrepreneurs and business owners manage their Pinterest accounts.

Some of the things they do include:

• Optimizing Pinterest profiles for maximum reach
• Creating and publishing pins daily
• Writing pin descriptions
• Applying to group boards
• Creating ad campaigns

and more…

Given the daily workload businesses face, it’s no surprise many don’t have time to manage their Pinterest accounts.

The pros of being a Pinterest virtual assistant are that you can work from wherever you want and get paid really well depending on your experience.

Beginner Pinterest VAs charge around $15/ hour. Experienced Pinterest VAs can make $30 – $50/ hour or even more.

So, it can definitely be a very lucrative job if you know what you are doing.

The great news: Pinterest virtual assistants are in high demand because almost every online business uses Pinterest to drive free organic traffic.

How to become a Pinterest virtual assistant

If you want to become a Pinterest VA you’ll need to have experience with Pinterest and how it works.

If you don’t have any idea about Pinterest but you’re still interested in becoming a Pinterest VA then you can still do it by taking online courses.

For those interested, the course I recommend is Become a Pinterest VA TODAY!

It was created by Kristen Larsen, an individual who left the 9-5 corporate world to work for herself.

She left her job and focused on bringing traffic to her website through Pinterest instead.

After succeeding in making money on Pinterest, she decided to help others succeed on Pinterest too, by becoming a Pinterest Virtual Assistant!

You can watch her FREE training workshop where she covers the basics of how you can become a Pinterest VA today.

Where to find Pinterest virtual assistant jobs?

There are many places in which you can find people who need a Pinterest VA.

You can create a website to showcase your services and promote via social media, or join Upwork, Freelancer, or Fiverr to reach thousands worldwide.

You can also find potential clients by joining Facebook groups related to blogging, entrepreneurship, or general online business advice.

Many people need help managing their Pinterest accounts for better results and it is very possible to find someone interested in your services there.

The main thing though is to let yourself out there and always have an email available so that people can contact you.