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Tips & Tricks for Pinterest

How to Make Money on Pinterest


Updated on April 12, 2021
7 minute read

Ready to make money on Pinterest? You’ve come to the right place. Pinterest isn’t just about discovering content, creating boards, or finding inspiration — it’s also a great place to shop. And with new e-commerce features like the Shop tab, Pinterest is making it easier for brands to drive traffic and grow their business. Here

Published April 12, 2021
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Ready to make money on Pinterest? You’ve come to the right place.

Pinterest isn’t just about discovering content, creating boards, or finding inspiration — it’s also a great place to shop.

And with new e-commerce features like the Shop tab, Pinterest is making it easier for brands to drive traffic and grow their business.

Here are 9 ways you can start making money on the platform today:

9 Ways to Make Money on Pinterest

Fun fact: Pinterest is a powerful platforms for driving sales.

According to a survey by Cowen and Company, 47% of social media users saw Pinterest as the primary platform for discovering products and shopping — more than 3 times the percentage of respondents who cited Facebook or Instagram.

Ready to get started? Here are 9 ways to make money on Pinterest:

  1. Use Pinterest’s Main Shopping Features

  2. Get Discovered With Rich Pins

  3. Offer Pinterest-exclusive Promotions to Would-be Buyers

  4. Promote Your Products With an Ad Campaign

  5. Catch Your Audience’s Attention With Video Pins

  6. Create Story Pins to Engage With Your Community

  7. Collaborate with Brands and Creators to Reach New Audiences

  8. Create “Try On” Product Pins

  9. Include Affiliate Links in Your Pins to Earn Commissions on Sales

#1: Use Pinterest’s Main Shopping Features

Product Pins are the most straightforward way to sell on Pinterest because they feature pricing, availability, and information on where to buy your product — and they take Pinners directly to your website to make a purchase.

Pinterest has made updating Product Pins super easy for business owners thanks to Catalogs — a data feed that connects your Pinterest account to your website inventory.

Once set up, your Pinterest Product Pins will automatically update every time you upload or modify products on your e-commerce site.

And thanks to the introduction of the Pinterest Shop tab, discovering your Product Pins is easier than ever — users now have a dedicated space to browse and shop in-stock products.

Source: Pinterest Newsroom

To add Product Pins to your Pinterest for Business profile, follow the steps here.

#2: Get Discovered With Rich Pins

Rich Pins are a type of organic Pin that automatically sync with information from your website.

There are a few different kinds of Rich Pins, including Product (mentioned above), Recipe, Article, and App Pins.

Setting up Rich Pins is a great way to drive sales on Pinterest — they provide a direct route to your website and are valuable SEO boosters for a search-first platform.

To make a Rich Pin, add relevant, top-trending keywords to your Pin title, as well as the first 50 words of your description.

Want to learn more about Rich Pins on Pinterest? We go into the details in Later’s Ultimate Guide to Pinterest Marketing.

#3: Offer Pinterest-exclusive Promotions to Would-be Buyers

Another great way to make money on Pinterest is to offer a unique promo code to your followers and users who stumble across your Pin in their Home Feeds.

Special promotions are highly effective and perform great year-round. Plus, offering a limited-time code exclusive to Pinterest creates a sense of urgency, which can give your account a boost in clicks and engagement.

#4: Promote Your Products With an Ad Campaign

Pinterest Ads are one of the most effective ways for businesses to drive traffic, boost awareness, and make more money on Pinterest.

You can use demographics like age and location, as well as categories and interests, to better-target Pinterest Ads and reach the right shopping audience for your business or product.

Once an ad is set up in Pinterest Ads Manager, it will appear in users’ Home feeds in their relevant search results — and it will look almost identical to a regular Pin.

TIP: You don’t have to create Pinterest Ads from scratch. If you want to create an ad with a product you’ve already pinned in the past, you can choose to promote existing Pins.

#5: Catch Your Audience’s Attention With Video Pins

Video Pins are a great way to engage an audience, tell a story, show your products or services in action, and — ultimately — make sales on Pinterest.

Video Pins automatically start playing on desktop, making them a great way to grab viewers’ attention.

If you’re already posting video content on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube, consider using video on Pinterest too.

ICYMI: You can schedule and auto publish Video Pins with Later! Simply choose a date and time to submit your video content to Pinterest for review, and your video will go live on your chosen board as soon as it is approved.

#6: Create Story Pins to Engage With Your Community

With a tappable format, Story Pins allow creators to share dynamic and visual stories, which is a great way to build brand loyalty and inspire sales.

On mobile, Story Pins are presented as a series of image or video pages that can be tapped through, much like Instagram Stories.

But unlike Instagram Stories, Story Pins don’t disappear after 24 hours — making them a lasting opportunity to engage with your audience.

NOTE: Story Pins are only available to a select number of Pinterest Creators at the moment, but could be rolling out further in the near future.

#7: Collaborate with Brands and Creators to Reach New Audiences

Once you’ve hit your stride as a business on Pinterest, another great way to drive sales on the platform is to collaborate with other brands or creators.

By working together you can tap into one another’s audience and increase your reach.

And it doesn’t stop there. Partnering with like-minded brands or creators is an opportunity to get creative, elevate your brand’s perception, and generate a social buzz.

For example, West Elm regularly partners with innovative creators on their Pinterest account, sharing their unique design stories to inspire their community:

TIP: Use Later’s Pinterest Click Tracking feature to measure the success of your Pinterest campaigns. Available now on Growth and Advanced plans.

#8: Create “Try On” Product Pins

Much like the augmented reality shopping features we’ve seen on Instagram, Pinterest’s AR Try On allows users to virtually see how a product looks through their phone camera.

This could be a game-changer for shopping the latest trends — and it’s available straight from the Pinterest app.

Source: Pinterest Newsroom

NOTE: This feature is still in limited beta. To request to be part of the beta test, Pinterest recommends reaching out to a Pinterest Account Manager.

#9: Include Affiliate Links in Your Pins to Earn Commissions on Sales

If you’re an influencer or creator, you can use affiliate links on Pinterest to earn money.

If you aren’t familiar with affiliate marketing, it’s a system that allows you to promote a brand’s products or services via trackable links you can generate from an affiliate network, like ShareASale, CJ Affiliate, or Rakuten.

You can then insert these links anywhere on the web — like in a Pin — and earn a commission from the clicks or sales those links generate.

TIP: For influencers and creators, affiliate links can be incredibly useful for monetizing a blog or social media presence. Find out how to use affiliate links here.

And that concludes our top 9 tips for making sales on Pinterest.

Thanks to Pinterest’s wide range of tools and features, there are more ways than ever to make sales on the platform.

Ready to kick-start your Pinterest sales strategy?

Plan and schedule your Pins in advance with Later, it’s free!

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