Perhaps one of the most underrated social media platforms for making money online is Pinterest. Most of the time when you think of Pinterest recipes or clothing inspiration comes to mind however, this site can be a powerful tool for exposing your brand and earning some extra cash.
Because this social media platform is so visual and heavily reliant on community engagement to reshare, it’s important to ensure that your brand, service, or product is easily recognizable and sticks out from the crowd.
What is Pinterest?
The best way to describe Pinterest is an online vision board. This social media site is all about the visuals and properly tagging them. You can search for literally anything from brunch recipes to DIY projects and everything in between.
You can gather all of your ideas or “pins” and create themed “boards” to place them on. As you curate these boards you can share the board or the pin itself individually too. Pinterest is an eye-pleasing platform that offers some really interesting content.
Another great feature of Pinterest is social engagement. You have the ability to follow users and even the boards that they create. You can even save someone else’s pins to your own boards, or share them externally via text or other methods of communication.
So How Can Pinterest be Used to Make Money?
Getting creative with your images, text, and the strategy you are using for your Pinterest boards will help you make some money. Website or blog traffic will be key, so here are a few ideas you can try.
1. Get a sponsorship
After you build a dedicated following on your social media accounts you can make your hard networking pay off by obtaining a sponsorship. Select a product and a company that you are not only an expert on but that you are passionate about.
Be sure that the company you are approaching is relevant to your followers so that you can help them promote and sell their products. You can potentially set up a contract agreement that will allow the company to promote their brand and you can be compensated for it.
2. Become an affiliate
Similar to the strategy of obtaining a sponsorship you can become an affiliate marketer. If there is a product you enjoy and they include an affiliate program this is one of the simplest ways to make some money on Pinterest. You can take photos, write or even better, record reviews and promote those items with pins for your followers. When you are promoting the products via your pins don’t forget to include your affiliate code.
An affiliate code will often be a unique code identified by something related to your branding that you can share with your followers to give them a discount. You’ll want to remember to include this in your pins so that you will get credit for the sales you generate for that product.
Affiliate marketing is one of the most effective methods to make money on Pinterest, especially if you are already an influencer and have a great social media following. It will be mutually beneficial as your followers will receive a discount, the company that manufactures the product will earn a sale, and you will receive a portion of that revenue.
One thing to note about affiliate marketing is that you will have to disclose that your post is an ad. One way to do this is to ensure you tag your pin or post with the appropriate #ad or #advertisement hashtag for full transparency.
3. Open an eCommerce store
Perhaps you are a seller and want to increase your sales volume. Pinterest is a great visual platform that can be an effective sales tool. If you sell tangible products you can create eye-catching visuals and then turn those into pins.
When you are creating these pins be sure to tag them appropriately so that your potential customers can find them. Once you have these pins tagged be sure to apply a link to where your customers can make a purchase. Every item should link to a product page that will help your customer find what they are looking for.
This strategy can work whether or not you create your own products or you are a drop ship company. The key will be to ensure you are making all of your pins and items as easy to find as possible for your potential customers.
4. Promote your blog
Pinterest can become a tool to increase the clickthrough rate of your blog. If you are already generating revenue by selling ad space on your blog you can use Pinterest to help. By creating interesting blog posts paired with bright and disruptive visuals you can catch a reader’s attention while they are pinning and encourage them to click through to your site and read more. Read also: 9 Steps to Get Traffic from Pinterest
5. Become a Pinterest Virtual Assistant
Once you’ve mastered your own creative ways of making money on Pinterest, you can sell your consulting services to others. You can advertise your expertise and help other companies and individuals set up the Pinterest account of their dreams. Teaching best practices and building out an expert profile focused on SEO will help you succeed in being a virtual assistant.
6. Build a mailing list
Building a mailing list can help you funnel sales if you are a business owner, a seller, or a blogger. You can use creative pins that will link your followers to a landing page where they can sign up to receive regular updates from you or your company. This is especially helpful for customer retention and gives you another opportunity to advertise to your follower base.
In conclusion
Now that you know you can earn money by utilizing Pinterest, it’s important to keep in mind the rules set forward by the platform when it comes to advertising, etc. You will also want to have is a complete and professional profile. Combining a robust profile with ensuring your description is written within SEO good practices, and prioritizing high quality and interesting images will help you work toward your goals.