Can You Make Money From Your Pinterest Account?

Please note that some of this site’s links are affiliate links, which means if you click through and make a purchase, I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. Gin&Gemini.co.uk is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

If you dive into a Facebook group or other place where bloggers and online business owners hang out, it won’t be long before you run into someone asking the question.  Can you make money from your Pinterest account?  Now the answer to this isn’t a yes or no so let’s take a look at what’s what.

How do you make money online?

Before you can consider if you can make money from Pinterest, it is worth thinking about how you make money online.  There’s tons of ways but here’s a few of the most popular:

• Services such as content writing, being a virtual assistant, a Pinterest manager
• Digital products such as eBooks, courses, printables, checklists
• Affiliate income where you promote other people’s products for a commission payment
• Ad income where you make money from people being on your site

Now there’s one thing that most of these have in common (or at the least the last three, the first one is a little different).  They all need the traffic to succeed.  Whether that’s people to see and buy your eBook, people to click affiliate links, or just people viewing your page to generate ad income, traffic is essential.

How you can make money from Pinterest

So it is clear that no matter what route you are taking to make money on your blog or digital business, there’s a good chance that traffic will play a big part in it.  And that’s where Pinterest comes in.

As a visual search engine, Pinterest has the potential to be a top traffic source, if not your top one entirely.  That means you can use your Pinterest marketing to drive traffic to your website to get those ad revenues, affiliate clicks, product sales, and more.

So while you don’t directly make money from Pinterest, you can make money from the traffic that you get from Pinterest.

Strategic pinning to make money

You can also take your pinning strategy a bit further when you get your account to start working for you.

One example is to create pins that lead either straight to your digital product or to an email freebie that has a tripwire product after it.  By getting people to see your product or freebie, you can either make money directly or increase your email list, with a side order of potentially making money on your tripwire.

Another example is affiliate pins.  Some programs allow you to pin an image to Pinterest that leads straight to affiliate products.  If someone clicks these and makes a purchase, you can make your affiliate commission.  You do need to make it very clear on the pin that this is an affiliate product and ensure your disclosures are in place.

Promoted pins to make money

The final way you can make money with Pinterest actually involves spending a little.  Promoted pins or Pinterest ads are the way to pay money to have your pins seen by a specific audience or people with certain interests.  

While promoted pins are a whole different topic, let’s just say you have that digital product.  You can promote a pin that leads to it using keywords that people would use when searching for what the product is about.  That way you could increase your sales – just remember to balance it with any ad spend to see what you are really making!

Making money from Pinterest marketing

While you’ll never see Pinterest as a source of money in your bank account, you can use it to make money by boost traffic to the ways you make your money.  From affiliates to ads, services to products, there are lots of options and ways to use Pinterest smartly to get more eyes on them.