Pinterest is so underrated when it comes to marketing on social platforms, but it’s actually one of the best platforms for getting eyeballs on your products and services. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need a ton of followers to make money on Pinterest. This is one of the few platforms that work this way.
What started as a way to get yummy recipes and interior decorating inspiration has turned into a huge shopping platform for just about anything. Nowadays, people are browsing Pinterest for more than just ideas — they’re looking to spend money. With Pinterest having over 480 million monthly active users and counting, that’s a ton of eyeballs on the platform looking for products to buy.
Since Pinterest is essentially a visual search engine, you can easily get viewers over to your business profile without worrying about growing a following. How do you do this? Through monthly views.
Pinterest has a little metric called Monthly Views that tells you how many monthly views your pins are getting. The higher your monthly views are, the more people are seeing your Pinterest pins. The amazing thing about this is — it’s not only for pins you’ve created but pins you’ve repinned as well.
So, how do you get views on your pins? What exactly do you need to do to get more people to view your pins and profile?
- Create/repin attractive pins: Since Pinterest is a visual platform, people will only click on what’s appealing to them. This means you should create pins with high-quality images, bold fonts, and nice colors. Also, make sure the pins you create are optimized for Pinterest. The pins that do the best are elongated.
- Pin/repin what’s popular: You can’t go wrong with staying up-to-date and pinning what’s popular. For example, if it’s January, you wouldn’t want to be sharing content on Christmas or the holidays. Stick to current events and pay attention to what’s relevant to your niche.
- Pinterest SEO: Make sure you have the correct pin title and description so that your pins can be found. Make sure that your pins and Pinterest boards have a title and keywords that include relevant keywords.
So, now that you know what makes Pinterest so powerful and how to get your pins seen, let’s get into exactly how you can take advantage of those views — by making some money on the platform. Here are five proven ways to make money on Pinterest with no followers.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is simply referring customers to products and services to earn a commission. Many of your favorite companies offer an affiliate program — the most popular being Amazon.
So, how does affiliate marketing work on Pinterest? You just create attractive pins relevant to the product or service you’re promoting with your affiliate link attached. Anytime your pin is repinned or someone comes to your profile and views it, that’s a potential commission.
For example, you may have a Pinterest account dedicated to posting about the keto diet, and you’re an affiliate with a company that sells electrolyte drink mixes that are keto-friendly. What you’d do is post attractive pins that are relevant to this so that you can link to the drink mix.
Let’s say that you get a $7 commission for every purchase that someone makes of the electrolyte drink mix that you’re promoting. If you refer just five customers per day, that’s $35 per day and $1,050 per month in commissions from just that one product — and that’s passive income.
Digital Products
Digital products are the best products to sell on Pinterest because you get to keep all of the profits and it’s 100% passive income. Here are some digital product ideas that sell well on Pinterest:
- eBooks
- Digital art
- Printable planners
- Stickers
- Templates
You can create pins that link directly to your digital products or you can link to blog posts. If you don’t have a blog, it’s a great idea to go ahead and set one up with relevant blog content. You can create pins linking to your blog content and have links to your digital products throughout your blog posts. Not only will you get eyes on your products, but you’ll increase your blog traffic as well.
Copy Paste Pinterest Profits
Learn how to leverage Pinterest’s powerful platform to make thousands!
Physical Products
In addition to digital products, physical products sell really well on Pinterest, too! According to Rankupper, here are the top-selling physical products on Pinterest:
- Shoes
- Beauty products
- Clothing
- Perfumes
- Bathroom Decor
- Crafts
There are an abundance of physical product ideas that you could easily sell on Pinterest. When it comes to selling physical items on Pinterest, it’s best to create shoppable pins. Doing so is a great way to increase sales.
Shoppable pins are simply Product Pins formatted to display accurate and relevant product information. Pinterest users can find pricing, availability, and other product details they look for when they shop online. To get started with shoppable pins, you need to have a Pinterest Business account and make sure your business meets the requirements.
Offer Services
You can also make money on Pinterest by promoting any services you have such as:
- Coaching
- Consulting
- Personal training
- Freelancing
The best way to go about promoting your services on Pinterest is by creating attractive pins and repinning relevant pins. Make sure your Pinterest profile is set up so that people know exactly what you’re offering. Add a link to your website in your Pinterest bio and be sure to add a link to all your pins.
Brand Deals
It’s 100% possible to partner with brands even if you don’t have a following. Brands want to partner up with creators who can create amazing content for them and they’ll pay you to do so. Very popular, notable brands have been known to offer creators a nice chunk of cash in exchange for helping them with content.
For example, a writer on Medium was offered $500 to create 30 pins for a brand and wrote about her experience. The best thing about a brand deal like this is you don’t need any followers and you’re not required to sell anything at all.
There are even more opportunities for brand deals once you do start growing on Pinterest. Once you get your monthly views up, brands will pay you to create and post Pinterest content for them. Below is an example of a Pinterest creator who did a paid partnership with Gatorade.
Final Thoughts
As you can see, there are numerous ways to get paid on Pinterest that don’t require you to have any followers. The best thing about Pinterest is that content is constantly being repinned which increases your chances of being seen, which increases your chances of increasing followers and sales. Pinterest is a very powerful platform and you can make money no matter what you sell. The key is getting started now.
