You might have your own Pinterest board on blogging, and nearly every Pin showcases how someone made tens of thousands of dollars in a month because of social media.
Pinterest is the under-underappreciated facet of social media in the blogging universe.
You can use Pinterest to make a substantial amount of income using the content that’s already on your blog.
If you’re starting your blog, click here to learn how to start a blog the right way!
Step One: Create a Business Pinterest Account
This step seems like the most obvious starting point there are a few things to consider when creating a business account.
First, be very careful about choosing your account’s name because you cannot change it later.
Second, be sure to set up a business account, or else you can’t make money on Pinterest, and the account is practically useless.
Third, create a featured board that highlights your best work. Too often people try to sort all of their posts into categories and forget to showcase their best posts.
You can make money off of Pinterest, but you need a business account to make a substantial amount.
Step Two: Create a Freebie from Your Blog Content
Pinterest is becoming the hot spot for shopping, and many people are making their purchase decisions on Pinterest.
You can get ahead of the competition in whatever you do by offering a freebie. Blogs are full of free information, so it’s merely finding which one provides the most value and pushing the content.
Use your blog content to create a PDF, eBook, printable or sample of your service and offer it as a freebie through email. Create a pin that will direct users to your email landing page.
Sign up with PicMonkey to create eye-catching Pin graphics and generate more clicks!
Step Three: Make Stunning Graphics and Catchy Pin Titles
Pinterest offers business and blog owners two chances to grab their user’s attention. You need a catchy title and a stunning graphic.
Titles are a little easier to navigate for bloggers because it’s likely that you already have a flair for writing.
When making pin titles keep basic SEO practices in mind and know that you only have a few words to use.
Try focusing on titles that include:
- Numbers
- “How to.”
- Open-ended questions
These three additions to any title will engage the reader, appeal to SEO, or give the most direct information to the user.
Numbers in a title are useful and go back decades in print magazines. People want the most tips, tricks, and techniques.
Numbers are also useful to distinguish the objective of your post.
For example, you can say Survive the Apocalypse, or you title your pin, 8 Ways to Survive the Apocalypse. Which one would you click?
How-to posts are also well-known for driving traffic because you’re giving the reader a complete guide. Of course, this only works if you’re telling someone how to do something from start to finish.
If your “How-to” is incomplete or uses a lot of jargon, don’t expect people to buy your product, click on an affiliate or revisit your site. Make sure that your catchy titles support the information behind the Pin’s link.
Finally, use open-ended questions. These questions should inspire thought and provoke action. Title your Pins with questions like How Does the Impending Apocalypse Affect Your Daily Life?
It’s likely that any open-ended question will make the reader curious about what information you have on the topic.
Creating Graphics
The shining star of Pinterest, the one leading everyone back to your blog content, and guiding money into your account is the use of imagery.
Unlike Instagram, Pinterest allows you to use links, promotions, sponsorships, and even facilitate sales all based on the image you Pin.
Take advantage of the hyper-functional aspects of Pinterest and create a graphic that will make a user want to take action. Hopefully, one that ends with a transaction!
Picmonkey is the go-to tool for creating eye-catching pins.
Click here to start making Pins that pop now!
Step Four: Create a Schedule for Pinning
If you’re new to blogging, you need to learn that consistency is among the most critical habits to develop. Many well-established bloggers have given up trying to do this on their own.
Instead, use tools to schedule posts to your social media.
Sign up with Tailwind to schedule your pins ahead of time and on a loop!
Pinning and re-pinning is a great way to cultivate consistent traffic to your blog.
Using your blog content to drive income only happens when you have traffic. Consistent traffic is the best environment for steady income.
To create a schedule, track which pins are your top-performers and set up a loop.
Tailwind makes it easy with one button and a Chrome extension so you can do almost everything from WordPress.
Step Four: Adjust How Pinterest Traffic Experiences Your Blog
You want to make money blogging or severely impact the amount of money you make blogging, and Pinterest is a critical tool in making that happen.
Regardless of your niche, products, services or even the content of each blog post your user’s experience reigns supreme.
Pinterest is a high-functioning site, and that means that when users go from Pinterest to your site, any slowdown is going to result in them going somewhere else.
Layer Your Pages
Even if someone is shopping through Pinterest and looking for whatever you’re selling, they don’t want to go straight to a shopping page.
Layer your pages so that your product or service has a separate landing page with a little more information than what was in your pin. Then they can add it to their cart and checkout without the immediate pressure to pull out their credit card.
Eliminate Unnecessary Ads and Banners
If you’re selling something, you might want to consider reducing the number of ads on your page.
Ads slow down pages, and if you’re not generating any income off of them, it’s best to get rid of them.
Utilize Your Sidebars
Sidebars are a big deal. Use your sidebars to create a loop that directs your visitors back to your top performing pins.
If you have sponsorships (more on this in a moment) or promote affiliate products, it can be very beneficial to cultivate your following.
Use your sidebar to remind your visitors to follow you or some of your boards on Pinterest.
Switch to Divi an ultimate WordPress theme that makes organizing sidebars and setting up the visual aspects of your blog easy.
Step Five: Choose Between Income Avenues
Okay, so you’ve gotten yourself a business account with Pinterest, made some gorgeous graphics for your pins, found some content to give away for free, made a posting schedule and cleaned up your blog’s user experience.
Now let’s talk about income.
Pinterest offers three reliable ways to make money, although it’s hardly directly through the site. You can make money from affiliates, sponsorships and selling your products.
Affiliate Marketing
If you’re already a blogger than you know that affiliate marketing can be a significant income source. But if you’re new to blogging “Affiliate Marketing” might seem like a confusing maze.
You don’t have to worry; affiliate marketing is not the beast it initially seems like, it’s pretty easy.
Affiliate marketing is promoting products that you love and then getting a little chunk of change when someone else gives it a try.
If you love a subscription service, then sign up with their affiliate program and create a pin with your new fancy affiliate link. It is that easy.
What a lot of bloggers overlook is that in their writing they probably mention half a different companies on a regular basis. Or, you might have avoided mentioning a company because you weren’t sure what the rules are about promoting.
It’s your site! Reach out to the companies you love and mention (or would love to mention) in your blog content. Many places have contact information at the very bottom of their page.
If you get the green light, then they’ll send you an affiliate link, and you can hyperlink any text mentioning that company or service to send your readers their way.
Affiliate marketing works great on Pinterest because of how many people use Pinterest to shop.
Selling Products
Selling digital things on Pinterest is easy, but you need Rich Pins and a prominent call-to-action. Not to mention a monetized blog, that part is vital.
Click here to learn how to monetize your blog now.
To sell a product on Pinterest, you need to create a pin, preferably a Rich Pin and then link it back to:
- Product page
- Sales page
- Post about the product
You might want to switch up which products link to sales pages depending on how invested you think your customer is at that point.
For example, if it’s a craft product you might want to link to a post that explains how you made it and how it was difficult. This linking system should extinguish any “I can make that myself” thoughts.
But, if your product is for an online course for certification in something useful, then link straight to the product or sales page.
Pinterest is the forum for putting your product right in the face of millions of people. Make it easy for them to purchase what you’re selling, and you’ll see your sales go up quickly!
Nearly every day about 2 million people save product Rich Pins and an estimated 50% purchased promoted pins.
Sponsorships
There’s a little confusion between a sponsored Pin and a promoted Pin. More on a promoted pins in just a moment.
Sponsored pins are when you reach out to a company and offer to promote them in exchange for a sponsorship.
Eventually, you can build your reputation as a micro influencer. Click here to learn more about micro influencing.
Sponsorships are a great way to try out products that connect with your audience (and you), but it’s mutually beneficial for the company too.
They can use their branding on your Pinterest business account for a year at a time.
You get to ride the wave of their branding while they’re feeding off of your branding and you’re both making money on the products that sell because of your pins.
Reach out to companies that interest you or your readers and send them your Pinterest account statistics to show you’re a serious pinner with a business behind you.
Make money with Pinterest in ways that aren’t so obvious. Many times, people will scroll right past pins that are obvious ads. Sponsorships aren’t ads, and they don’t always have to link to a direct product.
Many companies are happy with links to posts that fit in with the brand which might have affiliate links to their products or might not. It’s almost always up to you, the blogger, to make that judgment call.
Step Six: Optimize Your Pins
When you first start out blogging, optimization seems like this massive concept that applies to everything but is just too simple to understand.
That’s the thing is that optimization is simple and often people try to over complicate the entire process.
Pinterest likes keeping things simple and optimizing pins blends Pinterest provided tools with common sense.
Signup with Social Warfare to handle the problematic aspects of optimization such as load times, and control over how people share your blog content.
To optimize your images, think of what your consumers pay attention to and use that to build your pins.
In your images include:
- Text
- Context relevant photos
- Bright colors
- No-nonsense collages
Text in an image seems redundant because you have the title of the Pin right below it, but a lot of people don’t bother reading titles.
Use bright colored text in a font that fits with your blog or company brand. Create consistency between your pins.
Context relevant photos is a deal breaker for many people, and it’s easy to spend hours trying to pick the right image. Keep it simple, always.
Don’t select images that include:
- Anything unsightly (think G-rated)
- Abstract art images
- Blurry, fuzzy, or “too dark” images
High-quality images of a white background with the product perform better than you might have guessed.
Bright colors are eye-catching, and that includes white. A fair amount of white space in any image will attract more clicks than dark photos any day.
Finally, if you want to collage images with text blocks which is a common pin-format, then keep a template for those pins.
A template with a chunk of black text on white background over two collaged images can save you time and improve traffic on that pin.
Click here to sign up with Tailwind which has tools to help with scheduling your pins and how often you re-pin the same posts.
Rich Pins
Rich Pins is only available with a business account, and it’s a huge marketing tool for Pinterest users.
If you’re trying to make money on Pinterest, then you need to use Product Pins.
Product Pins makes it easy for anyone using Pinterest to see the available and real-time pricing of the product you’re using an affiliate link for or selling on your blog.
If you’re using Pinterest to drive traffic back to your blog you can use Article Pins which gives Pinterest users more information about the article and about you, the author before they follow the link.
Overall, Rich Pins gives you a tremendous opportunity to optimize every pin and cash in on your effort. In fancy tech terms, Rich Pins presents the metadata to the users for an enhanced experience.
To get Rich Pins, you must apply through your business’ Pinterest account.
After approval, you have to take a few steps on your dashboard. If you work in WordPress enabling Rich Pins is as easy as configuring the Yoast SEO plugin.
Then when you’re ready, add Metadata through Yoast and Pinterest will create the “Rich Pin” for you.
Pinterest Analytics
Pinterest Analytics comes with a Pinterest business account, and it shows its business users a vast range of useful data.
Use Analytics to find out which pins perform the best and how people are interacting with your pins. Do they click on to your site, or do they go on to another pin?
Pinterest Analytics is useful for anyone looking to make money with their blog because they know which posts to showcase on their “featured” board and which posts aren’t performing well.
You can update and re-strategize your Pinterest use daily to be sure you’re making the best income possible.
Step Seven: Promote Yourself with Promoted Pins
It’s not often that paying for promotion in social media works out well, but Pinterest is a little different.
First Pinterest looks after their users more than their businesses which concerning promotion is a benefit for you. That means that Pinterest will promote your Pins only to the users it will actually affect.
About 55% of Pinterest users use Pinterest to shop. That’s a vast market that your blog won’t hit on its own.
Then consider that the current return on investment for promoted pins is 2-to-1, which means that a single dollar spent in promoted pins yields a two dollar profit for the business.
The bottom line with promoted pins is that you’re gaining visibility in an interested market that is already shopping for products like yours.
Have you used promoted pins or rich pins in the past?
Comment below and share your experiences with blogging and Pinterest, share helpful tips and avoidable pitfalls!
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