Can You Make Money with Pinterest

Can you make money on Pinterest is something I only recently thought about.

According to Wikipedia, Pinterest is an image sharing service designed to enable saving and discovery of information on the World Wide Web using images in the form of pinboards.

Oh, I’ve used Pinterest for years but had no idea it could effectively be used to generate some extra income.

As a grandmother who loves to knit, crochet, cross-stitch, cook, bake and just find fun things to do with the grand-kids, Pinterest was my go-to for new ideas.

I found a plethora of fantastic patterns and recipes that I just loved.

I would pin them to try later when I had the time. Some of those patterns or recipes have turned into family favourites.

Until I started blogging recently, I had never thought about monetizing my Pinterest account and was unaware it was even possible.

The training I used to learn about blogging and making an income online introduced me to the concept of using Pinterest and other social media platforms to help grow my business.

Let’s take a look at how Pinterest can help grow a small, new online business.

Choose a Niche

This can be a little daunting, to say the least. Identifying your niche market doesn’t have to be scary or difficult.

You are basically going to choose something you are passionate about.

• Think about what gets you excited
• What do you love to talk about
• Something you like to learn about
• Or something you love to spend hours doing

 

For myself that was a toss-up because I love making things, love to save money and all topics related to that and so does my husband. I also have a grandson who was recently diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes so I am very passionate about learning about everything diabetes-related but also related to just grandparenting in general.

My husband and I work together so we each chose a niche to focus on.

Thus my husband focuses on helping veterans make money online and to avoid the many scams out there.

For myself, I focus on helping other grandparents navigate the often scary world of Type 1 Diabetes.

Now that we have our niche we are ready for the next step.

Start a Blog

We created two blog based websites, one for each niche.

We were very fortunate in that my husband found a really great training program that teaches how to start a blog business and you get to try it out for FREE.

They actually gave us ten free lessons, a website, and even helped us when needed. During those FREE lessons we actually got a website up and running, and I didn’t even have to give them my credit card number.

Once we got the basics down we found we really enjoyed running a website so naturally we then purchased their premium package which to our surprise was very affordable monthly payments. It always amazes me how easy it is to run a website.

We didn’t even have to purchase a separate hosting platform or WordPress site. It offered everything we needed even a free domain name.

We did think it was best to purchase our own domain names for each website so the websites would have a unique name.

The training and support were very professionally out with the newbie in mind.

This was a huge help because neither one of us knew what we were doing.

I am still amazed that we, a retired veteran of the Canadian Forces and a retired health care worker, actually have 2 websites live. I never would have believed this was possible especially for me because I suck at computers.

Let’s get into what you put on a blog…

Write Relevant, Useful Articles

The thing about blogs is they are just articles full of fun, useful, helpful information.

Blogging requires a lot of upfront work before you start to make any money but when you get the money started you can build a sweet passive income stream for life… seriously!

You will spend most of your time researching and writing new blog posts and very little working with the website.

This is why it is so important to choose something you are passionate about. It would be pretty hard to keep finding things to write about in a topic that you’re not interested in.

The great thing about working with my husband is that we can proofread each other’s articles.

And because I am also passionate about money sometimes I write articles for his site as well as for my own.

Is it always easy?

Well, no. There are times I have dry spells and can’t think of something to write about. That is what makes having the two sites so great for me. If I can’t think of what to write for one site I can usually think of something to write for the other one.

Of course, I would only recommend creating just one website to start with. You can always create another site later, actually, they will host up to 25 websites on their servers for you. That is more than enough.

Only once did I struggle with no ideas for either site. I had writer’s block for almost a whole week and couldn’t think of anything so I ended up writing an article about writer’s block.

Just writing that put an end to my block and got the creative juices flowing again and I haven’t had any trouble since.

Try to write two to three articles a week to start with if you can. If time is an issue get at least one weekly post up.

Become an Affiliate

To monetize your website, you will need to become an affiliate of various companies. This will allow you to market their products and earn a commission when someone buys through your website.

There are several affiliates networks there such as:

• CJ (commission junction)
• ShareAsale
• Linkshare
• Clickbank

 

Each of these networks has a multitude of companies that will allow you to market their products and earn commissions.

This is fantastic because these companies provide their affiliates with marketing materials already created for them. They can give you a whole range of items to use:

• banners
• emails
• coupons

 

This is perfect because you don’t need to spend time or money trying to create banners and emails and then testing them for effectiveness. The company does all that for you.

The other great thing is you don’t have to worry about products. The company has its products. You just market the product and when somebody orders the product the company delivers the product to the customer on your behalf.

What a fantastic way to build a business. No inventory to worry about, no dealing with customers, you just find good quality products and place on your post.

Start a Pinterest Business Account

To be able to put affiliate links or even link a pin to your website, you will require a Pinterest business account.

This is fairly easy to do and the Pinterest platform walks you through the process pretty easily.

I already had a Pinterest account so I just went in and changed it to a business account rather than create a new one.

My husband created one for his website as well because they are different niches.

Be sure to make the most of your profile. This is where you will tell readers who you are and what you are offering so it helps to be clear.

Create Pins and Boards

This part is pretty fun. You just browse through Pinterest at various pins related to your niche.

When you find some pins of interest simply create a board and pin the pins you like into that board.

You will want about 10 boards and about 10 pins in each board to start.

Pinning other people’s pins give you an audience to see your pins as well. This is a fast way to get viewers to your website and is faster than waiting for Google to send you traffic.

You can create your pins too and link them to articles on your website where you can market the products you are offering. To my surprise creating pins is super easy to do. Of course, they have training on how to do that as well.

Each pin allows 500 characters (about 100 words) for your description so use some SEO strategies here and make use of some great keywords and links.

Try to use keywords naturally not spammy as that could create some problems with Pinterest and besides no one likes spam articles.

Don’t go excessive with links, I would suggest linking out to your website where they can be marketed more efficiently.

Try to create new boards and pins each month to keep your boards fresh. People want new content so give it to them but never be pushy, aggressive or flashy.

If someone likes what they see then they will check it out just like walking through a store.

Conclusion

Can You Make Money with Pinterest is absolutely possible and even fun to do?

No, you won’t get rich overnight so if that is what you are looking for then Pinterest is not for you.

Listen, It takes time and effort but then so does anything worthwhile in life.

The way I look at it is we have two choices in life when it comes to when we retire:

1. Find a job hopefully that you enjoy doing and work for 25 years to get a pension that pays out $1500 a month to live on. Hopefully, the company doesn’t go under or there goes your pension.
2. Or, create a blog and write about something you are passionate about. Keep working on your website as I explained above and in 2 years you will have a monthly income between $1500 to $5000, in some cases, you may even reach the $10,000 a month. Then in 5 years, you will be well above any pension that you could have received from any job.

To me, it’s a no-brainer and a lot of the young kids see it that way as well.

No one gets to the ‘top of the corporate ladder’ overnight. It takes years of hard work.

To me, blogging and pinning on Pinterest is about as close to easy as you are going to get these days and it won’t cost you a fortune to get started.

Seriously, I start my work after my workout and shower which is at 9 am and work till around lunchtime then my day is my own.

I sure didn’t work those hours in healthcare. When I worked in the nursing home I worked 12-hour shifts and came home too tired to do anything else.

Let me tell you, if you worked 10 hrs at your blog each day then you would make money even faster. Most of us want a good income but don’t want to spend all our day doing it. That’s why I work 3 to 4 hrs a day writing my article and I am done.

If you are interested in trying your hand at blogging and Pinterest then would highly recommend having a look at the very same training that got me started.

I hope you found my article of interest.

Please share with me what you thought about my post, is there something you liked or didn’t like? Simply drop a line in the comment section below. I will respond.

Thanks for reading