How To Make Money On Pinterest
Pinterest is in the category of social media as well as a search engine. Users often go to Pinterest to discover new things concerning what they either want to venture into, learn about or buy something on offer.
Bearing this in mind, as a business person that want to know how to make money on Pinterest, you can mould your content according to the user’s inclinations, and direct your Pins to your blog, landing page, and probably to your affiliate links since Pinterest has recently permitted direct linking the second time.
Although Pinterest has two accounts: personal and business. Users can choose any of it, but if you want to make money on Pinterest, you will have to open a business account because it gives you access to in-depth analytics data that is good for business but not available in the personal account.
Read Also: How To Start A Dropshipping Business
As a business person, I would show you how Pinterest works to assist you to boost your business, create brand equity and grow sales.
- Pinterest Offers You The Opportunity To Drive Targeted Traffic:This is very simple. When you create and upload high-quality visual content on Pinterest, the tendency is that more users will share your content and probably follow your links.This is what makes Pinterest unique; Pinterest is very likely to direct traffic to your site when you do things right. These links are important to you since they are the source of generating referral traffic on a regular basis.
- You Convert Better With Pinterest: Internet has expanded so much but the rateat which leads are converted to customers is still low. This is where Pinterest comes in: it helps in destroying the general sales barrier by reducing the steps required for someone to convert from being a lead to buying a product.It is like a visual search engine where users are taken directly to the source. In other words, users browsing Pinterest Pins have a bigger chance of being converted from mere leads to buying the products.
- You Garner More Real Engagement With Pinterest:Sharing quality content on Pinterest by its users with a targeted group of audience is in fact, one of the advantages of using Pinterest. Your Pins are likely to be seen by the relevant audience and probably go viral on the social network
- You can be planted in your audience mind with Pinterest:With Pinterest for business, you can get in the minds of your audience. You can unlock the keys to your audience interests, see what is trending and discover your audience likes and dislikes. Being aware of what is in vogue is an essential ingredient you need to customize your products/services and create demand for them.
Procedure for Making Money On Pinterest
- Sign-up, build your audience and sell to them
- Pick a company/brand to promote and seek for sponsorship
- Promote affiliate products
- Use SEO to be more prominent on Pinterest.
- Create contests/giveaways on Pinterest to sell your own products
- Re-pin others’ Pins to win an audience engagement and make money.
- Make money on Pinterest by offering tutorials of its strategies to others
You have only one step remaining from choosing Pinterest as a business avenue to make money. It is better you stop looking at Pinterest as just photo-sharing network, instead think of it as your own worldwide bulletin board.
Read Also: How to start a restaurant business
As there are many ways to kill a rat, there are many ways to make money with Pinterest, and I will take you through from beginning to the end.
Shall we therefore look at some of the ways successful Pinterest users have made their money;
- Sign-up, build an audience and sell to them.
Sign-up your business account with Pinterest and come with me to learn how to achieve success with Pinterest.You must search on Pinterest where people are spending their money, in other words, what product/service appeals to them and in which area of life they are spending their money? If people are spending money on the area that you are interested in, then it is an opportunity for you to make money.
For instance, assuming you are fashion maniac and you love fashionable wears, be it clothes or shoes. You pick a niche: men in their twenties who want to dress fashionably. Create a business Pinterest account and boards that catch the attention of this audience.
Build supporters to your boards, and set-up a mailing list. Some people think that to do business with Pinterest, you must have very large followers – up to one million. Not at all; you don’t need as many followers as that to be successful with Pinterest. You only need few thousands of followers to be able to make headway with Pinterest. Even if you don’t have anything to sell, never mind, companies that have products/services to sell will come knocking on your door with their offers.
- Pick a company/brand to promote, and seek for sponsorship.
Select a niche, and grow your Pinterest followers the same way I have mentioned above. These done, then choose companies that offer products that are likely to appeal to your target audience. Staying within the “fashion” audience, you should start speaking with companies that make fashion clothes and foot wears.
This is the time to package and market yourself to the companies. Put your proposal on the table by sharing your Pinterest account’s statistics with them, and seek for their sponsorship. Offer them an attractive deal: they are likely to use their brand on your account for about one year.
- Promote affiliate products.
Some companies seek for affiliates who will use their resources to promote their products/services in exchange for a sales commission that result from the sale. These companies abound. Look for the companies that make products/services that may be of interest to your target audience and sign-up as an affiliate. If successful, then promote the products/services on your boards, making use of your affiliate links.
Don’t forget to use an URL-shortening service such as Bitly to administer your links, so that you can always track your pins and boards when people click on them.
Read Also: How to Make Money on YouTube
Tips: At regular intervals Pinterest wields their big stick against affiliate marketing spammers. So don’t indulge in this exercise, but if you ever get caught up, direct your pins to your own blog, from there you can use affiliate links.
- Use SEO scheme to be more prominent on Pinterest.
If you desire to make real money on Pinterest, people who search the internet, using search engines like Google, should be able to find your pins and boards, so apply the SEO strategies to the best advantage. Also, use the search engine in the best way possible so that you can be found on Pinterest too.
Use the “About” profile to your best advantage. You only have 200 characters (less than 50 words.) Be clear, concise, and use the very keywords searchers are most likely to use.
Moreover, use SEO strategies when using your pins. Each pin allows for 500 characters (about 100 words) to describe the words you want to use, so be sure you make the best of it by including the right keywords and links.
- Create contests and giveaways on Pinterest to sell your own products.
If you happen to be selling your own products on Pinterest, think about free gifts and create contests. People like playing game and they love free gifts. They are marketing gimmicks experience marketers have used to make money, and you too can use it to your own advantage.
However, be guided by the Pinterest guidedlines:
The important thing about contests/free gifts you must bear in mind, though they are a common trick businesses use to attract and hold people to their brand is that they encourage people to add Pins they don’t have interest in. So Pins emanating from contests/free gifts may sometimes be counted irrelevant. However, if contest/free gift is done well they can generate a lot of engagement, people thinking and talking about your brand. Users experience is safeguarded, and goes to show that Pinterest has come to stay, and the network will keep on growing.
- Re-pin others’ Pins to win an audience engagement and make money.
Pinterest, being a social network, it means that the simple way to motivate people to re-pin your Pins is to be up and doing on the network. Try to Pin others’ Pins, especially those people in your niche. They will observe your action and may decide to start trailing your boards.
- Make money on Pinterest by offering tutorials of its strategies to others.
If you learned the intricacies in the use of Pinterest, and since the network continued growth is unstoppable, maybe it is time for you to consider making money by coaching the upcoming Pinterest users, particularly those going into business.
You can develop an app with full tutorial on the step-by-step use of Pinterest to make money. Or alternatively, you can develop e-books on Pinterest’s usage and market them to potential learners of Pinterest.
Read Also: Work from Home Business Ideas
SWOT Analysis of Pinterest
Before you venture into Pinterest as a platform for making money online, it is good that we analyse its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. This will help you determine whether making money through Pinterest is ideal business for you.
Strengths:
- It reaches a wide range of users: The number of Pinterest monthly active users has grown past 335 million people. It was recently reported that adverts on Pinterest can reach about 144.5 million people.
- Boards can be tailored to everyone’s likes and needs. Depending on your target audience, Pinterest allows individuals to make their boards to suit their followers thereby, making the site appeal to folks with a wide variety of interests.
- Pictures are attractive: The pictures on Pinterest are aye catching. This can help you draw potential customers.
- Innovative environment: Users can enjoy unique products where available.
- Pinterest provides unique format and function that appeal to customers. This can make you have a loyal fan-base.
Weaknesses:
- It is gender biased: Pinterest is considered a site for women unlike other social websites that are more popular with both genders.
- While folks of many ages can find it enjoyable, it has a larger adult population than competitive sites.
- Spam: The platform can be filled with spam because anyone can pin anything. This can be deceiving or tough to filter through.
- Time Consuming: You may need to spend much time if you actually want to make money from Pinterest
- It does not allow adverts: While some individuals may like this, it may not be good for business. There are other social media that allow adverts.
Opportunities:
- Pinterest is growing and expanding: The more the platform grows, the wider the audience.
- You can drive traffic to your websites-by pinning links to your site. Through this you will be able to expand and grow your business. You will as well as help you create bonds with your customers.
- Pinterest login is through other social media such as Facebook or twitter. This makes it easy for you to link your accounts together. This can help you expand your Pinterest business even more because your content can appear on Pinterest, Twitter, and Facebook pages.
Threats:
- Many businesses have products on Pinterest: This allows for copycats to appear and is capable of hurting the business users the site has.
- Some pins can be scams. This can damage the reputation and credibility of the site.
- You don’t have absolute control of the platform. You need to follow Pinterest rules, terms and conditions religiously.
Read Also: SWOT Analysis and How To Use it
Conclusion:
Pinterest is a social network and search engine. It has garnered users from all over the globe with women dominating the men. Evidence shows that active users on the network have hit 700 million since 2013. Its growth is astronomical and it is not slowing down in the near future. Business people who make use of the network are taking advantage of the business opportunities available on Pinterest. As a business person why not join the winning team.