How To Make Money Using Pinterest

Is your Pinterest marketing strategy making you money? If not, here are a few ways to help you grow your online business utilizing Pinterest!

Hey there!

So many folks think that making money on Pinterest is some mystical unicorn in the land of online business.

While I do love the idea of a pretty unicorn with lots of rainbows and glitter…and purple (my favorite color!) It’s not hard to figure out how to utilize Pinterest to help grow your brand and online business!

But first things first! Let’s start this with a short little clarifier.

There are a few different ways to use Pinterest to generate revenue in your business. To name a few of those, it would include; affiliate marketing, ads on your website, or becoming a Pinterest manager/virtual assistant.

In today’s, blog post/podcast I am going to be talking about how I personally use it to help my business and my client’s businesses.

Just like any platform out there, people are going to want to teach you and show you different ways on how it’s done. I’m always pushing for you guys to do what feels right and best for yourself and your business.

So Let’s Get into It!(HA! See what I did there?!)

I have been on the platform since it started in 2010. I can specifically remember when it came out, it was a few months before my senior prom and I had an entire board dedicated to prom makeup and hair ideas. And I pretty much used it specifically to hold space for ideas.

Fast forward 7 years – it’s turned into my business. Which is wild to me. Like I cannot get over it. But I digress.

Affiliate Marketing/ Sponsored Posts

Like most of us in the Livingbreely community, we do our research, which lead me to learn more about affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing, in the context of this blog post, is that if a customer were to click a link that you gave them and they purchased an item, you would receive a commission from that sale. Think of it like when you go into a high-end retail store, a majority of the sales staff is working on commission. Meaning, when you work with them to select an item, they are making anywhere between 1-15% off of every sale they make.

(I will follow up with an entire blog post about affiliate marketing and the different forms of it later this year! Pinky promise!)

3 months into blogging, I had signed up for Amazon affiliates. At the time, this was the largest affiliate marketing platform. And as an (almost) daily Amazon user, this made sense. I was able to link products that I was actually buying and using and share them with my audience.

This worked great for me in the beginning because I didn’t have any e-products or courses or services available. However, it did not supplement my income entirely.

In fact, the first year that I was blogged (from June 2017 to December 2017) I made a whopping $57.93 from Amazon affiliates.

This isn’t to discourage you. There are so many factors that go into making affiliate sales work: price point of the item, commission percentage (with Amazon affiliates different categories have different commission percentages) and also the traffic to your website or links.

This is where Pinterest helps.

The more traffic I was able to get onto my website, the higher my chances were of someone clicking on one of my affiliate links and purchasing them.

E-Mail List

I have talked about growing your email list ad nauseam. You can listen to the ‘Let’s Get Into Podcast’ episode I did with my friend Austin Beals about the importance of having an e-mail list by clicking here.

Episode #70: How To Increase Revenue Through E-mail Marketing w/ Austin Beals

With social media algorithms being tumultuous, it’s important to have a place where your community or audience can keep in contact with you. With your email list, you actually own the information and your account unlike social media where your profile can be taken down or deactivated.

I am able to utilize my e-mail list to stay connected with my community, provide more valuable content that I am not sharing on Instagram or here on the blog, announce new podcast episodes and also let them know when I am releasing a new course or service.

Trust me when I say this, a majority of the folks on my email list are way more interactive with me via email than they are on any other platform. I make an effort to respond to e-mails for at least an hour a day and connect with my community that way. It’s way more personal and I feel like we build a better relationship and trust than just throwing up a #selfie and an inspirational quote on the ‘gram.

Whenever I have launched a new course or service, over 80% of buyers come from my e-mail list. And 75% of them are REPEAT customers, meaning, they have purchased from me before.

Sure, I still believe in social media and using platforms to garnish new relationships and customers.

But I will always stand in my belief of email lists for myself and my clients.

SOOOO….like… how does Pinterest tie into this?

If your pins are getting click-throughs, meaning people are actually coming to your website from your pins, then you should have some type of freebie, email opt-in, lead magnet or whatever you want to call it.

This should be offered to them as soon as they come to your website, like through a pop-up, in a blog post, on the sidebar or in the header.

Think of this as a handshake when you’re first meeting someone. You want to give them a little bit of love, a little bit of value in exchange for their email.

How To Make Money Using Pinterest – Bree Marie (2)

Marketing Your Own Products

The overall goal with my Pinterest marketing plan is to get more eyeballs looking at my website.

And when they come to my website, I want them to know that I can help them with their online business. And that could be from my free guide to finding the best keywords on Pinterest. Or it could be through one of my online courses.

If you don’t have your own online products that you can create and sell to your community, here are a few ideas:

E-courses
E-books
Printable/downloads
Merch (t-shirts, hoodies, coffee mugs, etc.)
Any tangible items that you may create and sell.

If you need help with learning more about Pinterest keywords, you can check outthis blog postwhere I talk about the importance of keywords or you can grab myFREE guideto finding the perfect keywords on Pinterest.