I don’t know a mama who’d deny that Pinterest is a time suck… a lovely, inspirational, addictive time suck.
But savvy moms have figured something out that makes all that time spent on Pinterest worth their while (beyond home decor inspo, dream vacay ideas and fitness and nutrition tips).
When used strategically, you can actually make money on Pinterest! And it’s a lot easier than you might think – once you get a few foundational pieces in place – and that’s exactly what we’ll be talking about in this article.
How Stay-At-Home-Moms Can Make Money On Pinterest
While there are many different ways to leverage Pinterest to make money, in this article I am going to cover the five easiest ways to make money with Pinterest:
1) Affiliate Marketing
2) Direct Sales / MLM
3) Pinterest Virtual Assistant
4) Sell Your Products
5) Sell Your Services
The reason I’m going to focus on these is because you can do them even if you don’t already have a blog or business, so really anyone can do it!
But, before you can get paid to pin, you must master two basic things:
- Get people to SEE Your Pins (Optimize Your Pinterest Profile)
- Get people to CLICK on Your Pins (Optimize Your Pins)
I know these might seem like common sense, but SO MANY people miss these simple foundational steps and waste a ton of time and energy only to get frustrated when they don’t see results. But that’s not going to be you! There’s actually a proven method to make sure these two things happen, so let’s talk about them.
How to Optimize Your Pinterest Profile (get people to SEE your Pins)
If you’ve just been using Pinterest for fun up to this point, you’re going to have to do some work to your Pinterest Profile if you want to start making money from it.
In order to get people to actually SEE the things you pin, you have to optimize your profile and presence so the Pinterest algorithm starts to regard you as a serious pinner. Here’s how to how to optimize your Pinterest profile:
- Decide What Type of Content You Want to Pin (eg. Home Decor, Parenting, Personal Finance, Health & Wellness, Mom Life, etc.)
- Use keywords in your Pinterest profile that are relevant to your content type (this helps the right people find your pins)
- Upload a friendly picture of your own face, preferably with eye contact
- Create 8-15ish boards with keyword relevant titles and pin several relevant pins to each
- When pinning, make sure your pins have keyword-rich descriptions (makes them easier to find when people are searching in Pinterest)
How to Get People to Click on Your Pins
There are thousands upon thousands of Pins on Pinterest in every category… so how do you get people to click on yours?
Two words: Pin Design.
And I don’t just mean a “pretty” pin, though it is important to have a nice-looking pin (more on that below). But “pretty” isn’t going to cut it. Depending on your niche/category, there are likely already a lot of “pretty pins” that you’ll be competing with on Pinterest. So what’s the trick, then?
Your #1 goal when creating your pin design is to get people to stop the scroll.
In order to do that, your pin needs to 1) catch their attention (stand out in the sea of pins they’re scrolling through), and 2) compel them to take that next step and actually click on it. Here’s how to get people to click on your Pins:
- Use professional, eye-catching designs. You can create your own in Canva or PicMonkey for free (they have tons of pre-designed templates), or purchase a template pack