Pinterest Marketing & How to Make Money With Pinterest

Pinterest is an awesome community and a great opportunity to not only get more “social” during the day, but you can come up with some cool ideas and drive traffic and sales.  If you aren’t using it, haven’t tried it or are just confused, here is a Pinterest marketing strategy that can help you to make money using Pinterest.  I do encourage you to read their terms and conditions before doing anything and also make sure you don’t spam.  Treat Pinterest well and in return it can send you traffic and sales.  It is all about fun and creativity.  The more creative you are with your pins, the better the results you can generate.  Here are a few ways that you can use Pinterest marketing to make money using Pinterest, your blog and your website.

1.  Create your own Pinterest board strategy.

The nice thing about Pinterest, as opposed to your blog or website, is that you can have as many interests and categories as you’d like.  With a website you are somewhat stuck within your niche, Pinterest lets you cover whatever you want and the people interested in one thing can follow those boards and ignore the others.  Think about what interests you and the niche of your blog or website.  Then create boards that match those niches.  You can also create profiles and boards specifically just for your sites to make them even more niche.  Number 9 in this post will talk a bit more about the advantages of doing this within your Pinterest marketing strategy.  If you are a CrazyforBargains.com Affiliate, there are a ton of boards you can create.  Fun fashion for your feet and include weird things like lobster claw shoes and also tie in your blog posts about slippers.  CrazyforBargains carries a ton of really cool animal slippers including animal paw styled, bootie, elf shoe, Yeti feet (that’s what they look like at least) and even sequins and fun-fur, animal print thong style.  You could try a DIY spa board and include their bathrobes from a blog post with your links or try a cartoon board and use the cartoon boxers and pajamas.  There are a ton of ways to do this.  Be creative and create a themed board that people would want to follow with pins they will be happy to repin on their own boards.

2.  Write your own blog posts and check your images.

The important thing to remember is that you are not allowed to use Affiliate Links on Pinterest.  Instead, write high quality blog posts that mention products and have large, clear and descriptive pictures in it.  You need to make sure the pictures are large enough for your Pinterest share button to pull in the photo and you also need to make sure it is clear what the photo is and what the person will find if the click on the pin.  If it is Bachelorette Party Supplies and you are a Bachelorette.com Affiliate, use the large images instead of the thumbnails from the network and then shrink them to fit within your code.  If the pin buttons or Pinterest cannot pull in the picture, your pin is useless.  One other thing you want to make sure you never do is use an image that has the Merchant’s url or logo on it.  By showing the logo or url, people may go to the merchant’s site instead of yours and your cookie will not be set, tracking will not show for you and you will not earn a commission.

3.  Find other people’s pins and share them.

Pinterest is all about sharing and storing ideas.  People get emails and there is an alert in the top right corner when you log in saying who repinned your pins and which ones they repinned.  By sharing other people’s pins on your own board and keeping it relevant, you may gain their interest, get them to follow you, repin some of your pins and potentially build a relationship where they allow you to pin to their boards by giving you administrative access to that board.  This is a great way to get exposure and help to build a following that can drive sales.

4.  Name your images correctly or fill out the advanced settings on the Pinterest share buttons.

Pinterest tries to pull either the image name or the post name in when you share something on it.  To make sure you have a great description every time you can do 3 things.  The first is to name every image properly.  Make it descriptive, relevant for the search engines and also for people who will see the image on Pinterest.  By making it relevant for all three, you can gain peoples’ interest and hopefully get them to click through to see your pin and then click through to your website.

The same thing goes for the title and meta data on your post.  If there isn’t a good image name, if it is from a homepage, a category, etc… I have seen the title get pulled instead of the image.  Read my post about how to use title tags and why title tags are important.  This will help you with SEO and with Pinterest marketing.

The last thing is one of the best things.  Go into your advanced settings on the Pinterest share buttons and fill out what you would like to have the pin say.  People will be able to modify and edit it, but for people that want to pin and move on, this is a great option.  The downside is that you don’t get as good of a description for every product.  If you are a NationalAutismResources.com Affiliate, and you do a post about ADHD, Autism and Sensory disorders in a classroom, your post may be great and the title can be good, but because the image doesn’t match the description, you may not get as many click throughs.   If it is a series like sitting wedges and fidgets to help children focus while in school, then this could be a great option and work very well because the title will be relevant to the images.

5.  Write good descriptions on your pins.

One thing you have to do is write good descriptions on your pins.  Use adjectives that promote imagery or help to bring people from Pinterest to your website or blog post with emotions.  Try using descriptive terms within the keywords and also make sure you generate an interest in the post.  You may want to say that the post is filled with more products, information, examples, ideas, etc…  This gives a passive call to action and helps get people to want to click through and visit the website.  If you’re a GiftBasketsOverseas.com Affiliate, try using a sports team gift basket when talking about watching a game with your Mom or Dad.   If it’s a honeymoon site, talk about sitting with your husband or wife in Tuscany and feature the image with a picnic gift basket filled with wines and cheeses and if you have a back to school post, you could talk about being in college and getting a thinking of you gift filled with junk foods that college kids can prepare in their dorm room, and how it helped to solve some of your homesick issues.  You could also talk about it from a parent’s side and how you used it as a ploy to get your kid to call you.  There are a ton of ways to do this, just remember to be descriptive and give the person a reason to click through to your website.

6.  Keep track of colors, descriptions, images, sales and reactions.

When getting ready to pin your own posts, keep track of what generates the most pins, clicks throughs and sales.  If you know what people will react to, you know what to share.  If you are in the DecorativeCeilingTiles.net program, and you have boards about architecture, gorgeous ceilings or DIY home improvements, look at what you share and how your followers and Pinners react.  Keep track of which colors of tiles, materials, images, etc… drive the most click throughs and sales.  By keeping track of this you can more easily know what and when to share on Pinterest.  If you pin one of your posts every 15th or 20th pin, try to make yours the one that stands out and generates the most reactions.  Click throughs and sales aren’t the only metric you want to look out for either with Pinterest marketing.  Pins and repins are another huge metric.

By getting more pins and repins, you gain exposure to more Pinterest users.  By being in front of more Pinners and having high quality boards you can grow your followers and hopefully get them to pin your pins more often.  The more people that gain exposure to you on Pinterest, the more opportunities you have for traffic and sales.  Don’t forget that two of the most important metrics to look at are pins and repins.  You can also start to pick out what will get the most by keeping track of image styles (I’ll cover this in the next topic for how to make money using Pinterest marketing), the colors and the descriptions.

7.  Be creative with your own images.

One thing that can work for specific niches is to combine images into steps.  Instead of showing the final picture of a great looking dinner, show the steps to prep it.  Instead of just the end product on a do it yourself decorating idea, show the process in a few images.  If you are a Viewbix affiliate and your post is about collecting emails using social media sites, show the steps and label them.  If the process is distributing a viral video, create a mini infographic out of 4 or 5 images and label them.  If it is about a process and how to set up a WordPress blog or how to use a tool like Viewbix, show the steps in a simple, properly labeled series of images.  This can help to give a reason for a person to click, it tells them what they will learn by visiting your pin and by clicking through to your site.  This can help you drive more traffic that is relevant for a product, process or instructions on how to do something.

8.  Don’t do follow me I’ll follow you back.

Just like with backlinks, if the majority are reciprocal, you can get penalized or your site won’t rank.  It is definitely ok to follow your friends and people whose boards you find interesting.  One thing you don’t want to do is follow everyone who follows you or sign up for follow me back lists.  You’ll never see what actually interests you when you log in and the people who do this will probably never see your pins either.  If Pinterest starts a more advanced algorithm that takes actual thought leaders with a following into account (which I have seen them doing but have no data on) by following a ton of people that follow you, you may never rank or your pins may have a harder time showing up in search results.  If all of the pins and repins are from people who have a few thousand followers, but are following the same amount or even 80% as many, there may be a chance the pin will fall because it now looks spammy and like those people were trying to game their algorithm.  Try to get people to follow you based on merit and not because of a follow me follow you type of deal.  This will not work for you in the long run and will probably not help you drive more sales in the long run.

Pinterest is about sharing ideas and things that people had never thought of.  People pin things that they either think are cool, that they want, dream about having or that they want to try making.  By remembering these things you can help to create a Pinterest marketing plan that is easy to execute and you can also incorporate your own websites into the plan in order to make money with Pinterest.  You do need to remember to not spam, not only post and share your own things and to not be afraid to repin other peoples’ pins.  It is a site where the more you share, the more you may be able to gain.  Don’t think about it one sided and be creative, that is the key to learning how to make money with Pinterest marketing.

9.  Include your other social profiles and a link back to your site.

When someone goes to your profile page or anything else that displays your header, Pinterest will automatically let them follow you on Twitter, Facebook and have a link back to one of your websites.  Your website also becomes searchable in the Pinterest search engine.  Make sure you fill these out by clicking on edit profile and display each.  They can easily help you to grow your websites following as well as your own.  One thing to think about is creating a unique account for each site you have so your boards and accounts are always relevant to your followers and users.  By creating an account for your niche sites and blogs, you can include the Twitter and Facebook accounts for those sites as well as drive people directly to it and get them to follow your RSS feed, join your newsletter and become a fan of the site.  I’m not sure if this is allowed with Pinterest or if they will continue to allow it, so check their terms and conditions regularly and see if you are able to do this.

Pinterest is a great way to drive traffic and sales.  The thing to remember with Pinterest marketing is what Pinterest is about.  Creating reminders of things you love, want to try, make or that are really cool.  People use it to plan events, redo their homes or even find recipes to make.  Create boards that are relevant for your sites, share other peoples’ ins and then share your own blog posts.  By having relevant and niche boards you can generate interest, build relationships and hopefully be able to make money using Pinterest.  Pinterest marketing is easy and a lot of fun, you just have to remember that it isn’t about you, it is about what other people think are cool and how you can get them to want to add you to their boards and click through to your websites or blogs.