Pinterest Creators: How to Make Money on Pinterest

Raw Flow: Why are the eyes on Pinterest? – Why should creators use Pinterest? – What features can they use? – How to use features and to make money? – Can Pinterest compete with Tiktok / other platforms? – What are the latest Pinterest trends? – Summary (Pinterest Creator Code, Unique features of Pinterest to note for a successful strategy)

We can make money from Pinterest?!

Yes! Now, you can!

Pinterest has always been about ideas. It’s the birthplace of our mood-boards for personal, professional, and passion projects. It’s the go-to place for creative inspiration of any kind. With over 400 million monthly active users, Pinterest is one of the most popular platforms on the internet.

Pinterest values the “people” behind the ideas as they curate their boards based on their niche. From DIY décor to book suggestions, this platform has it all. Now, Pinterest is going a step further, offering the opportunity to establish connections and build your audience as a Pinterest Creator.

The company plans on investing $20 million in Pinterest Creator Rewards, a monetization opportunity that is currently being tested in their beta version with a select group.

Why is this a wonderful opportunity for Creators?

Influencers and Creators have a strong social media presence on most of the popular platforms. From YouTube to Instagram, those who are a part of the first wave of creators on any new, fast-growing platform have always had an advantage and a competitive edge.

Though Pinterest is swarming with established Creators, monetizing Pinterest content will be a new avenue, open for everyone to leverage.

Even before introducing these new features, businesses and creators were capitalizing on Pinterest’s popularity to increase brand awareness and generate traffic and new leads for their websites. After all, Pinterest is one of the largest website traffic drivers in the world. Almost 50% of Pinterest users take inspiration from the platform to find products to purchase.

Pinterest does this by reducing the journey that a consumer takes from discovering a product to making a purchase directly from the source. When users pin useful products for future purchases or inspiration, these pins directly take them to the place from where they can purchase the product. By pinning the products and organizing them on boards, they don’t get lost in all the new data every day and users can always come back to something they liked. The usage of backlinks and inbound links instantly becomes integral and rewarding.

Generating leads is also possible because, unlike other social media platforms, Pinterest has less ‘noise’ since the content is more controlled. Noise includes the presence of bots. Therefore, more than a social media platform, Pinterest is often referred to as the ‘visual search engine.’

With a strong foundation in place, monetizing content will only take Pinterest and Pinterest Creators to a whole new level.

What are the cool features that Pinterest Creators can use to make the most of this upgrade?

Shoppable Content

Think of this feature like an e-catalogue. Instead of publishers, anyone can curate a catalogue of their favourite products and inspire others to purchase products from this catalogue.

Visual Search, now enabled for videos as well, will help users discover similar product recommendations for a seamless comparison. This will also push creators to draw more meaningful engagement through their posts. 

But that’s not all!

Shoppable Idea Pins come with a host of other features as well. One of the most exciting features is:

The Try-On Feature

Users can now try some of the products before buying them. Powered by Lens, this feature uses Augmented Reality (AR) to enable users to see how they would look if they used these products. Focussed on the beauty industry, over 10,000 products have been added to Pinterest Creator Studio from brands like Sephora, Neutrogena, L’Oréal, Estée Lauder, NYX Professional Makeup, YSL Beauté, and many more. Users can try different shades of lipsticks and eyeshadows that compliment their skin tone and purchase them right away using shoppable idea pins or even pin them for later. By introducing a range of skin tones on Pinterest, users can directly see how the products would look on skin tones similar to their own without sharing their images.

Creators could easily leverage these features and include unique ways of using these products in their shoppable idea pins. They can also engage in a fresh, new way, using another exceptional feature:

The Takes Feature

Pinterest Takes allows users (Pinners) to add their flare to an original idea (published by Creators). This could range from adding a substitute ingredient to a recipe to sharing some practical tips on a DIY project. Takes will be linked back to the original post and Creators can also highlight their favourite takes from Pinners. ‘Takes’ functions on a similar engagement level as comments, but in a video format.

Takes could also give a fun twist to:

Paid Partnerships on Pinterest.

Creators can focus the interest of users on a specific product for the paid ads that they publish. To give this idea some perspective, let’s consider a popular jewelry brand that has collaborated with a creator. In exchange for monetary benefits from the brand, the creator posts about an evening look that incorporates a statement jewelry piece from the brand. The Pinterest Creator can include a tag that shows the paid partnership with the brand, thus drawing the attention of the users onto the brand.

Through ‘Pinterest Takes,’ other brands can jump in with collaborations like adding other statement accessories, footwear, clothing, beauty products, etc to accentuate the evening look and offer a variety of options to users inspired by that look.

But how does a creator reach a point where their original post goes viral through Pinterest Takes and other Pinterest features?

Pinterest has a solution for that as well!

The Pinterest Creator Hub

Creators can get insights into the engagements on their posts and formulate an effective strategy to increase their reach. Additionally, Pinterest has also included tools and tips that creators can use to formulate this strategy and grow on the platform. The ‘Trend Tool’ and the ‘Pinterest Predicts Tool’ can help Pinterest Creators generate content that is currently trending or is expected to become a trend. Using these innovatively is a simple recipe to go viral!

Creator Rewards covers microgrants for projects

Further empowering Creators, Pinterest will be using a part of the Creator Rewards to offer micro-grants for projects. These projects could be a hair styling program or even an at-home fitness program. Pinterest covers a wide range of interests so there are really no limitations in terms of creativity.

Pinterest is building an entire community so they don’t stop at creativity.

To enable users to support causes, Pinterest’s Idea Pins can now include stickers.

Stickers on Idea Pins

Mental Health awareness Stickers, Festival, Celebrations & Parade Stickers, Black History Month Stickers help Creators add a personal touch to their posts while promoting community values.

Some strikers can also just be used to have fun with the content, like adding a heart or some stars.

This especially comes in handy with their:

Browse and Watch Tabs

Users can scroll through curated recommendations based on their tastes. They’ll see more of what they like and find inspiration through Idea Pins on the ‘for you’ feed.

This will also help Pinterest Creators because fresh content will be shared with users (who have similar preferences) daily through the “Today’s Inspiration” section on the search landing page.

Pinterest gives creators a wonderful platform to make the most of their skills and share quality content with users. Features like ‘preview mode’ for creators to better understand how posts will actually look on the feed become an important addition to the Creator Tools. Video Splitting, Continuous music through Spotify, and replying to Idea Pins are other features that make engaging with users and creating quality content extremely simple for Creators.

Pinterest Creators now have various options for monetizing their content using these features.

Let’s take a look at the top 5 ways in which you can make money on Pinterest

Pinterest is different from social media platforms like Instagram because it is a search engine. Users often come to Pinterest when they are looking for something specific, as opposed to social media where users spend most of their time without any clear purchasing intent.

Therefore, it becomes essential for creators to use the platform efficiently if they want to know how to become a Pinterest influencer or Creator and how to earn money from Pinterest.

Having a good collection of features gives Creators the foundation on which they establish their brand. That being said, using these features productively and creating a strategy that will monetize the content is a process that is unique to each Creator.

In addition to giving content their special touch, here are 5 ways in which Creators can make money on Pinterest.

Method 1: Introducing the Amazon Associates Program on Pinterest

The Amazon Associates Program has been extremely popular for creators to earn passive income through affiliate links. It’s Amazon’s go-to market strategy, occupying the rank of the largest affiliate network with almost 1 million affiliates.

Pinterest now allows Creators to use these affiliate links, tag products that they recommend, and earn commissions. It is important to note that Creators will have to be a part of the Amazon Associates Program to enjoy the benefits. 

Method 2: Brand collaborations through Paid Partnerships on Pinterest

Most platforms include an option of tagging paid partnerships while posting promotional content for a specific brand. The tag attracts the attention of users and creates brand awareness. It is essentially creating a customized ad. If a creator has a good following of a brand’s target audience, they will collaborate with the Pinterest Creator to make the product reach the audience.

Pinterest’s introduction of shoppable ads makes Paid Partnerships even more potent for brands and Creators. Products will now be just a click away.

Method 3: Shoppable Idea Pins and Product Pins on Pinterest

If you are a small business owner, this should be your go-to method. You can use Idea Pins to showcase fun ways of using your products. Shoppable pins make purchasing the products immensely effortless.

Products can include digital products, courses, and absolutely anything that you can sell.

Method 4: Creator Rewards on Pinterest

The next item on Pinterest’s agenda is the introduction of the Creator Rewards towards which their $20 million investment will be targeted.

A popular platform, YouTube, is well known for distributing ad revenue to its creators that fulfill certain criteria. Pinterest plans on entering this space a little differently, rewarding Creators that meet certain criteria not specifically through ad revenue. Facebook and Snapchat are looking to introduce their own version of Creator Rewards as well.

According to Pinterest, gaining entry to the Creator Rewards program will not require a massive reach. Around 1,000 followers and three Idea Pins would be enough. They will also pay creators if they create Idea Pins around a pre-defined theme and achieve a pre-defined target (given by Pinterest) in terms of engagement. These targets would involve getting people to use their new features.

Method 5: Mini-grants for passion projects on Pinterest

Creator Rewards on Pinterest will also include giving mini-grants to Creators for a passion project. Creators who wish to set up projects that require small investments but will in turn help a large volume of people can get these mini-grants. A lot of factors will come into play for getting approval for these passion projects but it is definitely a new avenue for Pinterest Creators to monetize their skills and content.

There’s no doubt that Pinterest’s introduction of these impressive features is a great opportunity for creators.

But, let’s be real. Isn’t Pinterest becoming more like TikTok? If so, can Pinterest compete with platforms like TikTok who already have an established user and creator base?

Features like the shoppable pins and ‘shop similar’ feature on the ‘for you’ feed can be compared to Tiktok’s e-commerce feature set. While this feature will help businesses get direct sales, it is not entirely new.

Creating content for Idea Pins in the form of short videos resembles the TikTok format and a text-based version of the same resembles the Stories feature of Instagram. Pinterest combines the two, but can it be called ‘unique’?

Other similarities include scrolling through content based on interests, with actions buttons available on the right side of the screen. The ‘Pinterest Takes’ feature is also comparable to TikTok Duets and Stitches.

Can Pinterest really be blamed? Tiktok is the most downloaded app in the world. Most other platforms, even Instagram, have features that are strikingly similar to those of TikTok. Bridging the gaps in existing models and giving a little bit of a personal touch is how platforms compete, to give users the best experience.

While on the first look, many of Pinterest’s new features are similar to the features available on other platforms, Pinterest has an upper hand in some ways as well.

The option of saving Idea Pins and organizing them on boards gives Pinterest a competitive edge.  While the ‘try-on’ feature of Pinterest is commonly used by Google, Snapchat, and beauty apps, Pinterest’s collaboration with over 10,000 products could put them at advantage, especially over just another filter.

Pinterest is also using Creator Rewards so that Pinterest Creators can benefit from the platform in several ways that go beyond virtual tips and brand collaborations.

Now that you’ve got a fair idea of the exciting new features and also of how to earn money on Pinterest, let’s look at some recent trends on Pinterest that you can check out for a more practical understanding.

What’s trending on Pinterest these days?

Pinterest has launched its first-ever original content series called Creator Originals with the objective of showing some practical examples to users of how they can become Pinterest Creators and make the most of the new Pinterest features. Pinterest has collaborated with over 100 Creators from 10 different countries across the globe for this series.

Following these Creators will help you gather wonderful insights on how you can use these features to bring your authentic ideas to life.

Some of the Creator Originals include:

Wendy Asumadu through ‘Wendy’s World’ – Taking a bold and fresh step into the beauty world through fine-art make-up.

Yaya and Lloyd through ‘Hand Luggage Only’ – Giving FOMO-worthy travel inspiration

Southern Cooking with ‘Kia Cooks’ – Inspiring us to set up festive Southern dinner tables with mouth-watering recipes.

Kahh Spence through ‘Kahh Spence Beauty’ – Sharing hacks so that we never have a “bad hair day.”  

Mat Sanders through ‘Thematfinish’ – Helping us keep our favourite corners of the house trendy and fresh.

Ally Love through ‘Allymisslove’ – Amping up our fitness regime with a post-workout skincare routine, tasteful athleisure inspirations, and even healthy recipes.

These Creators will certainly inspire you to join Pinterest as a creator yourself. Thanks to our guide, you’re good to go!

But wait!

Don’t forget to fully understand and adhere to the Pinterest Creator Code before you begin.

What is the Pinterest Creator Code?

Pinterest is highly focused on building a positive, inclusive, and safe online community.

The rules are fairly simple:

Be kind: Ensure that content never insults or puts others down.

Check my facts: Make sure all information is factual and accurate.

Be aware of triggers: It is crucial to practice discretion with visually sensitive content.

Practice inclusion: Never intentionally exclude any specific communities or groups.

Do no harm: Make sure all calls to action or challenges are positive and safe.

In addition to instilling accountability by making creators sign the Creator Code, Pinterest also has tools and features to ensure a safe environment. These include positive reminders, content moderation tools like keyword filtering and comment removals as well as enabling Creators to feature and highlight positive feedback. Using machine learning, Pinterest also aims to detect and remove spam comments and content.

Pinterest has taken a leap in the direction of being more Creator-friendly, empowering many creators around the world. With a good mix of features inspired from other popular platforms and features unique to Pinterest, this platform’s journey and Pinterest Creators’ journey to success has begun.