How to Make $22,000 per Month with Pinterest

This post is inspired by a podcast interview I did with fellow Elite Blog Academy alum and mastermind member Rosemarie Groner of the super popular website, Busy Budgeter. (Listen to the interview here.)

At the time of this writing, she was earning around $22,000 per month from her blog and related Pinterest traffic. Now, she earns well over $100,000 per month through a combination of organic search engine traffic, Pinterest and paid Facebook ads traffic.

Needless to say, she’s turned her blog into a very successful business! I’d say, there are tons of things to learn from Rosemarie. But today, we’ll focus on her Pinterest strategies.

Note: I’ve since had to update this post because some things don’t apply anymore- like using Board Booster, but the nuts and bolts of the strategy I’ve extrapolated from Rosemarie’s interview and Pinterest approach still apply.

Before I dive into the tactics I gleaned from our interview and some of her Pinterest resources, let me give you a little backstory on my own blog.

I started my blog four years ago. For the longest, I hovered around 800 unique monthly page views. (That’s so sad, I know!) I made a few dollars (like $2) in Google Adsense but overall was pretty content with my pageviews.

Then, I connected with someone who challenged me to aggressively increase my pageviews, Rosemarie Groner, of the Busy Budgeter website. She also encouraged me to enroll in the popular, Elite Blog Academy and the rest is history.

By the way, Elite Blog Academy is a blogging course, taken by thousands of bloggers, that helps you get the foundations of blogging in place. Both myself, Rosemarie and tons of other successful bloggers have taken the course. It only opens once a year, so get on the Elite Blog Academy Waitlist while you can.

Related resource: 10 Women Bloggers Who Retired Their Husbands

At the time of writing this article, here are some of the results Rosemarie had gotten from Pinterest in 19 months of blogging:

• Monthly income rose from $18.00-$22,000.00
• Monthly Unique Visitors………………………………….. 416,000+
•  Monthly Pageviews………………………………….. 619,000+
•  Email Subscribers………………………………….. 21,500+
•  Pinterest Followers…………………………………..34,500+

Duplicating her methods, I have seen an uptick in page views (and income.) When I started with Pinterest in April of 2015, I was around 8K in pageviews. Now, I am averaging almost 40K page views per month this year. My blog monthly income hangs around the $300-$500 mark but I am seeing even more potential as my measly 200 person mailing list is now to almost 900 people!

If you are looking to drive more traffic to your website (traffic = income), think seriously about investing your time and money with a Pinterest Strategy. Pinterest drives a ton of traffic to my website and has caused my page views and income to grow substantially.

Based on talking with Rosemarie and how I’ve gained traffic from Pinterest, here are a few pointers to help your Pinterest marketing results.

Also note: this strategy really only works if you have a self-hosted blog and can capture emails for further marketing. (I use ConvertKit). This is where the money happens.

If you need to start a blog, you can do so for as little as $3.95 per month with BlueHost.com. Use this link to get that price on web-hosting.

Have a “The Best of Board”

You need to have a board that displays your content exclusively. Pinterest is full of pins circulating from every which way, but you want to be clear about what you’ve created. Having a prominent “The Best of [Insert Your Website Name]” will help people find your content quickly and easily.

Create Multiple, Topic Specific Boards

I’ve noticed a pattern among Pinners with high followings- they all have lots of boards. I’ve seen engaging profiles with anywhere from 75 to 200+ boards. I think that 100 is a good number to shoot for.

Ideally, your boards will correspond to topics you cover on your blog, podcast, YouTube, etc. (Use your blog categories as a guide for setting up boards.) It’s a good idea to keep the board names simple for SEO purposes. Pinterest is really well-indexed on Google and ranks very high for many terms, so it’s definitely worth the effort.

Join Group Boards

When you join group boards, you are exposing your content to more people. If you only have a few hundred Pinterest followers but are on group boards with tens of thousands of followers, then you are getting your Pins and related content exposed to that many more people (hello, more traffic!)

Taking time to join group boards in your niche is probably one of the best strategies you can implement for more Pinterest traffic. I’ve got a group board called Increasing Income, and I can say that it was pretty easy to create and still drives traffic to my site regularly.

Related resource: Group Board Master

Make Your Profile Pop

Your profile description is limited to 160 characters, but make sure you use the space well. Tell people who you are and what you like to do as pertains to your blog, podcast, YouTube channel, etc. Here’s an example of what you could say, “My name is Mara and I help people train their pets for TV and film stunts.” You could even add a link in your profile to get people on your mailing list. Here’s mine:

I help you ROCK your finances by getting out of debt, increasing your income and building wealth. Free gift to get you started: http://bit.ly/1RhOlrK

Automate Your Pinning

Tailwind is an app that allows you to automate your pinning for both Pinterest and Instagram. It allows you to set up scheduling so that you can pin to group boards for more exposure. Once you get more followers, you can also use it to “loop” (still in BETA for many users ) your pins on your own boards.

That’s an advanced strategy, but doing the basics is a good start. Without an automated approach to pinning, you’ll be at the computer for hours pinning 50-70 pins per day. You can start pinning with Tailwind for free. Here’s a link to a 30-day trial for Tailwind.

Outsource Pin Creation

Creating pins can be time-consuming. If you’ve got a lot of things to do to keep your blog going, it can be a real time-drag, especially if you are not any good at graphic design. With a site like Fiverr.com, you can find people who will create pins for $5-$10 each. Here is a link to order gigs on Fiverr.com for creating pins or any other graphic design needs you have.

Monetize Your Traffic

Pinterest is going to drive a TON of traffic to your website. Unless you have a way to capture visitor email addresses (I use ConverKit) and present them with relevant, carefully curated products (your own products or affiliate products,) this strategy won’t do much for you. Once I understood that I needed to monetize my Pinterest traffic, I ended up earning over $2,500 on my first affiliate launch. You can read about that affiliate launch here.

Here are some other resources you can use to master affiliate marketing:

• Rosemarie’s Core Affiliate Strategy– Choose a base of 5-10 affiliates and promote them with care
• Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing– Michelle Schroeder, who earns $100,000 per month with her affiliate marketing strategies,

Get Help from Other Pinterest Resources

1. Pinteresting Strategies by Carly Campbell*- This focuses on manual pinning strategies. I highly suggest you learn the basics of pinning strategies with a MANUAL process first. Then, you can introduce automation like Tailwind. Carly is a SUPER NEW BLOGGER and already earns $5k per month.
2. Brilliant Pin Promotion by BethAnne Schwamberger- Focuses on PRODUCT PROMOTION on Pinterest as well as how to boost Pins to virality with promoted pins. BethAnne earns six-figures with her blog, eCourses and products.
3. Become a Pinterest VA– This is TOTALLY a thing. Big brands to small bloggers are hiring Pinterest VAs like MAD. This course shows you how to master Pinterest, then market your amazing skills and charge top-dollar for them as a Pinterest VA. Only opens a few times a year, get on the waitlist.
4. Group Board Master– Finally learn how to effectively find, join and benefit from group boards in Pinterest. This course is by Caroline Vencil who already earns $12k+ a month as a new blogger.
5. Hire Pinterest Help via Fiverr.com

Need More Pinterest Strategy Tips?

Get access to my free Pinterest email course below:

Aja McClanahan

Aja “A.J.” McClanahan is a writer, speaker and entrepreneur.