We recently concluded our series on the 10 commandments of Pinterest, and we are writing this post in response to a question from one of our readers. Her question was “how can I make money using Pinterest”? Excellent question! Now that you are all pros and know the secrets of using Pinterest properly it’s time that you learned how to monetize with Pinterest. 
The most important thing to remember when using Pinterest for your business is to respect the special niche that is already in place with the site. The great majority of Pinterest users are women who like pretty, artsy, and shabby chic things. If your products and or services do not fit this description, then you may want to consider other outlets to market your brand with. Also the key to promoting your business on Pinterest is to do so in subtle ways and to use Pinterest to tell and not to sell. If your pins are using obvious marketing tactics, then users of Pinterest are going to scroll right past them. If you market your products with tutorials, blogs, and pretty pictures that women can save and covet, you will succeed on Pinterest.
So how do you make sure that your pins and products are getting views from your target audience (and ultimately ending in purchases)?
Team up with top pinners
If you work together with other top pinners and bloggers who have already gained fame and followers on Pinterest, you will be well on your way to gaining your own Pinterentourage. The reason that pinners follow other pinners is to gain inspiration from their pin boards, and so they can have someone else sift through the millions of pins and show them all the ones worth repining. If you can get one of these famous pinners to repin one of your pins, be prepared for a whole new crowd of Pinterest followers in no time! With each repin, your pins and products are exposed to hundreds of new users online. The more times your pins are viewed the more likely you are to have customers purchase your goods.
Appeal to the pinterest crowd
Like I mentioned in the beginning, the Pinterest crowd is interested in artsy things like DIY projects, crafts, home décor, and trendy outfits. The users of Pinterest are more interested in looking at pretty things and getting lost in them rather than having sales pitches shoved in their faces. Think of Pinterest as a giant girl’s night out. Would you (or the lady in your life) be happy if someone came up to you on your girl’s night out and tried to sell you something? 99 times out of 100 this would not work, and the ladies would get annoyed with the sales person and walk away. Imagine another scenario where the ladies on their night out are walking and window-shopping and something in your shop window catches their eyes. If they choose to come in and take a closer look, you are going to have much more success if you simply talk to the ladies and give them some valuable information and skip the sales pitch. The second scenario would be received in a much more open and unguarded manner and the ladies would be more likely to make a purchase before leaving your shop.
Organic is the way to go
If you are expecting results overnight, then Pinterest may not be right for you (or any online marketing for that matter) good trusting online relationships with customers take time. Become an honest transparent source of information and don’t come off as a money grubbing corporation. Don’t fall into the trap of only pinning your company’s own products, branch out and pin some things from other users. If you only pin products from your company then users are going to see right through you and steer clear of your boards. Displaying your brand in an honest and creative way will go a long way with Pinterest users and overtime your brand will become popular and profitable on Pinterest.
Make it easy to make a purchase
While it is important to not sell directly with your pins, you want interested users to be able to click on your pins and be redirected to your website to learn more. An even better way to go about this is to link your pins that are pictures of your products to a purchase page. This should be a page with more views of the item, different color options, a detailed product description, and if possible customer reviews. From this point, pinners should be able to quickly make their selection, choose their quantity, and check out!
We hope this post helped to answer the question of “how can I make money using Pinterest?” Pinterest is powerful marketing tools if used correctly; remember to review our 10 commandments of Pinterest if you have any questions on how to get started. If any of our other readers have any questions they would like answered on this blog, please write your questions in the comment section.
Good luck marketing!
For these and other blogs from Orange Tail Marketing go to www.OrangeTailMarketing.com. Orange Tail Marketing an Ogden Utah Business provides quality search engine marketing, social media marketing, local search marketing as well as long term email nurture campaigns for businesses all around North America. Feel free to call us today at 801-317-TAIL (8245)