How to make money on Pinterest

Pinterest advertising works

People come to Pinterest in search of inspiration, crafted goods, and a community of like-minded creatives, making it an ideal place for you to showcase the ideas and products that define your business.

Whether you’re a one person team or a corporate entity, creating visually compelling Pins, categorizing them into ad groups that target your business goals, and running a successful campaign can help you gain a loyal following of Pinners. Spark inspiration amongst millions who are in search of your creativity by becoming an advertiser on Pinterest. 

The structure of campaigns

To advertise on Pinterest you begin by running a campaign: your business has a story to tell, and your campaign is where it all begins. Think of it as an umbrella which shapes your advertisement, and under which all other tenants of advertising at Pinterest fall.

Within any campaign lie multiple ad groups – you can think of these as chapters. This is where the action happens: set a bid and budget, and target specific audiences. Create multiple ad groups to achieve a variety of goals and tell different parts of your business’ story.

Once your ad group is created, you get to play around with promoting Pins within it that will best fit your campaign objective. You may find that changing your targeted audience or promoting a video Pin changes your campaign results in an exciting way. Everyone gathers information differently – through words, images, or videos – so enjoy the freedom you have to promote a number of Pins that represent your business in different ways.

Create a goal for your campaign

When you create a campaign, you’ll give it a title and an objective. Perhaps you’re looking to establish a loyal following, so increasing traffic is the perfect objective. Alternatively, you may want users to discover your merchandise, in which case opting to ‘build brand awareness’ would be a great fit.

Whatever objective you choose for your campaign, let it reflect your overall business goals. The objective will determine bidding and ad formats available to you, and has the potential to set you up for great success.

Build an ad group

Ad groups are where the action happens. You set your budget, timeline, targeting audience, and bids for the promoted Pins within the group.

Creating multiple ad groups is a great way to explore how different Pinners engage with your content. You have flexibility in targeting certain ad groups towards a specific audience, which will allow you to gain understanding and observe trends of how your products and Pins appeal best to Pinners.

All about promoted Pins

Pick a Pin of a project, idea, or product you want to showcase. Creating an image for your Pin that sparks interest is key! Keep in mind you can create multiple Pins that promote the same product, so have fun exploring what Pins capture different audiences, and which seem to meet your objective.

When your Pin is curated and posted, you’ll pay to promote it. The Pin will then show on your audience’s home feed and in relevant searches. You’ll be on your way to attracting fans, followers, and customers.

The fundamentals of placement and targeting

A great way to learn about how people engage with your content is to play with our placement and targeting tools.

When you first set up an ad group, the Pins within it will show everywhere – as folks browse their home feed or search relevant keywords. In time, you can change the placement so that some ad groups only show their Pins as folks browse, and others show up only as Pinners search for related content. It’s a great tool to observe which behavior increases the impressions of your Pins.

Targeting is another way to understand the different ways that people interact with your Pin. Say you’re promoting a portrait photography guidebook: target people interested in “headshots” or “cameras” and perhaps play with different targeted audiences to compare and learn who engages with your content the most

How to create a new ad account

Once you create a business account, you can choose to run ads on Pinterest. 

You can create multiple ad accounts and assign other business accounts to work on those ads. You can set up as many as 10 ad accounts per business account to support multiple currencies, support multiple payment methods, and improve the organization of your ads.

Keep in mind, if you’re running a simpler campaign, it may be easier for you to manage just one account.

Steps to create a new ad account

1. From Pinterest, click Ads in the top left corner then select Overview to open the Ads Manager
2. Click   next to your name
3. Click Create new ad account 
4. Enter a name for the ad account and select your country then click Set up billing
5. If prompted, read and accept our advertising agreement
6. Add payment information for your new ad account
7. Click Save

If you want to track conversions or target specific audiences, you need to set up a separate Pinterest Tag and create audiences for each of your ad accounts.