How to Make Money on Pinterest: 5 Realistic Ways

You make money on Pinterest by sending the people who click your pins somewhere that earns: a product you recommend as an affiliate, your own blog with ads, your own digital product, a service you sell, or a brand that pays you to feature it. Pinterest itself generally does not pay you for views, saves, or followers. If you are asking how to make money on Pinterest as a beginner, the honest short version is to pick one of those five methods, set up a free business account, and expect the first month to be mostly setup.

The rest of this guide explains each method, what it requires, and a realistic first-month plan.

Can you make money on Pinterest?

Yes. People search Pinterest for things they plan to do or buy, and every pin can carry a link. That combination is what makes it useful for earning.

Two limits are worth knowing before you start:

• Pinterest is a traffic source. It gives you an audience. Something outside Pinterest has to pay you.
• It is slow. Pins are surfaced through search over weeks and months. A new account rarely sees meaningful clicks right away.

Does Pinterest pay you directly?

Generally, no. Pinterest ran a program called Creator Rewards that paid some creators for completing goals. Pinterest's community team confirmed it ended on November 30, 2022, and the closure was reported at the time. There is no payment per view or per follower.

What Pinterest does offer is tooling that supports outside income, such as product tagging, a paid partnership label for brand deals, and (announced in June 2026) Amazon Storefront linking for members of the Amazon Influencer Program. In each case the money still comes from the merchant, brand, or Amazon.

For the full detail, see does Pinterest pay you?

Five ways to make money on Pinterest, compared

Method	Who pays you	What you need first	Upfront cost	Main difficulty
Affiliate links	The merchant or affiliate network	Approval from a program	None to low	Following three sets of rules, low early clicks
Blog traffic with ads	An ad network	A website with original posts	Domain and hosting	Needs a lot of traffic before ads pay much
Your own digital products	Your customers	A product and a place to sell it	Low	Making something people want
Services (Pinterest management)	Your clients	Skill and proof of results	None	Finding the first client
Brand partnerships	The brand	An audience a brand values	None	Usually not available to new accounts

No income figures appear in that table on purpose. Earnings depend on niche, traffic, and offer, and any single number would mislead you.

1. Affiliate links

You recommend a product, the reader buys through your tracked link, and the merchant pays a commission. Pinterest permits affiliate content under its Commercial and Branded Content Guidelines, provided it is original, you are transparent about the commercial nature of the link, and you do not post affiliate pins repetitively or in large volumes.

What it requires: approval from a program whose terms allow social traffic, a clear disclosure on every affiliate pin, and patience.

Who it suits: beginners with no product of their own who are comfortable reading terms pages.

The rules on direct links, disclosure wording, and Amazon are detailed enough to need their own guide: Pinterest affiliate marketing for beginners.

2. Your own blog with ads

Pins send readers to your blog posts, and an ad network pays you for the ads shown on those pages.

What it requires: a site you own with original posts. Google AdSense's eligibility page asks for original content and an applicant aged 18 or over, and does not state a minimum traffic level. Other ad networks set their own traffic requirements, so check each network's current terms before you plan around it.

The honest part: display ads pay a small amount per visit, so this method only becomes worthwhile with steady, sizeable traffic. Most new blogs take many months to reach that point. The upside is that the same posts can also carry affiliate links and promote your own products.

Who it suits: people who like writing and are willing to wait. The AI blogging system guide covers how to plan and publish posts at a steady pace.

3. Your own digital products

You make a printable, template, planner, preset, guide, or small course once, and link pins to the sales page. You keep the sale price minus whatever your selling platform and payment processor charge. Marketplace and checkout fees change, so read the current fee page of any platform before you price your product.

What it requires: one product that solves a specific problem, a listing with clear preview images, and pins that show the product in use.

What goes wrong: people build a large product before checking that anyone searches for it. Look at Pinterest search suggestions first. The list of digital product ideas is a good place to start.

Who it suits: anyone with a practical skill and a few evenings to build a first version.

4. Services such as Pinterest management

Businesses pay freelancers to design pins, write titles and descriptions, research keywords, and schedule content. This is the only method here where you can be paid within weeks, because you are paid for work and do not have to wait for traffic to grow.

What it requires: working knowledge of Pinterest search, basic design ability, and some proof. Your own account, run well for a month or two, is a fair portfolio.

What goes wrong: promising results you cannot control. Sell clearly defined work (for example, a set number of pins per month with keyword research) and never promise traffic or sales numbers.

Who it suits: people who need income sooner and are willing to do client work.

5. Brand partnerships

A brand pays you, or gives you a product, to feature it in your pins. Pinterest's rules say all paid partnerships must disclose the commercial nature of the content, for example with #ad or by applying a label through Pinterest's paid partnership tool. In the US, the FTC's disclosure guidance applies as well, and it covers free products as well as cash.

What it requires: an engaged audience in a niche brands care about, and usually a track record. For most beginners this comes later, after one of the other methods has built the account.

Which method should a beginner pick?

Pick one. Running all five at once is the most common reason beginners stall.

• You have no money to spend and no product: affiliate links, or services if you want income sooner.
• You can make something useful: a digital product.
• You enjoy writing and can wait: a blog, with affiliate links added before ads.
• You already have an audience elsewhere: brand partnerships become realistic.

If you are still deciding whether Pinterest is the right channel at all, the overview of how to make money with AI compares it with other beginner options.

What you need before you start

• A free Pinterest business account, which gives you analytics.
• A destination for your pins: an affiliate product, a product listing, a blog post, or a service page.
• A simple design tool for making your own pin images.
• A list of search phrases. The Pinterest keywords guide explains how to find them.
• If you have a website, claim it on Pinterest so your pins are linked to your profile.

How to monetize Pinterest: a realistic first month

This plan assumes about five hours a week. Its goal is a working setup and your first data. Income in month one is unlikely, and you should not count on it.

Week 1: decide and set up

• Choose one niche and one method from the table above.
• Create the business account and write a profile that says who you help.
• Collect 20 to 30 search phrases from the Pinterest search bar.
• Create three to five boards named after those phrases.

Week 2: build the destination

• Affiliate: get approved by one program and read its terms on social traffic and disclosure.
• Digital product: make a small first version and list it.
• Blog: publish two or three useful posts.
• Services: write a one-page offer with a fixed scope and price.

Week 3: publish your first pins

• Make 10 to 15 original pins, each aimed at one search phrase and one destination.
• Write titles and descriptions that match the destination page. The pin description template helps here.
• Add a disclosure to any pin with an affiliate or sponsored link.
• Spread the pins over the week. Do not post them all in one day.

Week 4: keep going and look at the numbers

• Publish another 10 to 15 pins.
• Open Pinterest Analytics and note impressions and outbound clicks. Low numbers are normal at this stage.
• Find the two or three pins with the most activity and make new versions on the same topic.
• Fix anything that broke: dead links, mismatched images, missing disclosures.

At the end of the month you should have 20 to 30 pins live, one working destination, and a first picture of which topics get attention. That is what a good first month looks like. Whether it becomes income depends on the next several months of the same routine. The Pinterest SEO strategy guide covers how to run that routine.

Mistakes that cost beginners time

• Expecting Pinterest to pay you. It does not. Decide what your pins lead to before you design one.
• Pinning to nothing. A pin with no link, or a link to a homepage, cannot earn.
• Posting in bulk. Pinterest's guidelines warn against repetitive, high-volume commercial pins. Steady and varied is safer.
• Skipping disclosure. Affiliate and sponsored content must be disclosed on Pinterest and under FTC guidance.
• Using other people's images. Make your own. Copied images are a quick route to removed pins.
• Judging after two weeks. Pinterest distribution builds slowly. Set a review date three months out.
• Buying a course first. Everything needed to test one method is free or close to it.

Next step

Choose one method from the comparison table and write one sentence: "My pins will send [who] to [what], and I get paid by [whom]." If you cannot finish the sentence, you are not ready to make pins yet, and working out the answer is today's task.

For a broader beginner plan that covers picking an offer and reaching a first sale, see the ebook Your First $100 Online System With AI.