How to Make Money on Pinterest in 2026

The social media platform Pinterest lets users find, pin, and sort photos and videos into digital collections, making it easier to shop for items they discover. 

According to a 2026 Dash Social report, Pinterest drives 26% of the total social interactions for bedding company Brooklinen—the largest share across all of its social platforms. And Petia Abdur-Razzaaq—the founder and CEO of digital marketing agency The Stylista Group—calls the social media site “the most overlooked platform” in terms of its potential to drive traffic to webpages.

Keep reading to learn how to reach some of Pinterest’s 631 million monthly active users and how to use the platform to increase brand awareness and sell your products.

What is Pinterest?

Pinterest launched in 2010 as a visual discovery platform and grew into a full-fledged shopping and advertising platform. People use it to save and organize images, videos, and links—called “ pins”—related to their interests and projects. Picture a virtual mood or bulletin board.

Pinterest works as users browse a personalized home feed, save content to themed boards, and use features like visual search and idea pins (the platform’s vertical video format) to explore topics.

Businesses use Pinterest to reach shoppers through features and tools, such as product pins, retail catalogs, and promoted ads, which put their goods directly in front of people browsing for ideas and inspiration. Brands can also tap into Pinterest Analytics to track what’s performing.

Here are some of the characteristics of the Pinterest audience, according to Pinterest:

• 96% of the top searches on the platform are unbranded, opening the door for smaller online stores to show up alongside major brand names.
• Gen Z is the platform’s fastest-growing demographic, now making up 42% of the global user base.
• The global audience is roughly 70% women and 30% men.

How to make money on Pinterest

• Affiliate partnerships
• Sponsored content
• Blogs
• Direct product sales
• Print-on-demand stores
• Digital products and templates

There are two broad ways to earn money through Pinterest. Brands can use it to drive traffic and sales to an ecommerce store or monetized website, and creators can monetize on the platform itself through partnerships, content, and commissions. Here are several Pinterest money-making ideas:

Affiliate partnerships

Pinterest doesn’t operate its own affiliate program. Instead, you can participate in Pinterest affiliate marketing by joining a third-party network like Amazon Associates or LTK. Then you generate tracking links for products you want to recommend and embed those links in your pins. When someone clicks through and makes a purchase, you earn a commission. 

Michelle Lei Pinlac, an engineer-turned-lifestyle-creator, generates more than 847,000 monthly views on Pinterest. Her boards span home décor, kitchen, travel, and seasonal themes like her spring board, where a styled charcuterie board pin links out to her LTK page, earning her a commission if someone shops through it.

Pinterest has also rolled out new visual search tools that let users interact with an image pin to find visually similar products. This means a single well-styled affiliate pin can surface your other recommended products to shoppers who are browsing related items, encouraging more views of your affiliate pins in a particular niche.

Try these tactics to get more views on Pinterest and earn more commissions from your pins:

• Create several pins per product. Design more than one pin image for every affiliate product, each with a different angle or use case, so you can test which visuals drive the most clicks.
• Experiment with pin formats. Try idea pins and video pins alongside standard image pins to see which format gets the most engagement from your audience.
• Pin to group boards. Join group boards in your niche to get your affiliate content in front of a larger audience beyond your own followers.
• Promote your highest-performing pins. Put paid spend behind affiliate pins getting organic traction to amplify what’s already working.

Sponsored content

On Pinterest, sponsored content involves a brand paying a creator to make pins that feature the brand’s products, tagged with a paid partnership label for transparency.

For example, shoe brand VIVAIA paid a creator to feature their Margot Mary-Jane Flats in a pin sharing the shoes up close as part of an outfit-of-the-day video. Tap for details on mobile, and you’ll see the disclosure: “VIVAIA paid to have this Pin show up where you’d be more likely to notice it.” This gives brands a way to tap into the audience a creator has already built.

Blogs

When you write a blog to promote your products or monetize content via ads, you can use Pinterest, which functions like a search engine, to drive traffic. The goal is to create a pin that surfaces through search engine optimization, or SEO. Then, when users search for the topic you’ve written about, the pin points readers to your blog.

Nancy Roberts runs Glow Decors, a home décor blog. Her boards generate 8.7 million monthly views. The pins on her boards link readers back to her blog. 

For example, her attic TV rooms pin links directly to her article “Best Attic TV Room Ideas.” This has the potential to boost her web traffic, increase the value of her paid partnerships, and raise her earning potential from the affiliate links on her blog.

Here are several tips for using Pinterest SEO to drive readers to your blog:

• Write keyword-rich pin descriptions that match the phrases people use to search on Pinterest.
• Use vertical images at a 2:3 ratio with readable text overlays that convey the post topic at a glance.
• Repin older blog content to fresh boards to give it another round of visibility.
• Add Pin it buttons to your blog posts so readers can save and share your content to their own boards.

Direct product sales

For ecommerce merchants, Pinterest is a direct sales channel. If you’re on Shopify, the Pinterest app for Shopify turns your inventory into discoverable product pins with pricing and availability that remain in sync with your website in real time. 

Sean Frank, CEO of accessories brand Ridge, says on an episode of Shopify Masters that he’s a proponent of Pinterest ads. Ridge uses product pins, like the below pin for Ridge’s gunmetal wallet, which surfaces the price and a “Visit site” button to take users straight to the product page. 

The blue checkmark beside the brand name signals that Ridge is a Pinterest verified merchant, a designation intended to build trust with shoppers before they ever leave the social media platform.

Once your catalog is live, Pinterest Ads Manager lets you run ads, target specific audiences and keywords, and track how your spend converts. Paying for top-of-search placements puts your promoted pins at the top of results when users are actively looking for something to buy.

Collections ads pair a hero image or video with a row of shoppable product images. Tapping one opens a full-screen experience with up to 24 products. Connect your product catalog, and Pinterest will automatically surface the most relevant items for each user. 

Print-on-demand stores

Print-on-demand lets you apply your own designs to premade items like stationery and tote bags. When a customer buys from your store, your site routes the order to the manufacturer, who prints, packs, and ships it straight to the buyer. 

As a print-on-demand entrepreneur, you can use Pinterest’s search bar and Pinterest Trends to pinpoint what’s gaining traction, so you can design unique and highly sought after products.

Find a balance between popular (where you’ll be competing with established sellers) and niche (where there isn’t enough search volume to drive traffic) categories. 

The Pinterest Predicts section of the platform can help with this. It spotlights emerging trends picking up momentum but aren’t mainstream yet.

To begin, connect your Shopify store to a print-on-demand app like Printful or CustomCat, sync your catalog to Pinterest and start creating pins that show off your designs. Pin your products alongside complementary content—styling ideas, color palette inspiration, gift guides. This way your designs show up in the same context where people are already browsing. 

Digital products and templates

Selling digital products is one way to generate passive income; you create the product once and sell it an unlimited number of times with no manufacturing or shipping costs. 

Nora Taylor, the creator behind the culinary website Nora Cooks, drives Pinterest traffic to landing pages for both her recipe blog and her cookbook, which she offers as a hardcover or digital product. 

She organizes her boards around searchable categories like “1 Pot Vegan Meals” and “Easy Vegan Baking Recipes,” so her Pinterest content consistently surfaces when users search for vegan recipe ideas. That traffic funnels back to her website, where visitors can browse free recipes and purchase her cookbook, Everyday Vegan Comfort.

Tailor your digital products to match what your target demographic is actually searching for. Digital products that people and brands promote on Pinterest include:

• Workbooks for budgeting, fitness tracking, or meal planning
• Online courses for photography basics, small business accounting, or social media strategy
• Templates for résumé design, wedding invitations, and Instagram story layouts
• Ebooks for recipes, travel guides, or self-care routines

You’ll need an online store to house your digital products, and you can set this up with Shopify using the free Digital Downloads app. 

How to set up a Pinterest business account

A Pinterest business account gives you access to tools that a personal account does not, including Pinterest Analytics and ad creation through Ads Manager.

Setting up a Pinterest business account is free and takes a few minutes. Follow these steps: 

1. Navigate to the Pinterest for Business webpage and click “Sign up.” If you have an existing personal account, go to your account and select “Convert to business.” 

2. Select the category that best describes your business, such as “Online merchant or marketplace” for ecommerce stores, or “Content creator” if you’re a blogger or influencer.

3. Enter your business name, country, and website URL.

4. Choose your business goals (e.g., “Drive traffic to your site” or “Grow brand awareness”) and select the focus of your brand from categories like beauty, fashion, home, or food and drink.

5. Once your business account has been created, Pinterest will ask where you’d like to start. You can create your first pin, set up an ad, or build out your profile. Choose “Build your profile” first to fill in your bio, profile image, and website link before you start pinning.

Once your account is live, consider applying for the Verified Merchant Program. Verified merchants get a blue checkmark on their profile and Pins to build trust with shoppers. 

Tips for making money on Pinterest

• Create rich pins
• Focus on SEO
• Post quality pins regularly
• Use Pinterest Analytics to track performance
• Capitalize on seasonal trends for content ideas

If you want to turn Pinterest into a revenue stream, here are a handful of Pinterest marketing tips:

Create rich pins

Rich pins automatically sync information from your website to your pins, keeping details like product pricing and availability up to date without manual edits. Product rich pins are the most relevant type for ecommerce because they display real-time pricing and inventory status right on the pin itself. The added metadata also helps the Pinterest algorithm categorize and distribute your content more accurately. 

Pinterest’s shopping templates build on this by turning your product feed into ad formats designed to help people make decisions. Instead of pulling a plain product image and price straight from your catalog, templates let you layer in brand elements, lifestyle context, and messaging.

Focus on SEO

Pinterest is a search engine at its core, and Pinterest SEO plays a role in whether users find your content. Use your Pinterest Analytics dashboard to research what terms your target customers type into the search bar, and then research keywords to use in your pin titles, descriptions, board names, and profile bio.

For example, to target “pantry organization ideas,” you might title a pin for a shelf organizer “Small Kitchen Pantry Organization Ideas” and add the description “A stackable shelf for pantry organization to keep spices, cans, and snacks visible.” Use relevant hashtags like #pantryorganization and #kitchenorganization to help your Pin surface in related searches.

Use Pinterest’s guided search feature (the colored keyword suggestions that appear when you start typing) to find related terms you might not have considered. Pinterest indexes board descriptions, and they help signal what your content is about. 

Post quality pins regularly

Pinterest recommends creating fresh content weekly, with clear visuals and readable text overlays. A single product page can have five or six different pins driving traffic to it at any given time.

Be cautious around using generative AI shortcuts to support your content goals. Pinterest recently introduced controls for GenAI content that let users reduce AI-generated images in their feeds. This signals that the platform is prioritizing authentic content. AI-generated images also include an “AI modified” label.

Use Pinterest Analytics to track performance

Pinterest Analytics gives you data on every pin and board on your account. Compare your top-performing pins and look for patterns: If lifestyle photos consistently outperform white-background product shots, that tells you what your audience responds to. 

Here are some metrics to track:

• Impressions. How many times your pins appeared on screen, whether in someone’s home feed, search results, or on a board they viewed.
• Saves. How many times someone saved your pin to one of their own boards.
• Pin clicks. How many times someone tapped on your pin to see it up close.
• Outbound clicks. How many times someone clicked through from your pin to your website or product page.
• Outbound click rate. Your outbound clicks divided by impressions. This tells you what percentage of people who see your pin actually visit your site and is useful for comparing the performance of different pin designs or descriptions against each other.

Capitalize on trends for content ideas

A Pinterest moderator recommends using the Pinterest Trends overview page to stay on top of the latest trends and discover what other Pinterest users are searching for. In addition to maintaining the Pinterest Trends tool, Pinterest publishes seasonal trend reports to its online newsroom, so check back regularly and adjust your content calendar as necessary.