My Pinterest Tips For You (Add Your Own Too!)

Most of my success has been in the *dating niche*, which hasn't been fun since like 2010. Since then, I have CONSTANTLY worked on other methods on the side in a bid to get the fuck out of that space and into something more stable. I've tried many methods, but have found the most success with the recent pinterest methods, but I had to fully make them my own, but it wasn't that hard. You can do it too, if you're willing to work.

I'd like to preface this with the fact that I am not rich from this yet, but am seeing great growth and potential. I am seeing earnings grow steadily over what I consider a short amount of time. I am reading posts where people are pinning with 50+ accounts and not getting one follower. I have one brand new account that I've been working on for two weeks that now has 400 followers, gains an average of 20-40 followers per day, gets hundreds of repins a day and drives several hundred people to my site per day, even if I do nothing. Can you imagine in six months? Let me also add I never paid a cent, never used software, never spammed to achieve this. I believe this is amazing for just two weeks work, albeit, it was a lot of work. I am reading where a lot of people are having a hard time, and I have learned so much that I feel it's the right thing to do to give some tips out. Let me add that I am not giving out ALL the things I've learned here, some are a little golden. But, even the ones I choose to keep to myself are not rocket science. You can figure it out, if you put the work in.

And this is work. You can stop reading now if you're looking for easy instant traffic and riches. I worked my ass off, but I always have. I historically only have IM success with these types of things by going in manually, getting dirty, and trying to make that first dollar. I think they used to say that, didn't they? The first dollar is the hardest to make? But you make that first dollar, or dime, or whatever, then scale it up. There is no better bot than a human.

I know what it's like to read methods/tips/whatever and KNOW that they're leaving out the good stuff that makes the method really worthwhile. I've left a lot out, but I honestly believe that anyone can achieve some level of success with pinterest if they follow just the tips I'm putting here. Look at my past posts-- I'm not doing this for thanks or rep. I've been here for ages and I don't really post that much (mostly because most of my valuable knowledge is in the *dating* field which is now banned from BHW), I'm actually doing it out of guilt, lol. I read like every pinterest post and I'm seeing so many people doing the wrong things, and it's not going to hurt me, the methods, or anything to help out a little bit. I am also posting this in the spirit of BHW. When I first joined, things were a lot different, and they changed shortly after. BHW blew the fuck up. We can no longer share golden things step by step out in the public, they get ruined for everyone that way. But we can still guide, share the right way, and help each other out. I firmly believe that.

I am in the food niche, but these tips will work for any niche. However, some niches are more profitable than others, depending on demographics of said niche. Do your research.

#1 - I believe this is the most important by far-- spamming does not work on pinterest. Well, it does, to an extent, but it's going to drive disgruntled traffic to your site, give you a bad rep, get you reported, get your site banned, and be a lot more trouble than it's worth in the long run. Spamming is harder than just doing it right, IMHO. You don't have to spam. This is part of why I'm here giving out some of these tips I worked so hard to learn-- if you do it right, there's plenty of room for you, and you'll be helping us all out anyway. The way you drive traffic is to blend in and get popular. You want to pin like 80% real/other people's shit, and maybe 20% your own shit. Every pin you make will drive traffic to your site, whether or not you're pinning your own site. If you re-pin something awesome that's not yours on a board, people see it, re-pin it, their friends re-pin it, into infinity, these people see your face and comments on this pin, they follow you or go to your profile, they find your other pins which promote your site, and they go to your site.

#2 - You have to work on your account first before you're going to get anywhere. You are going to need to join group boards, and no one is going to accept you if you look like a noob. Pinterest is very simple, there are only a few options and actions you can take there, and every aspect and detail needs to be deliberate and thought out. If you are starting fresh, you need to:

• A. Pick the right profile pic. I see a TON of people signing up with ewhore type photos and nonsense generated names, come on. What is the main demographic of pinterest? Who are you trying to appeal to? What demographic spends the most money? What kinds of photos do legit accounts with many followers have? Let me spell it out for you-- middle aged women. Middle aged women that want to trust your opinion on something they want to learn about. The best photo is a normal looking adult woman, on the pretty side, but not unattainably pretty. Approachable, normal, but something to aspire to. Blend in.
• B. Have a first and last name, a normal, real-sounding one. Don't brand your profile. They want to think they are getting a real reference to a great idea/product/food from a NORMAL person, not a brand. Pinterest is full of thirsty-ass going-nowhere food bloggers-- don't set yourself up as a food blogger, you just look like competition to the real food bloggers. If I were a real food blogger, I would pin my shit from satellite accounts that looked like normal people, that's how important this is.
• C. Make a lot of boards, and make them mean something. Throwing up boards with names like "recipes", "drinks","yum", etc., is follower kryptonite. Once again, look at what the successful people are doing. Micro niche boards with interesting names are where it's at. When people visit your profile,they look at those first few boards in your profile, and that's when they decide to follow you or not. For instance, if you're doing food, you could make a board called "Chocolate Chip Extravaganza", and pin only chocolate chip related things to that board. Make sure the first pin, or cover photo, for each board is an AMAZING picture. Pin at least 20 items to each niche board, and know that you eventually will need at least 100 pins in each of these niche boards to really start cooking with gas. You need a bare minimum of 5 boards like this, 10 is better, and the more the merrier. Place your best, most interesting boards at the top of your profile, and do not have any shit boards in your profile. You have the ability to make secret boards. If you are working on a board, keep it secret until it has 20 good pins in it or more and is fleshed out, then make it public. When people come to your profile and see interesting organized content (like they don't have), they will follow you.
• D. Put a little about your persona in your profile. Sound normal. Don't pump yourself up or hype your website. Put shit about your life in western Massachusetts and how you love your corgis and your passion for scrapbooking.
• E. Feel free to put a website in your profile, throw up a MFA blogspot if you want, or whatever you have. I recommend a MFA site with high paying keywords and adsense. People are gonna visit that site when they see it in your profile, and will sometimes click. Don't miss the chance to do something with that space.

When you complete these steps, and not a moment before, you are NOW ready to ask to be a board contributor. The harder you work on this step, the more boards you will be accepted to.

#3 - Prepare yourself for the fact that getting accepted to boards is the hardest part of all this, it's work, and it's especially hard when you're first starting. Don't give up. To get accepted to boards:

• A. Don't just ask to be added to the board. Don't copy/paste your request. Add a few sentences about why you want to be added. These people are on spamwatch motherfucking lockdown and they get a billion requests a day. Stand out, be nice, have good grammar.
• B. Follow their stupid fucking rules. Set up a dedicated email and facebook account for your persona (flesh out the facebook account) and if they want you to request by email or facebook, do it, it's worth it. If you break their rules, you risk being blocked by that person, which could hurt you in the future. For instance, if a board says you have to have 500 followers to be accepted and you must apply via facebook, don't post a request on a pin and beg. If they block you, you are missing a chance to maybe be accepted in the future, when you do meet their criteria. If you don't or can't meet their requirements, move on.
• C. Be nice, ALWAYS, and follow up. You are going to encounter FUCKING CUNTS sometimes. BE NICE. Pinterest has given quite a few twats with too much time on their hands a massive amount of power when they have huge boards and a billion followers, and you need these twats to like you if you want to make some dough. If they reject you, write back and say thanks anyway, and maybe another time. A lot of times they will add your ass if you just do this, they're filtering out spammers. Sometimes they will say, pinterest is acting up and won't let me add you, or they will say I can't add you, are you sure you're following the boards? They're filtering. Write back, talk to them, be cordial, kiss some ass. They will add you. When they add you, tell them thanks. Once again, FOLLOW THEIR STUPID RULES. When you're pinning, open up their board in a new tab and make sure your pin meets their stupid criteria before you pin it, if they have a lot of rules. Keep in mind this will get easier as you work. You'll eventually memorize what groups want what as you pin, and it becomes a piece of cake.
• D. When you get added, post a quality pin asap. Unless the board has like 1k contributors, better believe the board owner is gonna be looking at your first few pins, especially the first one. Spend some time and find something great that hasn't been posted on the board yet, follow the format, follow the rules, check the link the pin leads to if it's not yours to make sure it does not lead to spam or shit content. Once you've pinned several good things, they won't be on your ass anymore.
• E. Don't limit yourself to only joining huge boards, even boards with a few thousand followers will be helpful. Some of these small boards you join may turn into big closed ones later. Most small boards have more lax rules too and will accept you easier and are good starting points. The only exception to this is if you find yourself pinning on a small board owned by one of those previously mentioned FUCKING CUNTS who is trying to micromanage you and bitch about every little pin. Don't bother with these boards. There are other golden secrets about small boards I can't mention, just pay attention and you'll figure it out.
• F. If someone owns several huge boards, don't ask to be added to all of them, that reeks of spam. Ask for a particular few. Maybe even ask to be added to a smaller one they have. They will often add you to the bigger ones without even asking, and you can ask to be added to more of the boards later if they don't.

This part is hard, irritating,frustrating and time consuming. I know. But you only really have to do it once. Once you build a rep, people will start just adding you to their boards without you even asking. Pinterest is a small world and group boards are relatively new, so there are not really THAT many worthwhile boards per niche out there anyway. You might want to spend a few days just grinding away at this part, but after that, it's done. If you do it right, you'll be added to at least half of the ones you applied to and you'll be on your way. You can apply for more boards later, at your leisure.

#4 - Your pins and repins are important, every one of them. I'm not sure if I can effectively "teach" this part of it, but I'll try. Anyone can go to the 'popular' category and see all the hot shit. Everyone sees the hot shit. People follow you and re-pin because they like your taste and want to see new things from you they haven't seen before. You have to learn how to effectively cull pins from the herd that people will be interested in. Pay attention to how many people repin the pins you post. Try to figure out why one pin does better than another. It's not always just the quality of the photo. Dig deep into boards and profiles, pay attention to the pins that have high repin rates (keeping in mind the source. 4k people will repin a picture of a chocolate coated tampon if Food Network posted it). Once you get the hang of what to pin and repin, you're golden, and it starts coming naturally. Use GA and the preferred statistics plugin of your choice to see which pins are working the best for you. Use keyword research methods to find ideas for what to pin, as well.

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That's it for now. I've learned so much in the past few weeks I could write hugely, massively more on this, especially the monetization part, but the truth is, if you follow these tips and get this far, I think you'll start figuring the rest out yourself, and also new things and twists if you're creative enough. The more time you spend in pinterest, the more you will figure it out.

Feel free to ask questions, I'll try to revisit this thread when I can and answer what I can to the best of my ability.

I hope this helps some of you, and those who have had success, add some tips of your own!

Man, thanks for creating this....Im going to use what you said as a guidance...going to get back with some questions later..Please keep posting on this too ...

Later

That's great to hear, and makes the time I spent writing it worth it. I worked real hard to figure this shit out. As in, I haven't gotten much sleep lately and am damn near going cross-eyed from all the scrolling, lol. I really do hope it keeps some from having to go through all that.

This is awesome! The best pinterest help thread I've ever seen. Definitely hitting "Thanks"
Thanks!
BA,

Great info here buddy. A lot of the members need to understand these points when it comes to Pinterest. There are too many damn spammers on the site that it pisses me off.

I'd also like to add here that while this was a lot of hard work to set up, it's a piece of cake afterwards. There were about four days that I spent late nights and early mornings working on getting added and fleshing my profile out, and those were the hardest days. After that, it starts going on its' own and you can just use it as a tool to promote your site basically, and just work on pumping up your boards at your leisure, I'd recommend working an hour or two on pinning and repinning a minimum of a couple hours a week just to keep the juice flowing. Of course the more you work and pin, faster you'll get followers and traffic, but it's not necessary once everything is in place. This has been the best return on my invested time I've ever seen, so far.

I believe a 'roided out pinterest account could be a great weapon in anyone's SEO/traffic arsenal. Pinterest has been gaining weight for years but it is recently starting to overtake other big players in traffic, and I read somewhere that pinterest traffic in general is 40% more likely to spend. I believe pinterest is about to go supernova, and you know what happens when that happens-- shit gets complicated. All the greats start out simple-- google, facebook, craigslist. When shit goes supernova, they have to start adding more strict filters, more captcha, more rules, and make things harder in general. If you've been on the fence about pinterest, have dismissed it, or have failed in the past, now is the time to go ahead and do this, before things change. These people that have a quarter million followers are gonna have 2 million in a few years. I'd advise to get in while you can, even if you just sit on the account. If nothing else, an aged pinterest account with thousands of followers and contributor rights to elite boards is gonna be worth some money.

Keep posting man, please dont stop, im new to IM and got quite overhwelmed with all the information about the many subjects that make IM world what is is. Im getting some work done on my account today, repinning 100 pins each time i log in. And trying to set up blogs with copied content, but things are flowing.

Keep sharing your knowlegde please

What are some good boards for food? all of them I see are closed or have no way of contacting them to add you to the group.

@singing sleep : that's some high quality shit right there. Much win!! Cheers

Thanks! Great post. Very very job with your auditory. So some questions:
1. The most proper way to build your mass of followers is to post smth new and interesting, regarding your niche?
2. After step 1, when you gained enough followers, how to propery drive people to your site?

Posted via Topify using iPhone/iPad

Hi OP,
nice thread ! Can you say something about alternatives for Adsense monetization ? And if you like to add some specific details Thanks !

valkone said:

Hi OP,
nice thread ! Can you say something about alternatives for Adsense monetization ? And if you like to add some specific details Thanks !

Click to expand...

If you are not using adsense then you have to pick a specific niche and product from clicbank, amazon etc and creat boards and join group boards within that niche so that the visitors can convert.

amdcpus said:

What are some good boards for food? all of them I see are closed or have no way of contacting them to add you to the group.

Click to expand...

You have to contact the owner of the board, you'll see their name in the board url. Find powerful pinners in your niche, and look at the community boards they contribute to in their profiles, and use that as a starting point.

lexa500 said:

Thanks! Great post. Very very job with your auditory. So some questions:
1. The most proper way to build your mass of followers is to post smth new and interesting, regarding your niche?
2. After step 1, when you gained enough followers, how to propery drive people to your site?

Posted via Topify using iPhone/iPad

Click to expand...

1- It does not have to be THAT new or interesting, it just needs to be something kinda different, or at least try to make it different. For example, I am a contributor to a big community board and want to put a repin there. I have a choice of a) cinnamon rolls with bacon inside, that is a pin going viral and is on the popular page, b) a mac and cheese recipe with an ok photo that I found on a popular food bloggers page that has a few repins, or c) an old pin I found deep in a small community board about making strawberry ice cubes to put in lemonade to make strawberry lemonade, that has a relatively boring, but acceptable, photo. I'm gonna pick C everytime. It's an interesting idea, I haven't seen the pin before, lemon and strawberry are popular in general. Everyone has already seen the viral cinnamon roll one, and I could get in trouble with the board if I post it and someone already has recently. Mac and cheese is way too boring and basic unless there's a twist. Hope that makes sense.

2- You don't have to have any followers to start driving your site, you just have to be a member of community boards. Start pinning good stuff to those boards, and throw in a good pin from your site once in a while. Some boards even allow you to post a full fledged ad per every 10 pins you make or so, I haven't tried this because I don't want to get that kind of rep, but it could be useful.

valkone said:

Hi OP,
nice thread ! Can you say something about alternatives for Adsense monetization ? And if you like to add some specific details Thanks !

Click to expand...

I would highly advise selling your own digital product to them, they buy that shit. There are many whitehats out there doing food who are using no monetization besides selling them a digital product and it's working. If you can't do that, use clickbank. Offer a newsletter if you can. You can also lock the content, but you have to experiment with this to get good results.

Thanks for the tips OP. I appreciate you taking the time to write it

Great post I have just started using pinterest and welcome honest useful information from someone who obviously works at it "in person" and tells it like it is. It`s so refreshing to read this instead of yet another copy & paste crap "method" that seems to pollute this site for most of the time. (I don`t know why people do that actually it`s just so f#cking boring-give it a rest!) Anyways enough ass licking for now, But seriously keep posting this great information mate!

the difficult part is getting into group boards.
and some big boards owners don't say how to join his board.how to join this kind of group boards?

yummymsass said:

the difficult part is getting into group boards.
and some big boards owners don't say how to join his board.how to join this kind of group boards?

Click to expand...

You have to just send the owner a message and hope for the best.

I learned something important last night that I figured I'd add here, you guys might already know this. I decided to create a new board and spent about an hour and a half pinning 250 pins to it, when I was done, I saw I had lost about 20 followers. Until this point, I'd NEVER seen my follower number go down. I realized that anyone that was following me that was online was getting their feed spammed by my power pinning a bunch of similar pins in a niche they may not be interested in. (This is why I hate looking at my own pinterest feed, too). This is probably why facebook did the thing where only a certain percent of what you post gets seen by others, and I can only assume that this will happen in the future with pinterest, too. Anyway, I'd advised in the OP to make new boards secret until they are fleshed out, but I'd only recommended it because your board list needs to look on point to anyone that looks at it, I didn't think about the excess pins showing up in followers' feeds when you're working on it, which is something that needs to be considered. This was a big DUH on my part.

I also found out kind of a trick, by getting tricked by it temporarily. It's a shitty trick, I don't have a use for this and I CAN'T STAND this guy that did it to me, so I'll let it out of the bag in case someone can do something with it-- You can go to a big popular board, duplicate its name and description EXACTLY, then go to the original board (or the original board owners messages board ) and find people who are begging to be added to that board and send them invites to the copycat board, possibly tricking people into posting to it. You can alternatively also invite people who are already contributors to said original board, also possibly tricking them into posting on your board, keeping in mind that the latter contributors will see two of the same boards in their board list when pinning. The latter happened to me, and pissed me off-- it caused me to have to stop what I was doing, open both boards, and leave the dupe board. I wouldn't advise doing this on your main account, because contributors are going to block you, and it sucks when a good contributor blocks you-- you can't repin their stuff when you find it around. Maybe someone can figure out a way to game this, though.

singingsleep said:

find people who are begging to be added to that board and send them invites to the copycat board, possibly tricking people into posting to it.

Click to expand...

Im wondering mate, how does one find these people who are begging to be added to those boards?

Great thread +1

Really interesting post.

Got to put my thinking cap on now.

Hey guys, do you have the problems that your pinterest traffic clicks only give you 1c? I got two clicks till now and both are 1c worth. This seems kinda strange to me..