How I Use Pinterest To Get Blog Traffic and Make a Full-Time Income
Do you want to learn how to get page views and make more money blogging? Pinterest has changed a lot over the years, but I think it’s still one of the best ways to get traffic to your blog. In fact, it’s one of the top ways I get traffic, and it has been for…
Do you want to learn how to get page views and make more money blogging?
Pinterest has changed a lot over the years, but I think it’s still one of the best ways to get traffic to your blog. In fact, it’s one of the top ways I get traffic, and it has been for years!
Today, I’m excited to share an interview with Carly Campbell, a full-time blogger and the creator of Pinteresting Strategies, one of the most popular Pinterest courses out there. Carly started her blog back in 2016 after seeing a pin about making money online, and she’s been all in on Pinterest ever since.
She earns a six-figure income from her blog through a mix of display ads, affiliate marketing, product sales, and more, and Pinterest is a major traffic driver for her business.
I’ve been following Carly for years, and when it comes to Pinterest advice, she’s one of the few people I always trust – she’s truly an expert and always ahead of the curve.
In this interview, Carly shares how she’s using Pinterest to grow not one but two websites, including a new site that already gets over 1,500 outbound clicks per day.
Some of the questions she answers include:
If you’ve been wondering how to use Pinterest to grow your blog and income, this is a must-read. And if you want to dive deeper, check out her full course Pinteresting Strategies.
Below is how Carly uses Pinterest to make money blogging.
I’m a full time stay at home, homeschooling mom, full time blogger. In late 2015 I had seen a pin on Pinterest that talked about making money with a website and Pinterest, and the idea had cemented itself into my mind.
At the time, we were planning to start a family, and I knew that I didn’t want to go back to work after I had a baby… so I started my first blog in early 2016.
I had no idea what I was doing, but bought a course and threw myself into learning everything I could about making money with a website.
I worked 60+ hours on my site weekly for the first year.
I was very blessed, and Pinterest just clicked for me, and by the end of the first year I had replaced my desk job income (and then some).
When my baby was born I was earning around $5,000 per month, and I’ve never looked back.
Blog income fluctuates wildly – it’s affected by seasons, by platform algorithms, even by political tensions, and so over the years I’ve had wild months where my blog has earned $20,000+ and I’ve months where it’s earned less than $5,000.
(But, no matter what, even in the worst months, it’s always out-earned what I used to earn at my desk job.)
The more invested I became in online business, the more I became fascinated with Pinterest. My own Pinterest success continued to grow, and eventually, I started selling a course that helps others improve their Pinterest traffic, too.
These days, I’m still all in on Pinterest for my mom blog, and especially all in on helping other people navigate the platform, so recently (In July of 2024) started a new site specifically for Pinterest.
This new site has been the most fun project I’ve done in a long while… it came out of the gate strong in Q4 last year (generating more than $4,000 in revenue before if was 6 months old!) and now slowly growing in the right direct (using only Pinterest traffic).
The new site is sitting at around 1,500 outbound clicks per day, and it’s with Mediavine earning ad income.
Note: Carly started an even newer site recently and I asked her to share a screenshot from it. This proves that you can get started on Pinterest even if your site is new! She said: “Here is a screenshot of the past 60 days on Pinterest with our NEWEST account – we’re pinning just 5-7 pins per day on this one, and we started on March 3, 2025. The account is getting over 500 outbound clicks per day now, and It’s already accepted into Journey and earning up to $5-$10 per day.”
Pinterest is an idea discovery platform. A lot of people refer to it as a social media or a search engine, but it’s really neither of those. It’s about ideas, inspiration, and planning.
Understanding what the user is doing on Pinterest – ideating – is the first clue to figuring out how to use it well.
I do just use Pinterest to drive pageviews back to my blog. For me, that’s where it’s value is.
Unfortunately, not all blogs will do well on Pinterest. Pinterest is a place for ideation and inspiration, and it’s also a very visual platform. So if your content is non-inspirational and non-visual, it’s probably not for you.
Niches that do particularly well are the visual idea niches – things like DIY, home decor, nails, hair, beauty, fashion, recipes, kids activities – you know, things you have to SEE.
There is also room on the platform for the pain niches that affect MOST pinterest users – relationships, finance, parenting, etc. But often, because these niches are not visual, we should have lesser expectations there.
Niches where you don’t really have to SEE the content and ALSO do not have a large Pinterest audience should be avoided.
I knew that Pinterest would be a game changer really early on – within 6 or 7 months, I think, I was starting to see impactful traffic. But that was a long time ago… I think it’s better to answer this question in regards to my brand new site, because that is more relatable for anyone who doesn’t have Pinterest experience.
My newest (monetized) site is currently getting around 2,000 page views per day from Pinterest… Its Pinterest account is 8 months old, and it’s been getting good traffic ever since 2 months in (except for a real Q1 dip lol).
I don’t share my income specifically any longer, but I can share that as a blogger I earn 6 figures, across many income streams. Some years one income stream outperforms another, and then they flip flop the next year.
The key to stability with income online is to build out multiple income streams.
Display ads were my original, foundational income. Of course, this income is tied explicitly to traffic and to advertiser spending, and so it has extreme fluctuations.
These days I also do affiliate marketing, sponsored posts, sell my own courses + products, and I run a membership supporting people in their Pinterest strategy.
These are all excellent ways to increase income, but untie these streams from your traffic (by way of an email list) creates a real safety net for when traffic dips.
Recommended reading: How To Make Money Blogging
Currently Pinterest is still the most foundational thing I do for my site, so we spend a lot of time on it. I have a VA who helps me with Pinterest now, because I have multiple sites and we don’t want to slack on our Pinning process.
We aim for 10 pins per day, every day, and we use the Pinterest native scheduler to que them up.
It’s a little clunky but I have a friend who’s working on tools – extensions – that work WITH the native scheduler to make it more user friendly and quicker to user – so that’s very exciting.
Both!
New content is crucial for your success. We see a lot of older accounts declining and when we look into why, we see that they are pinning the same old URLs over and over, and their rate of creation of new URLs has really declined. New URLs should be the center of your Pinterest strategy.
That said, once you have old established URLs that have proven themselves as strong Pinterest posts, you can keep pinning those in perpetuity also. New pins for old posts – especially. When supported by new pins for new posts – are an excellent tactic.
Sure! As a rule, I don’t share my currently strong pins publicly anymore, but this pin was viral for 2 years or so – it earned thousands in ad income AND affiliate income over that time: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/277323289542346642/
It did well because it is the epitome of planning (even though it lacks the visual component, a visual component isn’t needed for this type of planning). The title shares a personal story promise, and people respond well to personal stories.
But of course it’s not just about the pin – I’ve made thousands of great pins that have gone absolutely nowhere… some of its success also comes from the fact that there was a ton of other RELATED content on my boards, and I had strong boards in the niche to pin this pin on.
Yes! It’s very important!
Pinterest looks at the text in our descriptions to gain more context and understanding about the pin.
Take the time to set an individual description for each pin, containing 4-5 (or more) related keywords, telling Pinterest what your pin is about.
You shouldn’t expect overnight traffic, but I do think that my newest website does demonstrate that you can certainly get traffic on a new site, if you know what you’re doing.
So the first step to get started is to LEARN what you should be doing.
Not understanding the platform. That is the biggest hurdle.
People come in thinking they can pin anything and the right people will see it, and traffic will appear… but Pinterest is NOT Google. There are NOT unlimited users hunting down every search under the sun. You have to understand the user, and understand what the platform is to the user.
It’s not a brief conversation either. This past year, my friend Tony Hill and I have spent HOURS on our podcast – Pin Talk Podcast – trying to help people understand the platform better.
Ai is a gray area for me. I personally have no problem using Ai to help me create pin descriptions, or speed up creating unique titles… but I detest Ai images. They make my skin crawl.
Not just because I’m old school and it seems unfair that those who will use Ai can have this massive leg up over those who won’t use Ai… but because I hate that my kids or my parents or – anyone else in the world – might see that image and not understand that it’s not real.
Ai images have taken a place that was already questionable as far as reality goes (the internet) and made it into a terrifying maze of lies.
I think we are still very early in the Ai era and we have no idea about how it will affect us… will platforms label Ai images?
Will users care?
Will Ai content become so cheap and useless that it implodes on itself?
Will real content rise to the surface as humans seek it out?
Will humans even be able to distinguish between real and Ai content?
All things we don’t know the answers to right now.
So, I’m being (I hope) very cautious in my approach with Ai.
I’ll use Ai to help with text generation, but I am not using any Ai images – I would not (at this point) turn my pinning process over to Ai, because I want to be in control there.
Pinteresting Strategies 2025 – the newest, most up-to-date iteration of my Pinterest course is for ANYONE who wants to learn how Pinterest works, and develop a strategy for Pinning that works with their content and for their niche.
The updates to the strategy have been battle-tested in the past 6 months – by myself – so it’s not outdated based on successes from a decade ago. These are the strategies we know are currently working – particularly well for visual niches.
I was really nervous to release the newest version of the course, because I had made so many big changes to it in Q1 – maybe more big changes than at any point since 2017 – but I got this great message from Jordan just a couple months after the new version came out:
“I can’t recommend the Pinterest Strategies 2025 course enough! After losing almost all of our traffic in Google’s Helpful Content update, we were convinced that our blog was done for. Within just three weeks of implementing Carly’s strategies, our Pinterest traffic skyrocketed from 5,000 outbound clicks in 30 days to an incredible 20,000 outbound clicks in 30 days. The course is incredibly well-structured, straight to the point, and packed with actionable advice. It’s also fun! If you’re serious about growing your Pinterest traffic, you can’t miss this course!”
Please click here to learn more about Pinteresting Strategies.
Are you on Pinterest? Why or why not?
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