How to make money on Pinterest, and what each route is actually worth
Pinterest shut its Creator Rewards programme in November 2022 and never replaced it with an ad revenue share. Every dollar you make on Pinterest arrives from somewhere off Pinterest — here is where, and roughly how much.
8 minute read
Pinterest does not pay you, and that is the whole design
Start here, because it saves a lot of wasted effort. Pinterest has no ad revenue share, no per-view payout and no equivalent of the YouTube Partner Programme. It ran exactly one direct-payment scheme, Creator Rewards, which paid creators for making Idea Pins against monthly prompts; TechCrunch reported its shutdown on 30 November 2022, and the company had said at launch it planned to put $20 million behind it. Nothing has replaced it. What still exists is an inclusion-focused grant fund offering one-off cash and ad credits to underrepresented creators, which is a grant rather than income. Pinterest's own creator FAQ lists four ways to earn — brand partnerships, product tags, affiliate links and the paid partnerships tool — and every one of them is money that arrives from outside Pinterest.
Affiliate links: banned, unbanned, and the rules now
Pinterest's affiliate policy has genuinely flip-flopped, which is why old advice is dangerous here. In February 2015 Pinterest began stripping affiliate links, redirects and trackers out of Pins entirely, and a lot of blogs lost their main income overnight. It reversed the ban in May 2016; as MediaPost reported at the time, Pinterest's stated reason was that its spam detection had improved enough to handle them. Affiliate links have been permitted ever since, and Pinterest's creator FAQ still names them as an earning channel. Two constraints matter in practice. Disclose the commercial relationship in the description, in line with FTC rules, near the top where it is actually visible. And paste the full destination URL rather than a cloaker or a link shortener, which spam systems read as evasion.
The Amazon storefront shortcut
If you are already in the Amazon Influencer Program, Pinterest has a built-in path that removes most of the manual work. Connecting your Amazon Storefront to a Pinterest business account puts the storefront on your profile and, according to Pinterest's help documentation, applies affiliate links automatically to tagged Amazon products. Those Pins also carry an automatic affiliate disclosure, which quietly solves the compliance step people most often skip. Eligibility needs an existing storefront, membership of the Amazon Influencer Program in good standing, and a business account, and availability varies by country. The commission rates are Amazon's, not Pinterest's, so treat this as low-friction rather than high-margin. It suits accounts whose content is already product-shaped: gift guides, room setups, kit lists, hauls.
Traffic to something you own has the highest ceiling
Every other route on this list caps out at somebody else's commission rate. Sending people to a site you control does not, which is why the unglamorous setup work pays off more here than anywhere: a claimed domain, Rich Pins pulling your metadata onto the Pin, and links that land on a specific page rather than a homepage. What you monetise at the other end is your choice — display ads, a digital product, a service, an email list you sell into later. The structural advantage is that Pinterest keeps serving Pins through search rather than through one day of feed distribution, so a page converting at a modest rate accumulates. The structural limit is that followers barely matter on Pinterest, so no audience asset builds up alongside the traffic.
Selling directly: catalogs and the Verified Merchant Program
If you sell physical products, Pinterest gives you a merchandising layer rather than a checkout. You upload a product catalog, which generates product Pins carrying live price and availability, and those Pins send buyers to your own store. Above that sits the Verified Merchant Program, which is free to join and adds a badge to your profile and product Pins, extra distribution, and access to further shopping features. The requirements are ongoing rather than one-off: an active catalog sent to Pinterest daily, a working Pinterest tag on your site, and compliance with the merchant guidelines, which include findable contact details and published shipping and refund policies. It is a genuine technical commitment, and it is the only route here that scales with inventory instead of with your own output.
Sponsored content, and who actually writes the cheque
Brand deals are the largest single payment most Pinterest creators ever see, and Pinterest is not the party paying. The paid partnership tool exists to label the relationship, not to broker it: you tag the brand on a Pin, the label appears on publish, and the brand has to approve before its name shows next to yours. Pinterest's documentation is explicit that the arrangement is agreed between creator and brand off-platform. Two mechanics are worth knowing before you pitch. The tool runs in the mobile app only, so you cannot apply it from desktop. And only the brand can put ad budget behind a paid-partnership Pin; you cannot promote your own. Pricing is whatever you negotiate, and Pinterest publishes no rate guidance whatsoever.
Realistic scale, in Pinterest's own numbers
Pinterest publishes exactly what a user is worth to it, which is the cleanest sanity check available. In its second-quarter 2026 results the company reported average revenue per user of $1.86 globally for the quarter — but $8.30 in the US and Canada, $1.35 in Europe and $0.23 across the rest of the world, against 640 million monthly active users. Two things follow. A large impression count on Pinterest is worth considerably less than the same count on a platform with a revenue share, because there is no share to take. And where your audience lives dominates almost everything else you do: the identical Pin performance is worth roughly thirty-six times more in North America than in the rest-of-world bucket, which is why generic global reach numbers mislead.
Volume is the real constraint, and video is the cheap fix
Every route above is throughput-limited: more Pins in circulation means more chances that one of them is the page somebody lands on six months from now. Video is the cheapest way to add that volume, because Pinterest accepts video Pins from 4 seconds to 5 minutes and recommends 9:16 at 1080 by 1920 — the same file you already export for Reels, Shorts or TikTok. A clip that has finished its run on a feed platform has done nothing on Pinterest yet, and it starts fresh in a system that keeps serving it through search. If pulling those clips out of long recordings is the bottleneck, FrameOS cuts vertical clips from podcasts, webinars and streams, with 300 credits for 3 days · no card. Give each one a title somebody would actually type.
FAQ
Does Pinterest pay creators directly?
No. Pinterest has no ad revenue share and no per-view payout. Its one direct-payment programme, Creator Rewards, shut down on 30 November 2022 and was never replaced. An inclusion-focused grant fund still awards one-off cash and ad credits to some creators, but that is a grant, not recurring income. Everything else you earn comes from affiliate programmes, brands or your own products.
Are affiliate links allowed on Pinterest in 2026?
Yes. Pinterest banned them in February 2015 and lifted the ban in May 2016, saying its spam detection had improved enough to allow them again. They have been permitted since, and Pinterest's creator FAQ lists them as an earning route. Disclose the relationship in the description under FTC rules and use the full destination URL rather than a shortener or cloaker.
How many followers do you need to make money on Pinterest?
There is no threshold, because there is no follower-gated payout to qualify for. Pinterest distributes Pins mainly through search and related recommendations, so a Pin from a small account can outperform one from a large account on the same query. What matters is whether your Pins rank for terms people search, and whether the destination behind them converts.
Can you promote a Pin that contains an affiliate link?
No. Pinterest's advertising rules exclude Pins carrying affiliate links from being promoted, so paid amplification is not available on that content. Paid-partnership Pins have a related restriction: only the brand you tagged can put budget behind one, not you. Organic distribution is the only route for affiliate Pins, which makes titles, descriptions and board placement the whole game.
Sources
- Pinterest Announces Second Quarter 2026 Results (Form 8-K) · Pinterest / SEC
- Pinterest shuts down its 'Creator Rewards' program · TechCrunch
- Pinterest Lifts Affiliate Link Ban, Rolls Out Network · MediaPost
- Connect Amazon and Pinterest · Pinterest
- The Verified Merchant Program · Pinterest
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