If you want to monetize your crochet blog you must become proficient with Pinterest.
This post contains affiliate links, which means I will make a commission at no extra cost to you should you click through and make a purchase.
Pinterest is the single most important way to drive big traffic to your crochet blog. And of course, targetted traffic is essential to earning an income from your blog.
As soon as I started properly using Pinterest pins and group boards to promote CrazyCoolCrochet.com and my Etsy shop, CrazyCoolCrochetUS, traffic to both sites soared! Which meant that income also soared!
When I made the decision to start a crochet blog I did my due diligence and did a lot of deep research. All of the super successful crochet blogs used Pinterest heavily to drive traffic to their blogs.
I learned that Pinterest is the mother lode for blog traffic! And especially so for crafting blogs. So I dug in and learned everything I could, as fast as I could, about Pinterest pins and group boards.
Pinterest traffic makes up the vast majority of the traffic to CrazyCoolCrochet.com. And it is the same scenario with other crafter blogs. And it’s free!
Since many crafters already use Pinterest they might believe they already have a good grasp on the platform. However, Pinterest for personal use and Pinterest for business are two very different things.
Pinterest Business Account
The first thing you need to do is set up a Pinterest business account. If you already have a personal account all you need to do is go to your settings page and switch it from personal to business. Done.
You might wonder, if it’s so easy to change my personal Pinterest account to a business Pinterest account, why even bother? What’s the point?
Claim your Blog with Pinterest
One of the advantages of having a business Pinterest account is the ability to “claim” your website or blog. Claiming your website (authenticating that you are the owner) allows your Pinterest pins to have additional info attached to the pin. Pinterest will show your profile pic, your account name, and the first several words of your pin description all in bold text below your pins. Cool eh?
Claiming your website with Pinterest also gives you access to analytics. That will come in handy when you are ready to delve deeper into your blog and research its success (or lack of). You will be able to see if your pins are reaching the “right” audience. You’ll see which pins are the most popular (getting the most saves/shares). That info is priceless! You can adjust your pin designs to achieve greater engagement (clicks to your blog or Etsy or Revelry for example).
How to Claim your Blog
Claim your crochet blog by following these instructions. If you are not technically inclined (or even if you are) it is easy to do this with a WordPress Plugin. I used Yoast SEO. The plugin adds the code for you.
- Log in to Pinterest from a web browser and click to open your menu
- Select Settings
- In the “Claim website” section, enter your website URL then click Claim
- Select “Add HTML tag”
- Copy the tag and click Next
- Go to the index.html file of your website and add the tag to the <head> section before the <body> section [this is where the plugin helps!]
- Go back to Pinterest and click Submit
Promote your Pinterest Pins
With a Pinterest business account, you can promote your pins for much greater visibility. This means you pay Pinterest to show your chosen pin to your designated target market within Pinterest.
You choose how much you want to spend and for how long. For example, when I first started on Pinterest, I believe it was week 3 of CrazyCoolCrochet.com, I experimented with this by paying a total of $59 (I chose this amount simply because it’s what I felt comfortable spending at the time) to have a pin promoted over 2 days. Traffic skyrocketed from 30 visitors a day to 900!
I tried it again about five weeks later. This time I only spent $30 for two days of promotion for this pin (still my most popular pin). It too achieved similar astounding results. This pin, a second variation and the YouTube video link (Pinterest pin) have resulted in thousands upon thousands of page views. The YouTube video alone has had almost 200,000 views! (I created a simple pin to link directly to the video.)
I plan to use promoted Pinterest Pins much more aggressively over time. The blogs I follow use promoted pins heavily to drive massive traffic to their blogs. Those are the blogs that make upwards of $60,000 a month. Obviously, it works for them! [UPDATE: I never ran another ad. Totally unnecessary.]
Another reason to use Pinterest to drive traffic to your blog is that pins live on to time indefinite. They will be shared over and over, possibly for years to come! They basically take on a life of their own. In a good way! [UPDATE: Yep! This has continued to be the case years later!]
How to Create Awesome Pins
When I was studying Pinterest I learned right away that pins that got noticed and re-pinned (shared) were pins that were graphically interesting. I studied pins that captured my interest and created my pins similarly. And believe me, graphic design is the least of my skill set! Actually, it is NONE of my skills.
It was truly painful for me to create my first pins. I spent HOURS and DAYS learning. First I tried Canva because I read that a lot of bloggers use that program. I could not make heads or tails of it. Then I tried PicMonkey and I found that much more intuitive. I can now shoot out a pin graphic in about 30 minutes or less. And they’re pretty good if I may say so myself. (Check out the graphics on the sidebar to the right of this page.)
Do take the time to create nice, interesting pins. It can make a huge difference
Pinterest Group Boards
Pinterest group boards are THE single most effective Pinterest success strategy currently available.
When you set up a Pinterest account you set up separate boards to hold and organize your various saved pins. For example, if you were saving crochet pins you might have a board for crochet hats and another board for crochet shawls and another for crochet baby blankets. For your personal Pinterest account you might have had a board for dream vacations or favorite recipes.
When you set up your business Pinterest account for your crochet blog you want to clean up your boards to have only crochet (and/or yarn, knitting, etc) related pins. Set up another personal account for your unrelated pins.
For Crazy Cool Crochet I won’t follow boards that have a mix of crochet and other unrelated boards. The reason is that I don’t want my Pinterest account flooded with unrelated, non-relevant pins. If a follower of mine has boards about Keto diets, something I have zero interest in, I don’t need or want to see those pins, so I won’t follow back.
Group boards are set up by individuals as a community of like minded pinners, of sorts. The group owner invites others to join their group. By joining relevant group boards you have a built in audience to view and share your pins. You, in turn, share their pins. If you find group boards that are active and have a good number of contributors your own traffic has the potential to grow much more rapidly.
You need to proactively search for the “right” group boards to join. Then you have to snag yourself an invitation. Keep in mind that a good half of group board owners don’t even respond back to requests. And each owner has their own specific criteria to request an invite. For example, some ask you to go their individual Pinterest account, follow them there, and request the invitation to join there. Others ask you to email them and they provide an email address. Some ask you to email them and don’t provide an email address. Yeah, thanks. What I do in a case like that (for a group board that I really, really want to join), is I go to their website/blog, look for the contact page and send my request that way.
The trick when you are first looking for group boards to join
Another important tactic for driving traffic to your crochet blog with Pinterest is using Tailwind.
[UPDATE: I have heard over the years that group boards are no longer relevant. WRONG! I still, again years later, post a new Pin whenever I have a new crochet design. Immediately upon posting to group boards they get pinned and shared!]
FRESH PINS!
In an effort to keep ’em coming back for more…Pinterest is giving preference to FRESH PINS.
Fresh pins, fresh images, fresh content…makes sense right? I know I get tired of seeing the same old same old day after day. Pinterest wants to keep the site fresh and awesome.
Does this mean you can never use the same pins? Or you can’t re-pin the same pins? Or you can’t use the same pages or posts as your destination links?
What Pinterest would like us to do is use fresh, new pins. New photos. New images. They can be directed to existing content (posts), however, fresh content is certainly encouraged.
I’ve started doing this by using existing photos that I had never used for pins previously and link them to existing content on this blog. I did that right away because it was the simplest way to create FRESH PINS. The first pin (below) was an older pin. Below that is a FRESH PIN. They both go to the same original post.
We are allowed to keep pinning “old” pins; but it is no longer best practice. Pinterest will be “pushing” fresh pins much more.
And of course, I continue to create fresh content, new designs and patterns which in turn calls for FRESH PINS. Win, win!
And of course I use Tailwind to schedule all these fresh, awesome pins in the easiest, most efficient way possible!
Tailwind for Pinterest
This post would be incomplete without a big shout out to Tailwind. As a matter of fact, Tailwind for Pinterest is SO vitally important to your blog’s success that it will get a major post of its own.
To pique your interest, I’ll provide a quick overview of what Tailwind is and how you use it.
Tailwind is a program that schedules pins for you. What’s so great about that? Once you start pinning for your crochet blog you will find that you are spending quite a lot of time creating and scheduling pins.
Once you start joining several groups you will find that they all have their own specific rules. Some allow repinning at will. Others don’t allow repinning of the same pin at all. Others want you to wait 4 weeks before repinning. Trying to juggle all the particulars can get really tricky and TIME CONSUMING!
Some group owners are extremely strict and will remove you from the group if you break a rule. I started keeping a spreadsheet trying to keep the pins and boards straight. It was even more work!
I had read a lot of great reviews and recommendations for Tailwind. So I gave it a shot.
It really did make a difference immediately! So much so that I am wholeheartedly recommending Tailwind as a MUST HAVE, MUST USE program! All the Tailwind detail can be found here:
Tailwind for Pinterest Drives Massive Traffic
More info to help you start a blog:
How to Monetize with Pinterest
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