If you sell printables, planners, templates, checklists or rebranded PLR ebooks, Pinterest deserves a spot in your traffic plan. People use it to search for ideas and save them for later, and your pins can keep sending visitors to your site long after you publish them.
This guide walks through a simple, sustainable setup. Everything about how Pinterest works is based on Pinterest’s own business and help pages, linked at the end. We’ll skip the hacks and focus on what the platform says it rewards.
Why Pinterest suits digital products
Pinterest describes distribution as being driven by engagement: searches, saves and other interactions help it decide which content is relevant to show. Its help center also says there’s no set engagement window for pins, so older pins can still pick up engagement long after they go live. For digital product sellers, that matters. A pin for a meal-planning printable or a social media template pack can keep working for months.
Pinterest also notes that seasons, holidays, location and trending topics affect engagement, and that relevant pins can resurface seasonally. If you sell holiday planners, gift-guide templates or New Year goal-setting workbooks, Pinterest is one of the few channels where last year’s content can come back around.
Step 1: Set up a business account
A Pinterest business account is free. According to Pinterest, it gives you access to the Business Hub and Pinterest Analytics, and lets you run ads if you ever want to.
You have two options:
- Convert your personal account. Your pins and followers stay the same. Business accounts are public, so a private account has to be switched to public first. Pinterest says you can switch back at any time.
- Create a new business account with an email address that isn’t already tied to a Pinterest account. Pinterest says this has to be done on a desktop device.
If your personal account is full of unrelated pins, starting fresh is usually cleaner. If it already has a following in your niche, converting keeps that audience.
Step 2: Claim your website
Claiming your website connects your domain to your Pinterest account. Pinterest says that when someone saves an image from a claimed site, your profile picture appears with the pin, the pin links to your profile, and people see an option to follow you. You also get insight into how often your content is shared on Pinterest.
The requirements are worth reading carefully:
- You must own the domain, subdomain or subpath and be able to edit its source code.
- Most marketplace stores, such as Etsy, eBay and Amazon, can’t be claimed.
- A website can be claimed by only one Pinterest account.
Pinterest offers a few verification methods: adding an HTML tag to your site’s head section, uploading an HTML file to your root folder, or adding a DNS TXT record (which Pinterest says can take up to 72 hours). Some accounts can also verify through Google Merchant Center. On WordPress, check whether your SEO plugin has a field for a verification tag before editing theme files by hand.
This is one more reason to have your own site, even if you also sell on a marketplace. You can claim your blog and send pins to blog posts or product pages you control.
Step 3: Turn on rich pins
Rich pins pull information from your site and show it on the pin. Pinterest lists three types:
- Article pins show the headline, description and author of a blog post.
- Product pins show current pricing, availability and product details.
- Recipe pins show details like ingredients and cook time.
For most PLR sellers, article pins (for blog posts) and product pins (for product pages) are the relevant ones. Pinterest says they work through Open Graph or Schema.org markup in your page’s head section. If you use an SEO or shop plugin, check whether it already adds Open Graph tags; you may only need to confirm they’re present.
A few details from Pinterest’s rules matter here. Product details only appear if the product is in stock, the price is accurate and the data was updated recently. Listicles and image-heavy pages with very little text don’t count as articles. And Pinterest says it can take up to 24 hours for rich pin data to sync.
Step 4: Plan your boards around search
Pinterest recommends organizing pins into boards with clear, descriptive titles that help with search. It also recommends using keywords in pin titles, descriptions, and board titles and descriptions.
Think about what your buyer types into the search bar, not what you call your products internally. A few examples:
- Instead of “Freebies,” try “Free Printable Planner Pages.”
- Instead of “Course Stuff,” try “Online Course Planning Templates.”
- Instead of “Email Swipes,” try “Email Marketing Templates for Small Business.”
Start with five to ten focused boards. Each one should match a clear topic you can keep filling with fresh pins.
Step 5: Create pins that match the landing page
Pinterest’s distribution guidance repeatedly comes back to one idea: the pin and the page it links to should match. Its help center recommends that a pin’s images, text and keywords line up with the landing page, and that you link to pages clearly related to the pin. It also asks you to check that links aren’t broken and that your domain loads in under four seconds.
For the creative itself, Pinterest’s guidance says:
- Use a vertical format. Pinterest recommends a 2:3 aspect ratio for images, and 15 to 60 seconds for videos.
- Use sharp, high-quality images. Blurry or distorted media is harder for Pinterest to understand.
- Add a call to action. Pinterest says more saves and follows increase how widely content appears.
- Create content in your audience’s language, since language affects distribution.
What to show on a digital product pin
Because buyers can’t hold a digital product, show what they’ll actually get. Good options include a mockup of a few planner pages on a desk, a preview of a checklist with the title clearly visible, a collage of template designs, or a short video flipping through an ebook. Make sure any preview images come from the product itself and that your PLR license allows you to use them in marketing. Most do, but check.
Link each pin to the most specific page possible. A pin for a budget planner should go to the budget planner page or a blog post about budgeting with that planner featured, not your shop’s homepage.
Step 6: Publish fresh pins consistently
Pinterest’s business guidance recommends creating new original pins at least once a week. Its help center adds that you should publish your own new content rather than saving other people’s pins, and warns that repeatedly saving the same pins or re-uploading existing content may be flagged as spam and lead to a temporary block on creating pins.
That has two practical consequences:
- Make new designs, don’t recycle. If you want more pins for one product, create genuinely different images: a different page preview, a new angle, a video, or a pin that targets a different keyword.
- Use the built-in scheduler. Pinterest says you can schedule pins up to two weeks in advance. Batch-create a set of pins once every week or two, then schedule them out.
Pinterest also mentions that you can create pins in bulk, connect a product feed to create a pin for each product, or link an RSS feed so new images from your site become pins. If you publish blog posts regularly, the RSS option can save time. Just make sure your featured images are vertical-friendly, or create separate pin images.
Step 7: Use analytics to decide what to make next
Pinterest Analytics shows metrics such as impressions, saves, save rate, pin clicks, outbound clicks and outbound click rate. Video pins add view and play-time metrics. Pinterest says you can look at custom date ranges within the past year and a half, and the overview page defaults to the last 30 days.
For a digital product seller, outbound clicks are the metric to watch most closely, because they measure people actually leaving Pinterest for your site. Saves are a useful early signal that a topic resonates, even before clicks pick up.
A simple monthly review works well:
- Sort your pins by outbound clicks for the last 30 or 90 days.
- Note which topics and pin styles show up at the top.
- Create more fresh pins on those topics, and consider building related products or lead magnets.
- Check your landing pages for the top pins. Make sure they load quickly and make the next step obvious, whether that’s a purchase or an email sign-up.
A simple weekly routine
If you only have an hour or two a week, try this:
- Pick one product or blog post to promote.
- Create three to five new pins with different images and keyword angles.
- Write a clear, keyword-rich title and description for each.
- Schedule them across the next one or two weeks.
- Once a month, review analytics and adjust.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Linking pins to a generic homepage. Pinterest wants the pin and the landing page to match.
- Pinning the same image over and over. Pinterest says this may be flagged as spam.
- Using wide, horizontal images. Pinterest recommends 2:3 vertical.
- Ignoring load speed. Pinterest’s own guidance mentions loading in under four seconds.
- Using preview images your license doesn’t allow. Check your PLR terms before you design pins.
Pinterest rewards patience more than bursts of activity. Set up your account properly, publish fresh pins every week, and let the older ones keep working in the background.
Sources
- Pinterest Help: Pin performance and distribution
- Pinterest Business: How to create Pins for business
- Pinterest Help: Get a business account
- Pinterest Help: Claim your website
- Pinterest Help: Create rich Pins
- Pinterest Help: Review Pinterest Analytics
Featured image: Photo: StockSnap (CC0)