How to Make Money on Pinterest in 2026

Lately, I've been seeing a lot of conversations online about how to make money on Pinterest. Unfortunately, so much of what I've been seeing has been scammy, predatory, and - quite frankly - straight up not true. So I've decided to set the record straight here on my blog!

There are a handful of ways to make money on Pinterest in 2026, and none of them are a "get rich quick" type situation. But let's dive into all your options.

Affiliate marketing

If you've seen the threads I've been seeing lately that oversimplify how to make money on Pinterest, this is probably the avenue they're actually talking about.

You sign up with a platform like ShopMy or LTK or Amazon Affiliates, make pins advertising products, and link the products through the pins. When people buy through your pins, you earn a commission.

While it sounds (and, frankly is) simple, that doesn't mean it's easy! This is a fairly saturated industry (especially since most people default to fashion, beauty products, and home decor when they do this) and can take some real time and effort to make progress and see success.

Selling a product

If you have a product to sell, whether it's a digital product or a physical product, Pinterest is a great place to market your goods.

From pinning to blog posts about your product to pinning images of your product, this is classic Pinterest marketing and a solid way to get more traffic to your website/shop.

Selling a service

This is the bread and butter of what I do for my clients: market their services on Pinterest.

It's a very similar process to marketing a product, and I find the best way is through a marketing funnel that starts with Pinterest pin to blog post. Getting people to sign up for your email list is also a great way to capture the new eyes from Pinterest and keep them in a place to nurture until they're ready to buy.

At the end of the day, how to make money on Pinterest is actually not how it sounds.

You're using Pinterest to make money, but Pinterest is not what pays you. It's a marketing tool that takes real strategy and time to see success.

So the next time you see someone bragging about the thousands of dollars they've made on Pinterest, and how all you need to do is buy their guide that tells you how you, too, can wake up to tons of sales notifications, remember that they're probably showing screenshots from their sales of this guide they're trying to get you to buy. And Pinterest isn't the one sending the payments. (If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is!!)