Yes, you can monetize Pinterest, but the money doesn't come from Pinterest itself. Every route in Pinterest's own guide to making money on Pinterest has someone else paying: brands through partnerships you disclose with the paid partnership tool, retailers through affiliate links and product tags, and your own customers when Pins send traffic to a site, shop or membership you run. The one program that paid creators for engagement goals, Creator Rewards, closed in 2022.
This guide sets out each route the way Pinterest documents it: who pays, what you need and where the setting lives, followed by a 30-day setup checklist. It was checked against Pinterest's help center, creator site and policy pages on 1 October 2026. If you promote an adult subscription page, read our Pinterest rules for OnlyFans creators first, because the content and link limits there are narrower than anything below.
Pinterest earning routes at a glance
The table lists every route we found in Pinterest's current creator and help pages. The availability column repeats what the source page says and nothing more; where a page names no country limit, the table says so instead of guessing.
| Route | Who pays you | What you need | Where it is set up | Availability as published | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paid partnership with a brand | The brand, on terms the two of you agree outside Pinterest | A free business profile, which Pinterest's creator FAQ requires, and a brand willing to approve your tag | Pinterest app only: Advanced settings, then Add paid partnership label | The help page lists no country limit; some options depend on the account owner's age | Paid partnerships help |
| Affiliate links in Pins | The retailer or affiliate network, at the commission it sets | Acceptance into a program and a unique link to a product page | The destination link field when creating or editing a Pin | Set by each program; Pinterest names Rakuten, LTK, ShopStyle and Amazon Associates US as official partners | Affiliate link guide |
| Product tags on your Pins | Retailers, when the tag carries your affiliate link | Products already on Pinterest, or a retailer product page to link | Tag products, while creating or editing a Pin | US, CA, UK, DE, FR, IT, ES, AT, CH, NL, AU, BR, MX and JP | Affiliate link guide |
| Traffic to your own site, shop or membership | Your customers, readers or subscribers | A destination you control; Pinterest's terms require a business account for commercial use | Pin links, your profile website and a claimed domain | No country list; the spam and link rules in the Community Guidelines apply | Terms of Service |
| Idea ads with paid partnership | The brand pays Pinterest for reach; your fee comes from your deal | A published Pin carrying the paid partnership label | The brand's Ads Manager; creators cannot promote these Pins themselves | Wherever the brand can buy Pinterest ads | Paid partnerships help |
| Creator Rewards | Pinterest, while the program ran | Nothing to apply for now | Closed | Ended on November 30, 2022, according to the help-page note TechCrunch quoted | TechCrunch |
Brand partnerships through the paid partnership tool
Pinterest's help page on paid partnerships for creators defines the arrangement as content a creator makes with a brand they have a material connection with, set up between the two of them outside Pinterest. Its creator resources page says the same thing from the money side: you set up payment terms directly with the brand. Pinterest supplies the disclosure label and the ad product, not the contract or the payment.
The tool has more fixed rules than most creators expect:
- It works only in the Pinterest app, under Advanced settings when you create the Pin.
- You can tag one brand per Pin, and the approval request reaches the brand after you publish.
- Until the brand approves, the label appears without the brand's name; a brand that isn't on Pinterest never appears by name, though the label still discloses the deal.
- If the brand declines, the label comes off and you cannot tag that brand on the same Pin again.
- The label cannot be added after a Pin is published, and once you remove a tag it cannot be added back.
- Only the brand partner can promote a labeled Pin, as an Idea ad with paid partnership; if the partnership is removed, the ad is archived.
The practical consequence is that the label has to be planned before you tap Create. If you also run sponsored posts on Facebook, the same discipline applies there: our Facebook branded content tool guide explains why a forgotten tag can't be added after publishing on that platform either. Pinterest does not set rates or take a cut, so the fee is yours to negotiate; our guide to brand deals for small creators covers how to approach that conversation.
Affiliate links and product tags
Pinterest's affiliate link guide is blunt that Pinterest isn't part of the affiliate agreement: you join a network, the network or merchant sets the commission, and Pinterest only hosts the Pin. The link should go straight to a shop's product detail page, and the Pin's title and description should match what the visitor finds there. The detailed rules, including disclosure and the shorteners Pinterest blocks, are in our guide to Pinterest affiliate link rules, and choosing programs in the first place is covered in affiliate marketing for creators.
Product tags put shoppable items in the Shop the Look area beneath a Pin, and Pinterest's money guide suggests pairing them with affiliate links so one Pin can carry several earning links. The limit depends on which page you read. Pinterest's guide to creating Pins says you can add up to five product tags per Pin, while the business article on tagging products in your Pins says up to 24 related products. The second figure sits in a merchant context tied to collections ads, so creators should plan around the first.
Sending Pinterest traffic to your own offers
The least visible route is a Pin that answers a search and links to your own blog, shop, course or membership. Pinterest's money guide names subscriptions, membership sign-ups and product pages as destinations worth driving traffic to. Two rules shape it. The Terms of Service say that if you use Pinterest for commercial purposes, you must create a business account and agree to the Business Terms of Service. And the Commercial and Branded Content Guidelines treat anything that promotes goods or services, organic Pins included, as commercial content subject to the Community Guidelines.
Link quality matters as much as the offer. Pinterest blocks links that redirect, mislead or spam, and asks that a Pinner be able to anticipate where a link goes. Claiming your domain links Pins saved from your site back to your profile and adds them to your analytics; our guide to the Pinterest business account walks through claiming a website. If the offer is a guide, template or course, our piece on selling digital products as a creator covers the shop side.
What happened to Creator Rewards
Creator Rewards was the exception to the rule that Pinterest doesn't pay creators. As TechCrunch reported when it closed, the program paid creators for content built around monthly prompts that hit engagement goals, and Pinterest's help page announced it would end on November 30, 2022. That English help article now redirects to the help center home page, so the closure is documented today mainly through reporting and Pinterest's own forum.
In a Pinterest Business Community answer from February 2023, a Pinterest staff member said the company had discontinued Creator Rewards to focus on features open to more creators, naming the paid partnership tool, product tagging with affiliate links and Pinterest TV. None of the current creator or help pages we read describe a program that pays per view, per save or per follower. Treat any offer that promises Pinterest payouts for engagement with suspicion until you can find it on a pinterest.com page.
A 30-day Pinterest monetization setup checklist
This is a setup schedule, not a forecast: it gets each route switched on and measurable within a month, and what it earns depends on your niche, your offers and your audience.
- Days 1 to 3: create a business account or convert your personal one, and complete the profile name, bio and website fields.
- Days 3 to 5: claim the domain you will send traffic to, using the HTML tag, HTML file or DNS TXT method Pinterest offers.
- Days 5 to 7: decide which routes you will test first and write down the destination each one will use.
- Week 2: apply to an affiliate program Pinterest supports, and read that program's own disclosure and linking terms before you pin anything.
- Week 2: build boards for the topics you plan to monetize, giving each a specific title and description, using our Pinterest SEO worksheet.
- Week 2: publish Pins that link straight to product pages, and try product tags if your country is on Pinterest's list.
- Week 3: refresh your media kit with Pinterest audience data and pitch brands whose products you already pin, starting from our media kit template.
- Week 3: for any agreed partnership, create the Pin in the app with Add paid partnership label switched on before publishing.
- Week 4: review saves, outbound clicks and impressions Pin by Pin, using our Pinterest analytics glossary to read them.
- Week 4: open every destination link, fix any that have broken, and note which route produced clicks to a page that can actually earn.
Limitations of this Pinterest earnings guide
This guide describes the routes Pinterest documents as of 1 October 2026; it does not estimate what any of them pays, because Pinterest's creator pages give no earnings figures and commissions are set by brands and affiliate programs. Pinterest's pages also disagree in places, such as the five-tag and 24-product limits above, and features roll out by country and account age, so check the current help page if a setting is missing.
The route table covers Pinterest's rules only. Affiliate programs have their own terms, and disclosure law depends on where you and your audience live, so read your program agreement and the advertising rules that apply to you, and ask an accountant how platform and affiliate income is taxed where you live.