Best Digital Products To Sell On Pinterest
Bonus Guide: 50 Best Pinterest Tips
This blog post is for any female small business owner who wants to increase revenue, and do so through the sale of digital products.
Whether you’re offering eBooks, online courses, templates, or digital art, Pinterest provides a great space where you can reach an engaged audience who are actively searching for inspiration and solutions.
If you’re wondering how to leverage Pinterest to sell digital products, this post is for you.
Understanding Pinterest as a Marketing Platform
Pinterest operates like a visual search engine, where users (also known as Pinners) discover and save ideas they love.
Unlike social media platforms, Pinterest is intent-driven.
That means people go to Pinterest to find inspiration, to plan projects, and, more importantly, to find things to buy.
This makes Pinterest an ideal platform to sell your digital products through.
One of the ways digital products have an edge, is that they’re instantly accessible.
There’s no shipping, and no physical inventory involved.
Your digital assets can be delivered straight to your customer, and you can get revenue straight to your bank.
How You Sell Digital Products On Pinterest
You won’t be able to sell your digital assets right inside Pinterest, because Pinterest is a gateway, rather than an e-commerce space.
However, Pinterest offers massive opportunity to drive organic traffic to your digital products.
Those digital products can be sold on any e-commerce or marketing platform of your choice, including Shopify, Etsy, Ravelry, or on a standalone website with a digital product selling portal (for example I use Surecart inside WordPress).
When you use Pinterest as part of your digital product selling strategy, over time you can get thousands and thousands of organic outbound clicks from Pinterest to your digital products, increasing the opportunity to make more sales.
Effective Strategies for Selling Digital Products
When it comes to using Pinterest to drive traffic to your digital products, strategy is everything, so here are some core Pinterest tips to follow, to give your digital products the best chance of selling via Pinterest.
- Create High-Quality Pins For Your Digital Products: Your Pins on Pinterest are the shop window to your products.
Your pin images need to be visually appealing, clear, and directly related to your digital offerings.
Having great images and text overlay on your pins can help them stand out, and immediately tell your audience what the pin is for.
Your goal with any of your Pinterest pins is to invest enough time in creating scroll stopping pins your audience will love. - Consistent Branding: Use your brand colors, fonts, and logo on your Pins.
This not only builds brand recognition, but also creates a better experience for your audience.
Doing this over time helps your audience learn and more easily notice and connect with the pins you post. - Link Optimized Product Pages/Listings: Every Pin should lead back to a product page or a listing that is optimized for conversions.
This means great product titles, compelling product descriptions, clear CTAs, and easy navigation on all the products you sell.
Whether you sell on a standalone website, an ecommerce platform like Shopify, or a marketplace platform like Etsy – wherever you lead people from your pins, those landing/product pages need to connect with your audience, and also work for the platform you’re using. - Engage with Your Audience: Whilst it’s not really known as a platform for social engagement, Pinterest users do still engage with pins inside the platform by saving pins, liking pins and commenting on pins.
Always be sure to engage with your followers by responding to any comments and questions they pop in your pin comments.
This helps to connect you as a human to your audience inside Pinterest.
SEO Techniques for Digital Sellers on Pinterest
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) isn’t just for Google; it’s essential for Pinterest too.
Pinterest SEO focuses on using relevant keywords on your Pin images, pin titles, pin descriptions and board titles, to help make your content discoverable.
- Keyword Research: Start by researching what your target audience is searching for on Pinterest.
Use Pinterest’s search bar to see what terms auto-populate when you start typing search terms (keywords). When you know what your audience is searching for, the goal is to create pins, lead magnets, digital assets, services that relate to those searches.
Tools like Pinterest Trends or Pinterest Analytics can also provide insights into popular search terms.
Everything you do on Pinterest should start with good keyword research, as those keywords are the primary strategy Pinterest uses to connect your pins with the searches people are performing inside the platform. - Pin Titles: Incorporate your primary keywords as part of your pin titles to help Pinterest learn what your pins are about.
- Pin Descriptions: Incorporate best primary keywords naturally within your Pin descriptions, this helps Pinterest’s algorithm understand what your pins are about, to show them to the right people searching in the platform.
Don’t keyword-stuff anywhere on your Pinterest account. Pinterest may penalise you for doing this. Instead, aim for clear, engaging, and informative pin titles and pin descriptions that encourage users to click through to the url attached to each pin. - Hashtags: Although once relevant, at the time of writing this post, hashtags have become irrelevant on Pinterest, simply because Pinterest indexes your pins based on the keywords you use.
Digital Product Ideas
Online Courses: A Growing Trend
Online courses are one of the best digital products to create.
With the rise of e-learning, more people are turning to online courses to acquire new skills from the comfort of their homes.
Pinterest users are no exception – they’re actively searching for educational content inside the platform, making Pinterest a goldmine for course creators.
Creating digital courses as part of your online business strategy, can help increase the revenue you make.
A great part of creating and selling online courses is that you can make once, and sell on repeat, saving you time, but making you more money.
Tips for Selling Online Courses on Pinterest:
- Create a Freebie or Lead Magnet: Offer a mini-course, checklist, or free lesson to get people on your email list. This way, you can nurture those leads to encourage them to purchase your full digital course.
Pinterest is a great space to pin to your lead magnets – pushing people to your mailing list, so that you can connect more deeply with your email list subscribers and sell your digital products to them.
Selling through your list should be core to your revenue success as a small business owner. - Pin Educational Content: Share snippets of your course content, infographics, or tips related to your course topic to get Pinterest users interested.
This positions you as an expert and draws in potential students.
A great way to do this is to share snippets through blog posts, YouTube videos or podcasts – where you are then able to give CTA’s to your broader digital course.
Remember when you do this, don’t give away the full content of your course in your snippets, make sure you pin to your snippets if they are on blog posts, YouTube videos or podcasts, or add a url to your pin to take people to the landing page for your course if the snippet you are sharing is on the pin itself. - Create A Mid Way Point: One of the key ways to turn Pinterest users into purchasers of your digital courses, is to have a mid way point where you’re able to share tips and educational content to really get your audience excited about your courses. I’ve mentioned this above, but it it’s important enough to repeat.
The best way to create a Mid Way Point is through a blog, a podcast or a YouTube channel.
In those spaces you have the ability to really showcase your expertise on a much deeper level than you can just on your pins alone, and this increases the chances of your audience then wanting to take the next step with you, to invest in your digital products.
This can be pivotal to your success in selling digital products via Pinterest.
eBooks: Captivating Readers Digitally
eBooks are another popular digital product that sells well via Pinterest.
Whether it’s a guide, a workbook, or a full-length book, if you’ve got knowledge to share, packaging it as an eBook can be highly profitable.
Strategies for eBook Sales on Pinterest:
- Create a Series of Pins: Instead of just one Pin for your eBook, create a series of Pins that highlight different aspects of the content. Don’t give everything away on your pins – they are there to entice people to take action, not to give them the whole enchilada so they don’t then have to progress to buying your digital asset.
One Pin could focus on a specific chapter, while another pin could showcase reader testimonials.
With all your Pinterest strategy you should pin consistently over the longer term to each of your urls – including those pins that lead to your ebooks. - Offer a Free Chapter: Give away the first chapter or an exclusive excerpt to entice readers.
You can do this via your blog post, podcast or YouTube channel, or you could create smaller chunks of information from a chapter to go on multiple pins.
Templates: Streamlining Creativity
Templates are a lifesaver for busy entrepreneurs, bloggers, and creatives. They’re a huge seller online.
Whether it’s social media graphics, website layouts, or business planners, templates are in high demand on Pinterest.
There has been an explosion of template based resources being sold via Pinterest – and that’s because people want and need them.
I’ve created a variety on Pinterest pin templates that have always sold well.
How to Sell Templates Successfully:
- Demonstrate Value: Create before-and-after Pins that show how your templates can transform a project or workflow.
- Bundle Templates: Offer bundles of related templates to increase your average order value.
For example, a social media template bundle could include Instagram post templates, stories, and highlights. - Leverage Seasonal Trends: Create and promote templates around holidays or seasonal events.
For example, launch a set of Christmas-themed Pinterest templates people can use to capture the festive audience.
To make seasonal content a success on Pinterest, you should be pinning to your themed templates at least 4-6 months before the seasonal event.
Checklist, Bullet Point Guides, Flash Cards
Selling checklists, bullet point guides and flash cards can be great digital products for your online business.
People are short on time. They want easy to absorb content and products that add value quickly to their daily lives.
Creating speedy checklists, guides and flashcards for your audience can be a great way to create passive income for your business.
How to Sell Checklists, Bullet Point Guides and Flashcards
- Remember the digital products you create have to have value to your audience. Make them about them, not about you.
- Those digital products need to be easy to access, download and use. You should have bonus trainings that show how to use these digital assets in the best way – this can help inform buying decisions, and help your digital assets stand out from competition.
- You can create checklists, bullet point guides and flashcards for free on platforms like Google Drive and Notion.so.
- Creating some blog posts, YouTube videos or podcasts where you’re showcasing snippets of these digital products and how they give value to your audience can help people make the decision to buy.
Pros and Cons of Selling Digital Goods
Selling digital products comes with its own set of pros and cons:
Pros
- Low Overhead Costs: No need for inventory or shipping.
- Scalability: Once created, digital products can be sold unlimited times, creating great passive income streams for your business.
- Global Market: Sell to anyone, anywhere, anytime in unlimited supply.
Cons
- High Competition: Digital products can be easily replicated or undercut, you need to figure out how to make your products unique and of great value to your audience.
- Intellectual Property Issues: There’s always a risk of your products being copied or shared illegally. Whilst you can never entirely prevent this happening, the more you make your products your version, in your unique way, the harder it is to copy and use.
- Marketing Dependence: Success relies heavily on your ability to drive traffic and convert leads. This is why Pinterest is so valuable for selling your digital assets – the organic traffic you can get from the platform can easily surpass anything you achieve on social media platforms and in other spaces.
Creating Eye-Catching Visuals for Pinterest
Pinterest is a visual platform, so your Pins need to pop! Here’s how to ensure your digital products stand out:
- Use High-Quality Images: Grainy or poorly-lit photos won’t cut it.
Invest in good photography, high-quality mockups, or good stock images for your Pins. Original images will always trump stock images on Pinterest. - Use Text Overlays: Clear, bold text on your pins, using simple, easy to read fonts can help your audience quickly understand what your pin is about. Think of this as your ‘hook’ to entice people to click through to your pin.
- Follow the 2:3 Aspect Ratio: Pinterest recommends a 2:3 aspect ratio for Pins (e.g., 1000×1500 pixels). This format performs best in user feeds. It’s also a better size of pin that gives you enough space to add great images and some text overlay. Don’t go larger than this size for your pins.
Building a Consistent Posting Schedule
Consistency is essential on Pinterest.
You should be pinning daily, using fresh pins, and introducing fresh content to the platform to keep your profile active.
Doing this signals to Pinterest’s algorithm that your account is active and relevant, which can boost your visibility.
You should not only pin to digital assets, other products, services and lead magnets.
You should also have strategy to pin to content based platforms to help showcase you and your business – primary to this should be either a blog, a podcast or a YouTube channel.
- Develop a Content Calendar: You can plan your content weeks or even months in advance. You can schedule pins inside Pinterest up to two weeks in advance. External schedulers will allow you to schedule content over longer periods of time.
- Scheduling Tools: Tools like Tailwind or Later allow you to schedule Pins in advance. This ensures that your content goes live at optimal times, even when you’re busy with other tasks.
Scheduling tools also help you maintain a consistent posting frequency, which is critical for growth. I normally take one time blocked hour each week to schedule all my pins for the week ahead, but of course, you can schedule for longer periods of time ahead than this.
Analyzing Pinterest Analytics for Growth
Pinterest Analytics are your best friend when it comes to refining your strategy and driving growth.
Regularly analyzing your metrics will help you understand what’s working, and where there’s room for improvement.
- Monitor Key Metrics: Pay attention to metrics like impressions, saves, and outbound clicks.
Impressions show how many times your Pins have been seen, saves indicate engagement, and outbound clicks tell you how many people are visiting the url attached to each of your pins.
High impressions with low pin clicks or outbound clicks may suggest that your Pins are visually appealing, but may lack compelling CTAs or descriptions.
Your goal is to keep an eye on the top performing pins that get the most outbound clicks.
This shows the type of pin, content, product or service that is getting the greatest traction on the platform.
You should take that feedback to refine your strategy, to do more of that type of pin, content, product or service that is working best.
Conclusion
Pinterest as a platform is a hugely powerful tool you can use to sell digital products.
Your strategy is not just about creating beautiful Pins – it’s about understanding your audience, optimizing your content to appeal to your audience in the platform, staying consistent in your pinning strategy, and doing more of what’s working by keeping an eye on your metrics.
If you’re prepared to stay with your Pinterest strategy for the longer term, you will see not only organic traffic from Pinterest to your digital products, but you will see an increase in sales and revenue from those assets.
It’s perfectly achievable to create a full-time income from selling digital assets via Pinterest, but you absolutely need good Pinterest strategy to do so.
There are millions of active users inside Pinterest who are your potential customers, looking for products and services to buy, looking for inspo, ideas and support.
Your goal as a content creator and online business owner is to deliver the content ideas, digital products and other products (such as physical products), your audience wants and needs.
When you do this Pinterest will become a hugely powerful platform to get your digital products in front of a larger audience, to encourage them to become engaged users with your pins, that will ultimately lead to digital product sales over the longer term.
If you’re a digital product business, and you want more information about how to use Pinterest to really scale your online business organically, I have some great blog posts you can read, that go deeper into core Pinterest strategy. Find those posts through the RELATED POSTS section below.
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