How to Become a Pinterest Manager & Travel the World – Step-by-Step Beginner’s Guide

Did you know that you earn extra money on Pinterest? Play your cards right and you can pin your way around the world. The secret is to become a Pinterest manager, and it’s not as hard as you might think.

If you love Pinterest and want to move your relationship beyond meal planning and tattoo ideas, see if a Pinterest manager business could be your perfect vehicle to freedom.

What is a Pinterest Manager?

A Pinterest manager is a marketer who uploads content onto Pinterest on behalf of a brand. Pinterest marketers have a lot in common with social media marketers, but there are key differences. Pinterest marketers make graphics (pins) and also have to optimize them for search (AKA search engine optimization/SEO) while maintaining an account that follows all current best practices.

A Pinterest manager can also be referred to as any of these terms:

• Pinterest virtual assistant business (PVA)
• Pinterest manager services
• Freelance Pinterest manager
• Social media manager who also covers Pinterest

This is important to know: a Pinterest manager is NOT employed by Pinterest. You work in a freelancer or agency capacity, running your Pinterest management business independently of the platform itself.

Is it Hard to be a Pinterest Manager?

Pinterest management is more stressful than hard. When problems arise with an account (the most common problem being the Pinterest spam blocker), you have to handle the problem itself while also communicating what’s happening to your client, which can feel very overwhelming.

But generally speaking, it’s pretty simple to be a Pinterest manager once you understand Pinterest and have your systems for managing your workload in place. If you’re disorganized or struggle with the basics of how to use Pinterest, being a Pinterest manager is going to be very difficult for you.

For those who enjoy:

• Making graphics
• Staying in communication with clients via email
• Tracking uploads and analytics
• Being ahead of their workload

…Pinterest might be the perfect fit!

Here’s my story of becoming a Pinterest manager in 2020.

How I Became a Pinterest Manager

There are a thousand ways to earn money online, but offering Pinterest management services is my favorite.

My digital nomad lifestyle wasn’t always funded this way. In 2017 when I became a digital nomad, I was a freelance writer. Later I tried freelance graphic design and eventually gave Pinterest and SEO coaching a shot too, but Pinterest management is my favorite income source for traveling.

That’s because it’s:

• Batchable. You can make months’ worth of pins at one time
• Schedulable. I schedule pins for my clients every Sunday, but some Pinterest managers only do this once a month.
• Beneficial for my own brand. Pinterest is a major part of my blog’s traffic, so by staying on top of trends for clients, I also help my own brand.

I didn’t decisively pursue Pinterest management, though. During covid lockdown, I stumbled into this type of income.

My own Pinterest account was reaching millions of people per month, and I was working as a nanny while I grew my blog. Childcare was shut down in March 2020, and out of boredom, I started answering people’s Pinterest questions in Facebook groups. 

One day after answering a bunch of Pinterest questions, someone point-blank asked me: “could I pay you to run my account?” 

The thought had never crossed my mind, but I had no income and dwindling savings so I needed to give it a try.

The learning curve of becoming a Pinterest manager never really stops (since Pinterest constantly changes) but it’s been the most stable form of remote work income that I’ve experienced.

Are you nodding your head? Here are the first steps you need to take to become a Pinterest manager.

 

How to Become a Pinterest Manager

In order to start making money as a Pinterest manager, you first have to learn the ins and outs of Pinterest.

Step 1: Learn Pinterest Marketing

Pop quiz: Pinterest is a social media platform.

True or false?

False! Pinterest is a visual search engine that’s just so cool it FEELS like Instagram’s cousin.

Just like with any new service or job, a lot of your learning will happen on the job, but you need to have the basics (like this) down in advance.

Part of the learning process that must happen ahead of time is getting to know the creator side of Pinterest. 

You can do this a couple of ways…

Start a Pinterest account yourself

This is the fast track to becoming a Pinterest manager.

If you have a website, set up your Pinterest business account and start publishing pins leading back to your:

✅ Blog posts 
✅ Products
✅ Freebies
✅ Services pages

❌ But never the homepage – this can get your Pinterest account suspended
❌ Also don’t create content leading back to other social media accounts. Pinterest wants to keep users on its platform, not send them to competing social media platforms

Anyone without a website can create idea pins, a type of short-form content that builds your presence on the platform without leading back to a URL that you own.

Take a Pinterest course

There are endless Pinterest courses available online, and after taking a bunch of them, there’s only one that I recommend:

Pinterest Popular by Nadalie Bardo.

This is an all-star resource for Pinterest newbies because it:

• Is routinely updated
• Has more than 24 hours of video content (hallo depth) as well as guided workbooks
• Starts at zero and builds all the way to scaling an account
• Includes spreadsheets, trackers, and templates so that you can make progress right away

It’s not specifically a Pinterest manager course, but it covers all aspects of Pinterest marketing and building a brand on the platform.

No budget for a Pinterest course right now? Start consuming recently-published or updated blog posts and YouTube videos on the subject of Pinterest marketing for beginners.

Whichever path you choose…

Become a Pinterest student

Your learning journey will not end when you land your first Pinterest client. In reality, it’ll never stop because Pinterest changes every single month. 

And this is actually to your advantage because that’s WHY people hire Pinterest managers in the first place!

Accept and appreciate the constant learning process. This is the only way you’ll become a successful Pinterest manager.

Step 2: Develop your Offer

Instead of charging per hour, most Pinterest managers will charge per package (also called an offering). 

Harvard Business Review describes a business’s offering as “effectively meeting the needs and desires” of its target audience.

An easy way to think of this is to look at your Pinterest management offer like a menu: what’s on offer for your clients?

When it comes to Pinterest management, this list can include:

• Auditing a Pinterest account (my personal favorite) 
• Creating unique pin designs
• Doing keyword research
• Publishing and scheduling pins
• Tracking account stats and pin performance
• Managing Tailwind Communities
• Following and advising on Pinterest Trends

My advice? See what other people offer, think about what you’re willing to offer, then make a first draft and see how it goes.

Don’t etch your offerings into stone. Clients making special requests can help you stumble across your best new package or offer.

Mindset check:

• Never offer something that you don’t ACTUALLY want to execute (an easy rookie mistake) 
• Never offer something that’s not worth your time. You MUST be excited about the money or you won’t give it all
• Always be open to the idea that your best service offering might still be yet to come

Your offer and rates will naturally evolve over time. Take your best stab at calculating your rates and tweak with each client if necessary.

With a draft of your offering in order, it’s time to find your first client!

Step 3: Find your First Pinterest Client

Finding Pinterest manager jobs can be a little mysterious, especially if you’re new to the gig or freelance economy, but here are actionable tips.

Here are some places to find Pinterest clients:

• Platforms like Upwork or Fiverr
• Facebook groups – join a few groups and search for Pinterest inquiries
• Word of mouth – tell people in your network that you’re available for hire
• Your email list if you’re already a content creator or business owner

This is a process that everyone needs a lot of practice at, but here are your tips for landing clients as a beginner:

• Offer free value. This can be via content creation (on a blog, LinkedIn account, TikTok page, etc.) or through direct conversations with potential clients
• Always offer to hop on a call and get to know each other more and answer questions. This is called a discovery call
• Put everything in writing afterward. What are you offering? When would this process start? What is your proposed Pinterest marketing strategy for this brand? What questions do you expect this person to have? This is your sales pitch – if your offer meets their needs, they’ll say yes and pay you! This is your big moment.
• Follow up with your Pinterest management contract and communicate the timeline and plan

It’s normal to be nervous and struggle with landing clients as a beginner. Join this Facebook group for Pinterest virtual assistants and ask for advice on your process if you can’t seem to get your first few clients in the door.

Step 4: Refine and Streamline

The process of finding clients, onboarding them, and getting a Pinterest account up and running gets easier every time you do it.

Actively facilitate this acceleration by looking for slow-downs in your system and being as efficient as you can with how you spend your time.

A few things that help with refining and streamlining are:

• Making templates for everything. Have a Google Doc ready with all of your normal communications: your email pitch, your onboarding steps, and your timeline. Everything that’s repeated should be turned into a template
• Becoming specialized in a specific niche. Not a requirement, but this can help you speed up your process
• Being conscious of how you spend your time. Track how long tasks take so that you can keep yourself honest and learn where your inefficiencies lie

These are steps that all online business owners must take, and they make you a much better remote worker!

 

What I Wish I’d Known Before Becoming a Pinterest Manager

There are real surprises of being both a digital nomad and a Pinterest manager.

When it comes to managing accounts, I had no idea how much time I’d spend troubleshooting Pinterest problems like low impressions, pins not publishing, and rapidly changing best practices.

As a digital nomad, I needed to learn how to streamline my workload significantly and become very critical of how I spent my time. I spent too many days not leaving the hostel or Airbnb because I was too buried in my work.

Working smarter was a lesson that was really hard for me to learn. Deep down, I think I intentionally created more work for myself at times because I felt like the work needed to be hard or I wasn’t really earning the money.

Reading the book Chillpreneur by Denise Duffield-Thomas helped me combat this. As did becoming aware of the time Pinterest when I wasn’t sitting at my computer.

I made a really bad habit of constantly checking the stats of clients’ accounts, even when I was out at the bar or trying to enjoy time with friends. That kind of nervous anxiety about work leads to a very poor balance and ultimately takes the joy out of traveling.

If you think you want to become a Pinterest manager, do this now:

• Start honing in on your organization. Files stored incorrectly, losing your computer charger, or any other type of sloppiness will cost you clients once your business is up and running
• Create your own Pinterest account and start publishing. Even if you don’t have a website, you can start creating idea pins right now
• Become a student of Pinterest. Watch weekly Pinterest videos from Nadalie Bardo’s YouTube channel (new videos every Friday)

 

Next Steps of Becoming a Pinterest Manager

Is Pinterest marketing for you? There are real disadvantages of Pinterest (as a platform) and subsequently to being a Pinterest manager, but every gig has its downsides.

Everyone wants to earn passive income as a digital nomad, and those dreams can come true! But there’s nothing wrong with making money online doing active income, and Pinterest management is the perfect vehicle to earn extra cash and fund your travels.

What questions do you have about becoming a Pinterest manager? Drop them in the comments and I’ll see if I can help!