11 Struggles Only Pinterest Marketers Will Understand

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Pinterest marketing can be hard, no matter what some gurus tell us. Here are 11 Pinterest struggles marketers can relate to.

I’m using this blog post to vent my frustration on my lack of Pinterest results after almost two years of effort. 

I hope this will lift your mood and will make you feel less alone out there with your Pinterest struggles.

Let’s get into it!

Read also: 15 Things I Wish I Had Known About Pinterest Marketing

Read also: 55 Things That Happen During Your Personal Development Journey

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1. You get super frustrated when the aesthetic pin that you’ve poured your passion and creativity into doesn’t even do remotely as well as other people’s ugly pins

Pinterest is a search engine that is heavily focused on visuals. So how can it be that so many ugly as f#ck Pins get ranked so high?! 

Yes, I know it’s all about the keywords. But many of these pins are not even keyword-optimized! 

I mean, come on! Why do I even bother with trying to make my pins pretty? 

Maybe I should try to make the ugly to test if that’ll attract people …

2. You feel incredibly awkward after pinning 2.374.588 fresh pins linking to the same blog post … but like, how much new content are you supposed to produce?!

Honestly, next to pinning pins, there isn’t much more time for me than to write one blog post a week. 

However, I do pin five fresh pins a day, which equals 35 fresh pins a week. 

Safe to say, I need many pins for the same blog post. And yes, I feel spammy doing that, but what else am I supposed to do? 

3. You worry that maybe you started too late with Pinterest marketing, and that’s why you haven’t had much success with it

Every new platform out there (Facebook, Insta, Google, Pinterest) goes through a specific development. 

It is incredibly easy to be successful on the platform in the beginning stages because the creators want to attract many users. 

As they do so, the obstacles slowly become more difficult because they try to raise the quality of the platform. 

And then, at some point, they make it even harder for you because they want users to buy ads from them to make a bigger revenue. 

So, with Pinterest seemingly being very much in that last stage already, do we low-budget marketers even have much of a chance? 

Sometimes, it doesn’t feel that way, to be honest. 

I see other accounts having immense success with their pins while I am celebrating anything above three outbound clicks with one pin. 

But then again, what alternative do we have? It’s not like Insta or Facebook are much better. 

4. You get passive-aggressive every time you hear about some Pinterest newbie’s traffic explosion after a few short months

How.Do.They.Do.It!?!?!?!??!!?

Is it magic?

Is it destiny?

Is it foul play? 

Whatever it is, I’m sick of it! 

It’s like back in school when the students that only started studying the night before got better grades than you. -_-

I’m not saying the other Pinterest marketers don’t deserve their success. I just feel like, at this point, I deserve a slice of it as well. 

5. You consider writing a few recipe and DIY blog posts simply because they do so damn well on Pinterest

So, your blog niche is not generating the traffic you want from Pinterest? 

Maybe you look enviously at all those food bloggers with their thousands of daily Pinterest conversions.

Why not write a few of these Pinterest-y Blog posts yourself so that you can attract more visitors. 

Suppose you are just going for traffic numbers, then that might be a reasonable idea. However, if you aim for high-quality traffic to, later on, funnel into one of your products, you need niche-specific traffic.

You will probably not have much luck, should you hope vegan recipe enthusiasts might spontaneously be interested in your meditation course. 

6. You dream about the day you can hire a virtual assistant because all you seem to be up to these days is creating Pinterest pins

Creating Pinterest pins takes up a whole chunk of your time. 

You need to create or find templates, find stock images, come up with a click-worthy title, proofread them, download them, name them with keywords, upload them into Tailwind, give them a description and link and finally schedule them. 

Tools like Tailwind Create can make this process faster and easier, but it still takes a decent amount of time. 

And time is something a side-hustler doesn’t have all too much of. 

With a virtual assistant for Pinterest marketing, you could spend so much more time with what you’re good at and the core of your business: your content creation. 

7. You feel like you’ve seen and used all of the internets stock images already … like seriously? In an image-obsessed world, there have to be more amazing stock images. Maybe you should start googling for some Asian websites …

As mentioned previously, a successful Pinterest marketing strategy requires you to create tons of new pins. 

And to keep these pins fresh and make them stand out amongst your competitors, you need tons of new stock images. 

Unfortunately, there often comes the point at which you feel like you’ve exhausted your go-to stock image site and need to find a new one. 

I mean, yes, you could take your own photos, but it’s not like you already spend too much time on your Pinterest marketing strategy. 

Read also: 46 Websites For Free Stock Images You Should Know About

8. You HATE group boards

Maybe it’s just me, but I really don’t like group boards. 

I don’t like remembering which board had which rules. 

I also don’t like the disappointment of them not working or being full of uninspiring pins that I have to pin to my boards. 

At this point, I prefer Tailwind Communities, although they annoy me too at times. 

9. You’re not entirely sure if you should buy ANOTHER Pinterest course or if your niche simply isn’t very Pinterest-y

Success leaves clues, they say. So what do we do? We go out and learn from a successful Pinterest marketer and buy their course. 

That’s great and all, until we realize that it didn’t help us all too much with our Pinterest struggles. 

So we wallow in self-pity for a while until we bring up the courage to dig deeper into our pockets and purchase another course. 

But despite your best hopes, this wasn’t your breakthrough moment either. 

So, what now? 

Investing even more? 

Giving up? 

Settling with what you have? 

10. You want to use Pinterest ads, but like … you need money for that

When you are on Pinterest, you often come across ads. These Pins stand out to you, and your mouth starts to water when you imagine this being your pin and how many clicks it could gain. 

But there is a small problem … ok well, it’s more of a big and essential issue. 

Your biggest problem, if you’re honest. 

Yep, you’ve guessed it: MONEY. 

Seriously, getting a business off the ground without much of a budget is tough work. 

But we will manage it. And once we do, we can finally cross out one of our Pinterest struggles and afford those Pinterest ads to skyrocket our traffic!

11. You hear how others complain about the new Pinterest algorithm, but if you’re honest, your traffic is just as frustratingly low as always

This happens to me about every time Pinterest changes its algorithm, and it’s equally as much amusing as it is frustrating. 

I mean, what is it saying about my Pinterest strategy that it works equally as much no matter the algorithm? 

As much as I am grateful that my results don’t deteriorate, I still would like to figure out how to get my pins working with the algorithm. 

But well, I guess I need to be more patient and continue the effort. 

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What about you? 

How long have you been marketing on Pinterest, and what are your results? What Pinterest struggles have you come across?

Feel free to rant down below. Hopefully, it gives you the energy to continue the hustle. 

Until next time and good luck! 

Sophie