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It´s time to get rid of your Pinterest mistakes! If you are reading this, I am assuming you have already discovered what an amazing and unique tool for traffic Pinterest is. 

So did I a few months ago as I excitedly jumped on the easy and fun opportunity to create traffic to my blog. Within the past few months, I’ve come a long way and have stepped up my Pinterest game significantly. 

This post is all about the biggest Pinterest mistakes I made along the way. Errors that, if I had avoided them, would have given me more traffic way faster. 

I hope you learn out of my Pinterest mistakes and go on and step up your pinning game! 

This page contains affiliate links. If you purchase a product through one of them, I will receive a commission (at no additional cost to you). I only ever recommend products that I have personally used and loved. Thank you for your support!

1. Pinterest Mistake: Believing impressions and monthly views matter 

When you open your Pinterest business account, two of the very first analytic stats that come to the eye are your monthly viewers and your monthly impressions. 

Now, of course, you are aiming to get them as high as possible. However, there can be a big difference between your impressions and your traffic. 

That’s what I had to learn at the end of last year, as I celebrated reaching 2 million monthly Pinterest viewers, yet only 20 daily website visitors. 

Out of freaking 2 MILLION monthly viewers, only 20 a day, meaning 620 a month, converted to my website! That’s almost nothing. 

That’s when I knew I had to change something. So I purchased Pinfinite Growth by Melyssa Griffin and focused on growing my traffic instead of my impressions. 

And out of that first lesson came the following lessons. 

2. Pinterest Mistake: Pinning without my target audience in mind 

Now, the first and most important thing you have to get into your head is this: People are not interested in you and your interests (yet). 

So you might like those vegan recipes and pin them like crazy to one of your boards. But if your blog is about training dogs or dancing, then you won’t be able to pin your own content to that vegan recipes board. 

The result: Your Pinterest account get’s a ton of impressions and followers, who love vegan recipes, but barely anyone clicks on your links to visit your blog. And when they do, they are probably disappointed not to find vegan content. 

Now, this was, of course, an obvious example. I dare say most (not all, though) people figure this out on their own. 

Now, I fell into a different yet similar trap. For a few years now, I’ve been obsessed with motivational and inspirational quotes! I love them! 

And I knew that my content would also be motivating and inspiring. Furthermore, many people like quotes images, and they are incredibly easy to create. 

So what did I do? I created two quotes boards and pinned a ton of quotes images to them, some I created myself. 

And the people loved those boards. My impressions soared upwards, and those boards were in all my analytic categories the best ones. And my quotes pins also had way more impressions and saves than my blog post pins. 

Great, right? Well, not really. At first, I got really excited, but then I noticed I had a ton of impressions, and not even 1% of those converted into traffic for my blog. Talking about Pinterest mistakes, right?

And when I thought about it, I couldn’t even be that surprised. I mean, I don’t know about you, but I may love quotes images and save a ton of them, but I can probably count on one hand how often I clicked the link they were referring to. 

I mean, why should I? The quote was all I wanted, and I already got that. 

So, don´t make this mistake and always have your target audience in mind. Very often, you want to attract people that are eager to learn something. They are hoping your content solves a problem or answers a question they have. What kind of Pinterest Pins are those people clicking on? 

Read also: 8 Things To Consider About Gender Targeting Your Audience

3. Pinterest Mistake: Pinning other peoples content 

Another mistake that originated from me unconsciously solely focusing on impressions was the ratio of my and other people’s content I pinned. 

In the beginning, I read somewhere that 30 pins a day are the right amount to pin. So I did that by scheduling all kinds of pins with Tailwind. And when I had some of my own content, I would schedule that. 

Somewhere else, I read that 20 % of your pins should be your own content and 80 % other people’s content. Now, in the beginning, that’s hard to accomplish when you don’t have much content yet, but you try to pin 30 times a day. 

However, by now, I know you should instead aim for 80% of your own content and only 20% other content. After all, you want people to click on your pins, so they shouldn’t drown between different people’s content. 

So what I recommend you to do is this: 

When you start out and don’t have much of your own content to pin yet, don’t worry at all about how much you pin a day. 

Pin so much that you can maintain that 80/20 ratio. So out of 10 pins, 8 should lead to your website. Out of 5 pins, it should be 4. Get it? 

Then as you create more content, you can also increase the number of images you pin daily. At most, I would aim for 25 – 30 a day. 

4. Pinterest Mistake: Worrying too much about viral pins 

Viral pins aka that one pin that takes off and skyrockets your traffic into unimaginable heights. We all want that. And apparently, some people manage to do this. 

So, over the months, I found myself experimenting with my image designs over and over again, trying to make them eye-catching so they could go viral. 

I even tried to implement some statistics that said stuff like “warmer colors and red colors get ?? % more clicks and saves”. 

Typical me, I completely obsessed over a more or less unimportant detail. 

Please don’t understand me wrong, your pin design should be eyecatching so that people want to save it and click on it out of all the other pins. 

But if you look at successful pinners like Melyssa Griffin, House of Brazen, or Anastasia Blogger, who all have their own Pinterest courses. Their pins don’t look very extraordinary. 

Or an even better example. Type in any keyword relevant for your niche and look at the top pins. You probably could create more gorgeous and eyecatching ones, right? 

But what I had to learn is that it is far less about the aesthetics and much more about keywords in your pin description, alt-tag, and title. 

So, please don’t get a headache over the whole viral pin topic. Instead, focus on steadily increasing the clicks and saves of your pins through keyword, board, and profile optimization. 

5. Pinterest Mistake: Trying to succeed without a professional course 

Now, this thought was not entirely wrong. I still believe I could have succeeded without purchasing Pinfinite Growth. But ladies, it would have taken time! 

Time, frustration, insecurity, and confusion. 

Why bother with that when I can have a Pinterest guru teach me proven methods that get results fast? And I have lifetime access to her course. So if something significant on Pinterest changes, Melyssa, who is in contact with the Pinterest team, will know about it and update it. 

I won’t have to worry about being confused or having to figure out a new strategy. Instead, I can enjoy comfortable and fun traffic to my website and, therefore, a steady flow of income into my pocket that has paid me back tenfold what I had to pay for Pinfinite Growth. 

I hope this will help you grow your traffic and income through Pinterest. They might not seem like big mistakes, but they can genuinely make all the difference. 

Other than that, I wish you a happy pinning! ^^

Sophie

Building a business is a daunting but exciting task. It promises an amount of financial freedom, influence, and passion most of us have never experienced before. 

And living in our on demand-society, we naturally can’t wait for our business to start producing income finally. 

Of course, there are all those success stories out there of people who claim that they started earning 5.000 € a month within 3 months of starting their business. Or 1.000 € within their first month. 

That gives us hope, and our goals shoot high up. On the other hand, however, if it were that easy, wouldn’t everyone had started to try it by now? And why are there still a lot of people who do try it but give up along the way? 

What does that mean for us? How long will it take until the first few hundred dollars start to roll in? 

As I am getting closer and closer to the first anniversary of having started my business, I believe I’ve figured out some of the main factors that determine how long we will have to wait. 

Read also: 9 Reasons Why You Should Start Your Own Business

This page contains affiliate links. If you purchase a product through one of them, I will receive a commission (at no additional cost to you). I only ever recommend products that I have personally used and loved. Thank you for your support!

1. Your experience and skills 

Now, this might be obvious, but I only recently realized how true it actually is. I am sure that if I would start a different blog now, it would take me at most half the time it took me for this blog to become profitable. 

You get that feeling for success and can then repeat it easily. 

I am not talking about pure knowledge accumulation. You can have all the strategies written out on paper in front of you. It will still take you longer as if when you actually already practiced them. 

There is just something about doing stuff vs. studying it. We learn better by doing than by mindless memorizing. That’s what all those “how-to-study-effectively” – gurus tell you. 

It is a different thing if you’ve memorized the best textbook on selling or if you’ve gone out and sold a few dozen products. 

The latter will benefit you so much more. 

And the younger you are, the less of those practical experiences you will have. I, for example, had none. Simple as that. 

I’ve never written a blog post, designed a website, created pins or posts, tried to market or sell something. 

I was a complete newbie. And looking back, I am incredibly proud of how much experience and skills I’ve gained in under a year!

2. How much you are willing to/capable of investing in courses and tools 

Although you do not need to have tons of money to start a business, there are specific tools and courses you probably will have to invest in if you want to get the results as fast and effortless as possible. 

In fact, those courses are very likely going to save you money in the long term. Because the longer it takes you to make your business profitable, the more money it will take. For example, your domain name and hosting platform, which are two musts, usually have annual fees. 

In my Free Resource Library, I’ve also listed every tool, product, or course I’ve purchased and loved, so if you are interested in a broader overview of my investments, you should check it out. 

But to give you a few examples, these have been the most important investments I’ve made for my business:

Bluehost

Again, domain name and web hosting are unavoidable if you want to start a blog. 

Affiliate Marketing Mastery

An admittedly costly course (I had to do a very painful leap out of my comfort zone in purchasing it), which has helped me immensely.

Other than the general information about how to start a Blog/YouTube Channel and earn affiliate commissions you get inside this very in-depth course, it also improves your mindset. And as you will see in the next point, that’s a big part of success.

But what I loved most about it is that they set up my website, installed the most necessary plugins, told me how to build an e-mail list, and what you need to look out for legally when earning affiliate commissions.

But I have to say, for it to be worth the price you should really be a beginner because it does focus a lot on the basics.

Grammarly

A fantastic spelling and grammar tool that, in my opinion, is necessary for every blogger, English speaking or not. In fact, I am still looking for the German equivalent of Grammarly, because Microsoft Word has really been letting me down recently -_-

Tailwind

I keep it simple. If you take Pinterest marketing serious – and in my opinion, it might be the easiest and most straight forward traffic source that will benefit you in the long run – you need to use Tailwind.

It’s most important function is that it schedules and auto posts your pins at the strategically best time so that you can reach the biggest audience possible.

But it also offers many more functions, and most importantly, Tailwind is approved by Pinterest. So it’s not going to get banned tomorrow, and it is prepared for updates of the Pinterest system. 

Pinfinite Growth

Now, I’ve waited quite a few months between purchasing Tailwind (aka taking my Pinterest traffic game seriously) and finally reinvesting (even though I’ve already spent a lot for a student without income by then) in a course that can truly make me succeed.

The thing was, I did notice my traffic improve through Tailwind, but it was going slowly. And I knew, I could be succeeding so much faster with significantly less experimenting and worrying if I just followed the advice of an expert that even works together with Pinterest! So, yeah, don’t wait as long as I did with this one ^^’ 

3. Your mindset 

Yes, I know you’ve heard and read it a million times before, but I am going to repeat it. 

Only 20 % of success is the strategy, but striking 80 % is your mindset!!! 

An excellent example of that is those staggering statistics of how many lottery winners go broke. Why is that? Because they received all that money while they still were living with a poor mindset. So unsurprisingly, they lost the money and, within a few years, we’re back to living the life suitable for their mindset. 

Read also: 9 Mindsets That Are Keeping You Poor

Now, if you start a business, you most likely won’t have the entrepreneurial mindset of say Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, or Elon Musk. 

And that’s ok. But because of that, you also don’t have to expect to build the next Amazon within a year. 

Developing an empowering and abundant mindset and overcoming limiting beliefs takes time. And doing it without a coach will probably take a bit longer than with professional help. 

However, it is very much possible to create that success mindset by journaling, using affirmations, being aware of your mindset, and consuming a ton of content catering towards a better mindset. 

In fact, because the mindset is such an essential component of success, and I’ve overcome my own fair share of limiting beliefs. I wanted to create an E-Mail course where I can share with you common limiting beliefs and my thoughts and experiences on overcoming them. 

It’s a 30-Day free course that will prepare you for your first successful business. Go ahead and try it out! 

4. Your passion 

Now, this has been a big thing that had been holding me back. You most likely heard that you should build your business around a passion of yours. 

And that’s great to hear and all, but can you name a passion of yours around which you’d like to build a business? 

I couldn’t. I knew I wanted to start a blog, but I didn’t really know what niche I should be in. Without any unique talents or strong passions, I settled for the next best thing: interest and joy. 

And that was fine and all. I got started, which is the most essential part. And with time, I discovered what niche I really wanted to be in, developed my business, and now I am getting more and more passionate about it. 

But now, I also have a much better view of how different it is to be passionate while building a business compared to “kinda enjoying it.” 

Read also: 4 Things You Need To Know About Finding Your Passion

Back in the beginning, I struggled with creating content. Not only did I have issues finding topics to write about, but the writing process took me quite long and wasn’t much fun. 

And today?

Even though I am not yet at the “passion level,” I am aiming for, writing posts like these are actually fun and happen sooooooo much faster and more effortless than in those first few months. 

It’s a striking difference that I’ve only noticed recently. And I think that makes it very clear on how much energy, time, and effort you will put in if you have that passion. And as a result, your business will grow faster. 

But don’t be discouraged if you haven’t found that passion yet. After all, I hadn’t either. 

In the end, the most crucial part is to get started. The time will pass anyway, so you might as well not care how long it will take until you earn that first 100 €. 

If you’d had started last week, you would already have a week’s worth of experience and skills by now and be a week closer to that profitable business of your dreams. 

So what are you waiting for? 

Start now! 

Have you ever thougt about gender targeting your business? By now, you probably know that you should specifically target your audience with your product, service, and content. To do that, you should know which niche your business is in.

This is so essential that it is one of the first things courses like Affiliate Marketing Mastery and Pinfinite Growth teach.

If you are in the makeup niche, you most likely will target makeup interested women.

If you are in the grooming niche, you will target men who want or have a beard.

As you can see, your niche helps you to define your target audience. However, it is not always as easy as this. Let’s say you can’t decide on a small niche and instead want to build your business around a broader one. For example, Personal Development, Entrepreneurship, Fitness, or Finances.

In that context, you might not need to do gender targeting, but aim at any person who needs help in those topics.

That was my initial plan with Striving for Felicity. I wanted to do Personal Development, Success, and Mindset advice for Felicity Seekers of every gender.

However, as I started Pinfinite Growth, I surprisingly found myself frowning at the niche and target determination unit. I had thought that I could rush through those because I had dealt with them before.

But as I listened to Melyssa talking about the importance of a clearly targeted audience and niche, I became honest with myself. I realized that I still had issues with those.

The primary underlying problem was that from the very beginning, I wasn’t exactly sure what niche I wanted my business to be in. I didn’t feel experienced or talented enough on any topic. So I just went with Personal Development, in which I was interested in and had somewhat of competence because I was regularly learning more about it.

After 9 months and working a lot on growing my barely existing traffic, I was at a point where I had a deep passion for the whole “how to start your business” niche, and I also accumulated quite some knowledge that I felt comfortable teaching.

At the same time, I realized that the Personal Development part I was mostly interested in and had some talent for, was the mindset part.

And one topic I had grown extremely passionate about in 2019 was the whole boss babe/being in your feminine energy niche of Monica Yates and Women Love Power.
However, I didn’t have that much knowledge yet on that topic.

So, answering the questions in Melyssa’s workbook, I realized that you could actually combine the whole “starting a successful business,” “mindset” and “living in your full feminine potential” into a boss lady, boss babe or girl boss niche or however you want to call it.

But that’s where suddenly massive resistance appeared towards the whole gender targeting topic. As I might not be the only one with this issue, I thought I give you an overview of my thought process, which led me to finally targeting specifically women.

1. You are cutting your potential audience at least in half, but …

This was my most significant reason for desperately wanting a gender-neutral audience. It felt like I was limiting my success if I only focused on women.

But that is so NOT true! The fact is, there are a ton of men and women out there who are having immense success with a gender-targeted business. I just want to name Monica Yates, Kimberley Wenya, and Alpha M. Of course, there are many, many more.

Furthermore, we have over 7 billion people on this planet. So trust me, even if you target just one gender, there are more than enough possible customers/fans for you out there.

2. You can create raving fans more easily

The more targeted your audience is, the easier it is for you to connect with them on a deeper level.

Chances are it will be easier for you to connect with women, if you are a woman yourself, or with men, if you are a man. It merely comes more natural to you because you are similarly wired.

Of course, this is just a rule of thumb and doesn’t apply to everyone. But you can very quickly do a test …

3. Whose content/products are you consuming?

The test is simple. Whose content or products are you consuming? Who are the people you are following most online?

For me, I realized that the vast majority of the content I consume comes from women. Sure, I am also interested in the content of men like Stefan James, Ryan Daniel Moran, or Tony Robbins. But without realizing it, I automatically followed women more often than men.

By the way, I also have male friends, so it’s not like I anyway just surround myself with women. And I also asked my brother, and he follows men primarily. So I see a pattern here.

So, don’t feel afraid of targeting your own gender. Very likely, you would have attracted them anyways.

4. Who is already consuming your content?

This is another test you can make. Who do you imagine is consuming your content?

Although I hadn’t tried to target women, I realized that the content I was creating, the pictures I was using, and the pins I uploaded onto Pinterest probably attracted many more women than men.

According to my Pinterest Analytics, 67.1% of my audience is female. And the 27.3% male audience probably only consumed those Pinterest boards that were less targeted to my niche.

So what about your audience? Who do you think they are?

5. How does the thought of targeting every gender feel?

This is a question that requires you to analyze your feelings carefully. Imagine what you would do with your blog or business if you’d specifically targeted also the other genders. What content would you create? What brand colors would you choose?

Now, how do you feel thinking about those things? Personally, I felt like I needed to hold back. Like I wouldn’t be able to be absolutely authentically me, because I tried to appeal to everyone.

6. How does the thought of targeting that one specific gender feel?

On the contrary, the thought of finally targeting just women, in that boss babe way, made me feel excited and free!

If I listened carefully, it was so evident that my intuition wanted to target women.

What does your intuition say?

7. This doesn’t have to be your only business

Still, I don’t feel content, thinking that I will only provide value to women for the rest of my life. That thought makes me feel kinda small.

But here’s the great thing about being an entrepreneur: You have freedom! Who says you will only have this one business for the rest of your life?

You might as well start other businesses, too, that will also help different genders. I, for example, would LOVE to have some kind of technology business someday. Maybe I could invest in research that will help to stop climate change! Who knows?

You also have the freedom to develop your brand. For example, Monica Yates, who is a Period and Women’s life coach, has also started doing some Podcasts for men only. And Tatjana James, who sells waist trainers, has created a line of waist trainers for men.

Everything is possible! You are not restricted in your business. You can do whatever you want. But at the very beginning of your business journey, it might be beneficial for you to really target a small and specific niche.

8. Targeting A doesn’t mean you won’t attract B

Just because I now target women, doesn’t mean I won’t also attract men or other genders. If my content seems appealing to them, then they will consume it no matter if I say it’s for women.

And that’s awesome! I am so excited to have all kinds of people part of my community! The key is that they like the way you express yourself and your brand. That they like your authentic self.

Conclusion

The lesson I want to convey with this article is this:

You do you!

Depending on your niche, it is very much possible to target both genders. But if it feels more aligned with you to target one specific gender, than go for it!

The key to success is less what you do, but more how you do it. There are no rules set in stone for who your target audience should be. You could be in the niche of makeup and target men or in the niche of grooming and target women.
It might be a bit more complicated, but I am pretty sure you could pull it off.

The important part is to feel comfortable and aligned with doing it!

I hope this helped you. This topic had given me quite some headache in 2019 because my head said one thing and my heart silently something else.

But once I actually found a balance between the two of them, I suddenly felt so comfortable and so incredibly aligned with my brand. I am 100% sure this was part of the reason my business finally flourished.

Until next time.

Sophie

Starting a business can be expensive. Depending on your income, it might be a financial stretch to invest in the necessary tools or in helpful courses that will speed your progress up.

Therefore, you don’t want to waste your money on tools that could easily be replaced with similar free versions for the time being.

Below, I listed some of the free tools I use in my business until I have the financial means to upgrade to a better and paid version.

Read also: 6 Things You Should Do Before Starting A Business

This page contains affiliate links. If you purchase a product through one of them, I will receive a commission (at no additional cost to you). I only ever recommend products that I have personally used and loved. Thank you for your support!

1. Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is the #1 WordPress SEO plugin, according to their website. They have a paid version with a ton of amazing features that help you to get a high SEO score.

With as SEO becoming more and more complex and continually changing, it can lift a significant burden of an online business owner to have a reliable tool that makes SEO almost effortless.

However, you don’t have to purchase the paid version to get this kind of help. Yoast SEO Free gives you keyword optimization, checks your text for readability, checks for duplicate content, and more!

2. Post Grid

Now, this is a tool that saved me early on in my blogging journey. Shortly after I had my blog set up by the Affiliate Marketing Mastery Team, I discovered that the Genesis Essence Pro theme I chose did not offer any grid layout on regular pages.

How was I supposed to show all my different blog posts on my pages?! After some research, I figured out that there are quite a few grid layout plugins out there. Of course, many of them are not free.

Again, this was a topic, where I figured I could wait with investing until my blog became profitable. So, Post Grid was my solution.

With its free version, you can create good looking and functional post grid layouts.

If you merely want to create a grid for blog posts, this will do. However, if you’re going to create a grid for e. g. online courses or a free resource library, you might want to purchase something more advanced.

3. Mailerlite

Now, this tool I am still very grateful for!

As my business progressed, it got time for me to create an email list. Easier said than done because you not only need an email service provider where you can manage your subscribers and email campaigns. No, you also need a tool for opt-in forms and pop-ups on your website.

Now, each of these tools often costs at least $100 a year. There are also fantastic tools like Convertkit, which combines these two functions. However, with $290 billed annually, I really, really, really didn’t feel comfortable to invest in that while I am still not having many pageviews.

Lucky me, I discovered Mailerlite! Mailerlite lets you manage your subscribers, campaigns, pop-ups, landing pages for FREE up to 1,000 subscribers and up to 12,000 emails a month.

For me, this was the absolutely perfect tool to start my email list painlessly.

4. Canva + Over

You’ve probably already heard others recommend Canva. It’s an amazing and easy to use graphic design tool with a ton of templates.

With Canva, you can create all kinds of Social Media posts, worksheets, ebook covers, presentations, logos, and whatnot.

In other words, an absolute MUST for any online entrepreneur.

Over is similar, and it’s the app I used in the beginning. However, as far as I know, it is only available as a mobile app and not online as Canva.

5. Unsplash

Six words: Gorgeous.High quality.Free Stock Images.

I LOVE Unsplash. It’s an online entrepreneurs’ dream. But for those of you who don’t already know it. Unsplash has a massive library of high-quality images that you can use without having to worry about copyright rules and for completely free.

Once your business starts to make more money, you might want to upgrade and purchase stock images that are more unique and make your brand stand out more. But for the time being, you won’t have any complaints with free stock images.

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

6. Planoly

For those of you, who want to market your business on Instagram. Planoly is a scheduling tool that allows you to schedule and auto post 30 images and their descriptions a month in its free version. They also have a function for Insta stories.

Before you jump ahead and put a lot of time into scheduling and creating Instagram posts, please consider whether it will really be worth it.

I half-heartedly posted content on Instagram for months and spend a lot of time creating quotes images. When in reality, it did have very little of an impact on my business. So I decided to drop it for the time being and instead invest that time into Pinterest with Tailwind.

I hope some of these tools will help you as much as they helped me in my first year of growing my online business.

I know how tempting it is to invest in all those shiny and amazing tools. Still, especially in the beginning, whe you don’t make any income yet, you should carefully consider your options.

Only invest that money into things that will make a significant impact on your business. Pinfinite Growth and Tailwind were two of those investments I made, even though I had already spent a lot of money for a student without an income. But they were absolutely worth every single penny! Without them, I don´t know how long it would have taken me to build a profitable business.

I wish you all the best with your business!

Until next time

Sophie