I have three active Pinterest accounts that are all in completely different niches. I have to admit that I never strategically chose these, they just kind of aligned with my interests. That worked out for me, but it’s still important to mention that not all Pinterest niches are equal. If you’re reading this, you’re probably trying to be more intentional about finding your niche than I was, so let’s talk about how to think it through.
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you sign up through them, I may earn a commission or referral bonus at no extra cost to you.
How to make money with Pinterest
In this post, I will assume that your end-goal with Pinterest marketing is to make money. And this goal and your Pinterest niche are inextricably linked.
Just to be clear, Pinterest doesn’t pay you. It used to pay a handful of specific creators, but their creator program is no more. So there is no monetization threshold like there is with YouTube or TikTok. Instead, Pinterest works by sending traffic to wherever you earn money. Here are the main ways this can happen:
- Physical products. Let’s say you make cushion/pillow covers and have a Shopify store. Pinterest would help you earn more by sending people to your product listing. It could also play a role in a longer funnel by directing people to a blog post about DIY home decor, that then leads them to your products.
- Digital products. If you sell digital products such as, for example, printables on Etsy or your own shop, Pinterest would send traffic to the product listing.
- Affiliate income. This could be for software, physical products or digital products. You may also join affiliate programs like Stay22 for travel or Stay22 retail where products related to your niche are suggested based on customer behavior.
Now I will say, that it’s trickier than just posting the product directly. In my experience, in addition to direct links, you should send people to content written around the product you are promoting. For example, if you are into travel, you could write a post about a specific trip. Or you could write a post comparing video editing software. - Ad revenue from blogging. Ad revenue is one of the best income sources in my opinion, because once you do the writing, there’s very little else left do do. So if you’re into kombucha brewing, you could focus on blogging about recipes and trouble shooting. Once you reach a certain threshold of traffic to your site, you can apply to an ad network. You will slowly build monthly income from ad revenue to your blog.
- Email signups. Sometimes the goal isn’t an immediate sale but instead, you’re building an audience that will, hopefully, pay you farther down the line.
A note on Stay22. If you’re in the travel niche and haven’t joined Stay22 yet, you can sign up through my link. If you refer a creator who reaches 100 confirmed travel bookings, I earn $500, and you get a $100 bonus once you hit that milestone too. If you’re in a food, lifestyle or any other niche where Stay22 suggests retail, you can join Stay22 Retail through my link. I earn a $50 gift card for every qualified creator who goes live with it.
All of these potential income sources will help determine what Pinterest niche you choose.
How to find your niche on Pinterest
Pinterest actually helps you choose your niche. The easiest way to identify one is to look at Pinterest Ideas. I talked about this at length in my post on how to name your Pinterest boards, but below is the short version.
Pinterest organizes its content into main themes, which are basically broad categories such as art, women’s fashion, beauty, home decor, food and drink, quotes, DIY and crafts, animals, design, weddings, travel, and more. You can see these main interests at https://www.pinterest.com/ideas/
Unfortunately, at present time, this is not an exhaustive list. You can view the full list of main interests by joining Pinclicks. Just join the free trial (you don’t need to provide payment details).
Click one of the interests and once on the page, scroll down and you will see a list of related interests. I consider these sub niches, they break the main niche down into smaller topics. For the purpose of this blog post, let’s click on DIY And Crafts as an example.
Under related interests, I am gonna choose Crochet patterns. At the top of the page, you can see the full path of this interest according to Pinterest:
Explore > DIY and crafts > knitting and crocheting.
If we are to consider the main niche, DIY and Crafts, one might come to the conclusion that this is too broad a niche considering its size. Knitting and crocheting, however, is a great niche. It’s broad enough that you have plenty to post about, but specific enough that you’re not trying to cover everything under DIY and crafts, which could include stuff that you may be completely unfamiliar with even if you’re a crafter.
Pinterest also shows you the monthly search volume (you need a Pinterest business account to see this). Crochet patterns has about 1 million monthly searches. Obviously, this number changes with the season. It’s fall in the northern hemisphere so people are probably spending more time at home and wanting to make warm things. If you scroll down on the page and you’ll find more related interests such as like crochet stitches, small crochet projects and crochet blanket patterns. All of these are topics you can create content about, and they all sit under the same sub niche.
Here’s another example. Go back to the Pinterest ideas/explore page. Click weddings and scroll down. I will pick the ‘Wedding photo ideas‘ interest. The path of this interest, according to Pinterest is Explore > Weddings > Wedding photography and videography, and inside it, wedding photography ideas has about 485,000 monthly searches.
So in this case, the niche is weddings and the sub niche is wedding photography. Scroll down and you’ll see the following related interests: courthouse wedding photos, unique wedding picture ideas and elopement photography. All these will help you with content ideas. For example, you could write a blog post about the best wedding photography poses or locations in a certain city.
How to find all the main Pinterest niches
As I mentioned earlier, Pinterest might not list every idea on the Ideas page because they’re always changing the layout. So here is how you can find the entire list.
You can do this via the web app, Pinclicks. It’s a paid tool, but you can get a five-day free trial without entering any payment information. Go to Keyword Explorer, and in the filters section you’ll see a full list of the main niches along with the search volume. I’m not going to share the numbers from inside it, because I don’t think the terms and conditions allow it.
You could also try using Google by searching for a niche that you are interested in.
Go to Google and type site:pinterest.com/ideas followed by a word you think is an idea. E.g.
site:pinterest.com/ideas/ finance
Click a result in the search results and look at the path at the top of the page. For this example, I clicked ‘How to learn Finance’ and on the idea page was the following path:
Explore > Finance> Financial Planning> Financial Skills
The main Pinterest niche here is whatever comes after ‘Explore’. In this case the niche is Finance. You can click it in the path to explore the niche further.
Do you need to find a sub niche on Pinterest?
Let’s go back to the Google trick and try a few.
With finance, I clicked a result and the menu showed Explore > Finance > Financial planning. Finance has about 264,000 monthly searches. That’s a smaller niche, so I wouldn’t worry about getting more granular because one can talk about finance in all its aspects.
With women’s fashion, the first result was wide leg pants outfit, and the menu showed Explore > Women’s fashion > Women’s bottom pants. Again, I’d lean towards the broad niche as Women’s fashion is comprehensive enough on its own.
With design, the first result was design tips and tricks, and the menu showed Explore > Design > Design ideas > Design challenges. That’s too general for me, so I went back and looked at the related interests and found that Graphic design could be a good sub niche there. This sub niche falls under design but makes things more targeted.
Don’t choose a niche based on search volume alone
I’ve shown you how to find a niche, but let’s now discuss search volume. The important caveat here is that high search volume ≠ good niche.
Let’s look at Quotes for example. In the PinClicks list I can see that it has millions of monthly searches, far more than most of the others. So I went to pinterest.com/ideas, selected Quotes, and clicked the first related interest that is ‘short meaningful quotes’. That alone has about 1 million monthly searches. But if you look at most of the pins on this page or any of the quote-related interests, you’ll notice that they’re all just quotes with a cute background, and a lot of them don’t even have a destination. The chances that you are going to get outbound clicks with quotes is pretty low because people just want to be inspired by the words, and may perhaps save them for later.
I’m sure you could get millions of monthly impressions in the Quotes niche if you got your account going. But if money is your bottom line, as I assume it is for most people doing Pinterest marketing, I don’t think it’s a good niche to go into. You could use quotes to supplement an account in another niche. If you’re in finance, for example, a few pins with quotes about being financially responsible could work. I wrote a blog post on zero-friction Pinterest pins that explains this idea. They’re pins that aren’t designed to get you traffic, but they can boost engagement and help your account as a whole.
Now compare Quotes with the Parenting niche, which has far fewer searches. With the pins on the latter, I see text inforgraphics and text-based pins such as “15 positive parenting habits every mom can start today” and “10 parenting ideas for mom guilt”. A mom who is invested in being a good parent will probably click through to read such a post. Once she’s on your site, you could invite her to join your email newsletter or even could offer a digital product like an ebook. You could also recommend a book and earn affiliate income. Or she could just read the post, and you earn ad revenue from the traffic.
Woodworking is another good example. Explore> Diy And Crafts> Woodworking> Wood Projects
Let’s say someone is inspired to start woodworking but is on a tight budget, so they search for the basic tools they need. You might write a post about five inexpensive tools to get started with woodworking that could earn you affiliate commission, ad revenue, a digital product sale or an email signup. Or you make an infographic and tag the affiliate products, and anyone who finds the pin sees “shop the pin” below it.
The point I’m trying to make here is that high search volume does not equal a high intent audience. Don’t choose your niche solely on search volume. That said, search volume still an important criterion to consider when choosing a niche. Whatever your circumstances, ensure that your niche lines up with your long-term goals for Pinterest.
I have to also say, don’t overthink it. I understand that not everyone has long-term goals or even wants to build an audience. Pinterest is a cold audience, and for some people it’s very touch and go. So one might want to create pins that convince someone to buy their digital product on the first try. In this case, one may rely on sheer volume and not care whether the audience is high or low intent.
List of Pinterest niches
Use the list below to see what kinds of content exist in each niche. I’ve grouped them by how they tend to behave.
High volume niches: People mostly enjoy browsing this content but might not necessarily act on it.
- Quotes: life and deep quotes are in the tens of millions, and almost everything else is in the millions. It’s all text that people read and re-share.
- Entertainment: memes, humor and movies are all in the tens of millions. Social media content ideas are also huge, and those are for creators who want to act on what they find.
- Art: drawing, digital art, painting and photo poses are all in the tens of millions. Most people are getting inspired but may not be buying. Unfortunately, AI slop is ruining this niche
- Animals: Dog and cat memes are in the millions. However, Dog training and cat care are still viable.
- Electronics: iPhone and iPad wallpapers are in the tens of millions. Phone repair is in the tens of thousands.
- Vehicles: car aesthetics, accessories and photography are in the millions. Repair and maintenance are in the tens of thousands.
- Travel: aesthetics and planning essentials are in the millions, but a lot of it is inspirational.
- Architecture: house exteriors, floor plans and tiny houses are in the millions. So are Minecraft and Bloxburg house builds, which aren’t real homes.
Niches with a journey. People want to make, fix or learn something.
- DIY and crafts: sewing, knitting, paper crafts, DIY gifts and kids crafts are all in the millions. It’s a well-rounded niche.
- Food and drink: meal and recipe ideas are in the tens of millions. Baking, cooking how-tos and charcuterie are in the millions.
- Lawn and garden: smaller, with the top sub niches in the hundreds of thousands. A lot of it is about solving a specific problem, which suits how-to content well.
- Home decor: room-specific decor is in the tens of millions. Organization, home offices and entryways are in the millions, and much of it is real decorating projects.
- Health: healthy eating and recipes are in the tens of millions. Mental health, gut health and women’s health are in the hundreds of thousands.
- Parenting: baby photography, announcements, names and nursery design are in the millions. Newborn care and sleep training are in the hundreds of thousands. A fair amount of unrelated teen relationship content shows up here too.
- Education: kids’ educational content, study tools and teacher gifts are in the millions. Vision boards show up here as well, even though they aren’t really about school.
Niches with high purchase potential. People are planning something or shopping for it.
- Event planning: gift ideas and party ideas are in the tens of millions. Invitations are in the millions, and checklists are in the hundreds of thousands.
- Wedding: wedding dresses are in the tens of millions. Beauty, guest attire, stationery, cakes, rings and decor are all in the millions.
- Beauty: nail art is in the tens of millions. Perfume, hair color, makeup and skincare are in the millions.
- Women’s fashion: outfit ideas and dresses are in the tens of millions. “Dress to Impress” also shows up there, but it’s a Roblox game and not real clothing.
- Men’s fashion: tattoos lead here, in the millions. Casual and streetwear is also in the millions.
- Children’s fashion: kids’ dresses and hairstyles are in the millions. A chunk of the results are drawings and coloring pages and not clothing.
- Sports: sport-specific aesthetics are in the tens of millions. Soccer and running are in the millions.
Two niches in one.
- Design: wallpapers, interior design, color mood boards and graphic design are in the tens of millions. It works well for digital products that people search for by name, like wallpapers and templates.
- Finance: half of it is soft, like generic money imagery and old money aesthetics. The other half is practical, with saving tips, savings challenges, side hustles and budgeting in the hundreds of thousands. The practical half is where planners and trackers fit.
Final tips for identifying a Pinterest niche
If I had to give one tip, it would be to look for a niche with a journey in it. All that this means is that people go through stages in a journey and you can reach the same person at different points. They might read your blog post, buy a digital product, join your email list, or click an affiliate link later. Or they might just love your content and stick around.
This is why DIY and crafts does so well. You are teaching people how to do or make something and your audience is probably doing a lot of skill building. Making money online and personal finance have the same quality. Teaching someone how to save in their twenties or invest for the first time can turn a cold audience into a warm one, even if those niches don’t have super high search volume.
All the best with choosing your Pinterest niche. I hope this blog post helps you!
