How to sell on Pinterest: from business account to product Pins

How selling on Pinterest works

Pinterest does not run a checkout for your products. A product Pin is a Pin that carries a product title and description, as well as pricing and availability info, and it links to the product page on your own site. Pinterest's help center says people need to be able to buy the product directly from your site before you can add the product Pin.

So the short answer to how to sell on Pinterest is: have a store that takes payment, connect it to a Pinterest business account, and get your products onto Pinterest as product Pins. People find the Pins in search and in their feeds, click through and pay on your site.

There are two ways to create product Pins. You can add Open Graph or Schema.org markup to your product pages so Pins of those pages show product details, or you can use a catalog to upload a data source of all your products. Pinterest states: Only product Pins created using catalogs can be promoted as shopping ads. So the catalog route is the one to use if you may advertise later.

What you need before you start

Pinterest's catalog guide lists these requirements. Each one is a step in the next section.

If a required field is missing or badly formatted, your entire retail catalog will fail ingestion, so check those columns before the first upload. Products with variants also need an item_group_id column.

How to sell on Pinterest, step by step

These steps follow Pinterest's business help center. Most of them need a desktop browser.

1. Get a business account

   There are two ways to get one: create a new business account or convert your personal account. At this time you can only create a new business account from your desktop device. If you convert, Pinterest says: Your Pins and followers will remain the same. Business accounts are public on Pinterest, so a private account has to be made public first.

2. Claim your website

   In your business account settings, open Link to Pinterest and claim your site. The options are to connect with Google Merchant Center, add an HTML tag, HTML file or TXT record; the Google Merchant Center option is only available to some accounts. A DNS TXT record can take up to 72 hours to work. With the HTML tag method, you can remove the HTML tag from your site once the claim is done. A website can only be claimed by one Pinterest account.

3. Install the Pinterest tag

   The tag sends events from your site, such as page visits and checkouts, back to Pinterest. Before adding it, you need to Create an advertiser account. There are three different ways to install it: an integration partner, emailing instructions to a developer, or a manual set-up. It can take up to 24 hours to show in Ads Manager.

4. Prepare your product file

   Make one row per product with the required fields. The main image must be at least 1000x1500 pixels, and each title has a Maximum of 500 characters. Prices default to US dollars unless you add a currency code: we’ll default to US dollars.

5. Add the data source

   Under Manage business, open Catalogs and product groups and click Add data source. Give a URL for a hosted file or upload it by hand. Pick the country carefully: you will not be able to update these details later.

6. Check the product Pins

   You’ll receive an email from Pinterest about the status of your data source, and errors show on the catalogs diagnostics page. Once approved, each product becomes a product Pin with a product title and description, as well as pricing and availability info.

Keep the catalog up to date

A hosted file is read once every 24 hours, so a store that exports a feed at a fixed URL keeps prices and stock current without extra work. In Pinterest's words: We do not provide data source hosting. The file has to live on your own server or come from your store platform.

A file you upload by hand needs more care. Pinterest asks you to update it every 30 days, or your products stop being shown organically. After 90 days without an update, they stop showing in ads too.

Product details only appear if the product is in stock and you meet the merchant guidelines. Once your first data source is approved, you can add up to 50 data sources, for example one per country or currency. Catalogs handle up to 20 million products per retail catalog.

How to sell on Pinterest for free

The Pinterest side of selling has no sign-up cost: the business account is free, and the help pages for claiming a site, adding the tag and uploading a catalog list no charge for those steps. Product Pins can be found in search and feeds without buying ads.

What you do pay for is the store behind the Pins. Each sale goes through your store's checkout, so its card processing and any plan fee apply. A free store plan keeps the monthly cost at zero, though card fees still apply to every order.

Ads are optional. After a catalog is in place there are four types of shopping ads you can create if you want paid reach.

What a sale through a Pinterest Pin costs on common stores

Pinterest sends the buyer to your store, so the fees on the order are your store's fees. Example: one $30 order that came from a product Pin, paid by card.

Selling on Pinterest from an Etsy or eBay shop

Marketplace sellers can still use Pinterest. Etsy, Teachers Pay Teachers, or eBay pages need no markup: Pins of those listings get product information within 24 hours.

The limits come from claiming. Pinterest says you cannot claim most social accounts and online stores hosted on marketplaces like Etsy, eBay and Amazon, and a catalog needs a claimed website. That means no catalog, and Pinterest states: Only product Pins created using catalogs can be promoted as shopping ads. To use catalogs and shopping ads, you need a store on your own domain.

Becoming a verified merchant

To be an approved merchant, Pinterest says to claim and verify your domain, then add your catalog, which Pinterest then reviews. The Verified Merchant Program adds A blue checkmark on your profile and Pins. Once you meet all its requirements, you'll automatically be verified. They include a business account created at least three months ago, a website created at least nine months ago, and 75% of your catalog’s products have been ingested successfully.

It also asks for regular events from the Pinterest tag, starting with At least one page visit event every 7 days, plus add to cart and checkout events. That is one more reason to install the tag early.

Where Nation fits

Questions about selling on Pinterest