Pinterest for Etsy Sellers
Etsy sellers! Are you noticing your Pinterest views are down and outbound clicks to your shop are dropping? You’re not alone! Is it still possible to use Pinterest to grow your Etsy shop? Is Pinterest for Etsy sellers worth the hassle?
Pinterest has changed A LOT, and it’s now harder to grow an Etsy shop using Pinterest but it is still possible. Here’s one strategy to help you grow your business using Pinterest, with tips on Pinterest for Etsy sellers.
Pinterest and Etsy used to be BFFs. You could create pins linking to Etsy and Pinterest would send bucketfulls of traffic to your shop for you. Unfortunately, things have changed. Gone are the days of merrily pinning your products straight from Etsy and letting Pinterest drive traffic and sales.
In February 2022 Pinterest removed the option to claim your Etsy shop and receive all the analytics from those pins linking to Etsy (it also did the same for YouTube and Instagram). It now only allows you to claim your own domain.
Whilst they’re great at announcing new features, this may have slid under the radar for a lot of folk as they didn’t announce they were taking this away – it just happened one day. Sneaky Pinterest!
Pinterest has changed loads over the last two years. What used to be a bit of a selfless site, happily sending traffic to other sites, now wants to keep users on the platform for longer (hello ad revenue!). Pinterest is also focusing heavily on growing its e-commerce and shopping features within the platform so it now wants to keep people there, rather than sending them elsewhere.
So how can you grow your Etsy business on Pinterest now?
You can still continue to create pins that link to your Etsy store but they’ll likely perform quite poorly on Pinterest, even if they’re keyworded AF.
It might be a pain in the a*se but having your own blog or website where you can promote your products is the absolute best way to grow your business, in my opinion. If you can set up your own e-commerce website you can save yourself the Etsy commission too! Having your own site means you can create pins that link to your products and get them pinned on Pinterest so that it can drive traffic to your domain AND sell your products.
It’s easier than you think to set up a simple e-commerce website. My blogs are all WordPress sites hosted with Siteground. You can purchase WordPress website templates on Etsy (I know!) which will give you an online shop for you to upload your products into – you just customise as you need.
If you have a site or blog already, consider adding an e-commerce section for your products. If you don’t want to have e-commerce facilities on your site, just add a listing for each product as a blog post, write a bit about it and how amazing it is, and add a Buy Now button which links to your Etsy listing. It’s not ideal, as it’s an extra step in the buying process for your customer and you’ll be sending traffic to Etsy and away from your own site, but at least you’ll be able to use Pinterest to promote your products.
Give each product it’s own webpage (so it has it’s own URL). Create carefully keyworded pins, pin them to keyworded boards and let Pinterest send traffic to your website. Make sure your Pinterest account is optimised (and you can learn how to optimise your Pinterest bio here) and you’ve done your keyword research.
WordPress users can install plug ins such as WooCommerce to create an online shop for their users. Other plug ins may be available, or you can decide to use a platform like Shopify to start an ecommerce site. Shopify is able to integrate with Pinterest and is an easy way to get your products onto Pinterest.
As of April 2022, Pinterest announced a Pinterest for WooCommerce Extension which will allow you to link your Pinterest and WooCommerce accounts. You’ll be able to create shoppable Product pins on Pinterest, which means you’ll get a dedicated Shop tab on your profile as an extra bonus! Etsy doesn’t do that for you ;). Here are some instructions on how to connect Pinterest to WooCommerce.
Another bonus of having your products on your own site is that you aren’t lost in the competition of Etsy and you get Google traffic to your products as well, using SEO strategies.
I know – I’m basically saying you should sack off Etsy and start out on your own! Pinterest falling out with Etsy isn’t the end of the world for Etsy sellers – it just means you may have to adapt your strategy a little. What might seem like a lot of work in the short term can bring you huge benefits and help you grow your business using Pinterest, and you might even decide that being lost in the competition of Etsy isn’t for you, and you’re better off self hosting!
How to Connect Etsy to Pinterest
Sadly, you can’t connect Etsy to Pinterest any more. Pinterest used to have the option to connect your Etsy store but as mentioned above, they have removed that option. Whilst pins can send traffic to your Etsy store, these pins will be slow to gain traction and won’t perform as well as pins linking to your claimed domain. If you can, set up your own site and domain and use Pinterest to grow your site.
If you want to get back to making, or creating beautiful things to sell in your Etsy shop and don’t want to learn the ins and outs of yet another platform, drop me a message to see how Pinterest can grow your business.
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