Hey you, if you’re new here:

My name is Angela Vaz, and I’m a 32-year-old Blogger, Illustrator, and Website Builder who lives in Bangalore, India with my partner and 2 dogs.

I have been blogging since 2018 and I make a full-time income with my multiple niche websites.

So, if you’ve missed the gist:

Google Updates massacred blog traffic in September 2023.

Whoever didn’t get caught in the algorithm updates soon discovered that they were just delayed and eventually lost over 70% of their traffic in the following updates (released in March 2024 and then August 2024).

Bloggers all over the world are devastated and have been looking for traffic replacement ever since.

I talked about this issue in detail in my post, How Blogging has Changed in 2024. 

After wallowing in my misery for a few months, I decided to get back up on the horse and try again.

I’ve always lived by SEO and I knew that people haven’t stopped reading content – because frankly, tell me, who wants to read a bunch of non-sensitive, nonsensical jargon AI regurgitates?

Okay, that was quite a mouthful, but I do despise AI with all my heart.

I’ll save that rant for another time.

I moved to Pinterest and initially, I was hesitant but I noticed my traffic increasing to all 3 websites and I was pleasantly surprised.

However, it was taking me a long time to see results – and you know me, sometimes I am not a patient woman.

A few pins go viral here and there and it brings me a lot of traffic.

Every time I get a viral pin, my traffic goes up – which in turn increases my ad and affiliate marketing revenue.

So, I wondered, if there was a way to speed that – what if I could make MORE viral pins and INCREASE my traffic by a significant amount?

I did.

Now, I never gatekeep.

That’s what I want to cover in this post – I’ll break down exactly what I did to create a viral pin and then repeat that process to make MORE viral pins.

Let’s begin.

Please note: My posts are long, but this is only because I want to make everything super easy for you to understand. 

This post may include affiliate links, which means clicking on them might result in me making a commission at no extra cost to you. This allows me to run this blog ad-free and make content accessible for you for free. I also use this to pamper my beloved pups.  

Stray Curls Banner including Angela and her 2 dogs Chloe and Maria

I never try to reinvent the wheel.

I always look at what works and then follow the same method repeatedly to reach success.

So, in this case, I looked at the Pinterest Experts – Carly in particular whose course I follow to the bone. 

She also recommended a new tool called PinClicks. 

It’s a tool that helps you understand what is working on Pinterest so that you don’t have to guess what keywords, pin designs, and pin descriptions you need to use.

It shows you:

  • Keywords (and related keywords to the topic)
  • Top Pins along with saves, clicks, and reactions (you can study the designs of the top pins for a keyword and then create something similar to maximize your traffic)
  • Topics (all the topics under the keyword, including annotated interests so you can use those keywords in your descriptions, titles, and pin design)

I was initially skeptical because I always think twice before a paid subscription.

But the best part is, that it comes with a 5-day free trial (no need for any credit card information), so I had nothing to lose.

CLAIM FREE 5-DAY TRIAL HERE OF PIN CLICKS

It’s different from the Pin Inspector which I’ve been using for 2 years now, and it’s got a few more updates that I like.

The guy who developed his tool also chimes in her Facebook Group once in a while and he genuinely wanted to help bloggers regain their lost traffic.

So, here’s what I did with the free trial as an experiment.

You can claim the free trial here and then read the rest of this post to see how I created the viral pin – use my method.

STEP 1: I did Keyword Research

For my lifestyle blog, I wanted to write a post that would increase ad and affiliate revenue – so something around skin preferably since I am comfortable writing on the topic. 

I noticed that a lot of “glass skin” posts come up on Pinterest when I randomly type any searches related to skin.

So, I opened Pin Clicks, went to the Keyword Research tool, and just entered a random idea like glass skin. It will show you the results that it picks up directly from Pinterest.

Note that besides each keyword, you can see the popularity (if you’re a brand new blogger to Pinterest, pick something with less competition), and “See Top Pins” which is my favorite tool.

STEP 2: See the top pins of the “selected keyword”

I liked the idea of “glass skin on dark skin” and I went and checked out all the top pins.

Note how beautifully you can see all the stats of the top pins for that particular keyword which include:

  • Pin Saves (to learn how to get people to save pins)
  • The position where it appears in the Search
  • Date created (super useful to find out how long it’s been viral)
  • Reactions

It’s super fast and clean, you’ll notice.

The best part?

You can hover over any pin and see all the annotated interests that Pinterest assigns (within its algorithm) to the pin – so now you can use these as keywords in your Pin Design/Pin Description/Pin title!!!

This is SOLID GOLD information yo.

After corresponding with other online business owners, did I realize that blogging is a golden opportunity to make money blogging.

STEP 3: Write a blog post using these keywords naturally

I then proceeded to write a blog post using these keywords from Pinterest and added some affiliate links to skin care within the post.

I won’t go into detail about writing a blog post because I already have a post here that teaches you how. 

Make sure it has a nice introduction, very well-formatted points, a short conclusion, and 3-5 links to relevant posts at the bottom of the blog. Add your images and affiliate links and publish the post in your blog.

STEP 4: Create 3-4 pin designs & pin to Pinterest

After you’ve studied the top pins (for beauty, the image is always striking and very large with a text overlay), go to Canva and create 3-4 pins for free.

You don’t need Canva Pro but I love it because it’s fast and it’s way too easy to use. You can use the free version if you want to minimize your costs.

Once I created the pins, I pinned them immediately to Pinterest. I used the keywords I collected in the PinClicks tool to optimize the title description and linked to the post.

I did this in late June.

Here are the results:

It took 1 month for the pin to start bringing in consistent blog traffic.

(Yes, I waited 1 month for the results to write this post)

The pin I created using PinClicks went viral within 3-4 weeks.

 

My Amazon Affiliate Earnings for this post alone brought me around $60 for July – notice how the earnings increase towards the month’s end.

This does not include the ad earnings the post brought me.

My Pinterest traffic has gone up drastically since pinning with this tool.

And I am genuinely stunned as to how much fun Pinterest has become now.

  • No more guessing what topics work and what doesn’t. 
  • No more guessing what keywords to put in the Pin description. 
  • No more guessing how to design your pins. 

This tool has saved me SO MUCH TIME and once the free trial ended, I went ahead and purchased the annual subscription because I noticed I got a discount when you purchase annually.

So, if you still haven’t claimed your free trial of PinClicks, please do so here.

Look around the tool and see how easy it is to now understand what does well on Pinterest.

Here are some things to note:

  • I have been pinning consistently on my Pinterest account for 3 months now, that’s why the pin took off within 1 month. If I had a new account, it might probably take a few months.
  • I am now replicating this strategy on my other blogs as well. So far, it’s working for any niche that does well on Pinterest.
  • This is not a paid/sponsored review. I never recommend anything I haven’t tried myself or purchased.

Conclusion

I am thankful to Pinterest because I have been recovering my traffic and I don’t believe in keeping anything hush-hush.

I will be doing more research and releasing it soon – I want to make Pinterest traffic possible for you so I may even write an eBook if it’s too much to put in blog posts.

For now, here are all my blog posts related to Pinterest to help you:

If you have any questions or insights, please share them in the comments below.

I’m all ears!