Looking for ways to make money with Pinterest? Rather than looking at Pinterest as a simple photo-sharing network, consider it your own global bulletin board. In November of 2013, Pinterest had 70 million users, 80 per cent of them women, and received 2.5 billion page views per month.

There are many ways to make money with Pinterest, and as the network continues to grow, your opportunities will grow too.

Let’s look at some effective ways in which you can make money with Pinterest.

1. Follow your passion, build an audience and sell to them.

What are you passionate about? If people are spending money in an area you love, you can make money.

Let’s say you’re a fitness junkie. You love being fit, and staying fit. You choose a target audience: women in their twenties who want to be fit and attractive. Create a Pinterest account and boards that attract this audience.

Get followers to your boards, and create a mailing list. Some keen Pinterest users have a million followers and more. You don’t need that many followers to your account to sell to your audience. If you don’t know what to sell, don’t worry. Once you have a few thousand followers, marketers will approach you with offers.

2. Choose a company to promote, and ask for sponsorship.

Target a group, and build your Pinterest followers as we discussed above. Then select companies offering products that appeal to your audience. Staying with our “fitness” audience, you could approach companies that sell gym machines, or sports drinks.

Share your Pinterest account’s statistics with the companies you approach, and ask for sponsorship. Offer them a deal: they can use their branding on your account for a year.

3. Promote affiliate products.

Many companies want affiliates who will promote their products for a small commission on the sales that result. Find companies that sell products you can promote, and sign up as an affiliate. Then promote the products on your boards, using your affiliate links.

Tip: use an URL-shortening service like Bitly to manage your links. You’ll be able to track your pins and boards for the number of clicks.

Regarding spamming. Periodically Pinterest takes action against affiliate marketing spammers. If you get caught up in this, link your pins to your own website, where you can use affiliate links.

4. Use search engine optimization (SEO) strategies to get found on Pinterest.

If you want to make money on Pinterest, people have to be able to find your pins and boards, so use SEO strategies. Not only will you be found on Pinterest, you’ll also be found via the major search engines, like Google.

Make the most of your “About” profile. You’ve got 200 characters (around 50 words.) Be clear and descriptive, using the keywords you expect searchers to use.

Also, use SEO strategies on your pins. Each pin allows you 500 characters (around 100 words) of description, so make the most of it by adding keywords and links. Include keywords naturally, rather than in a spammy way.

5. Create contests on Pinterest to sell your own products.

Perhaps you want to sell your own products on Pinterest. Consider creating contests. They’re popular, and can help you to make money.

Pinterest guards its users’ experience. This is wonderful because it ensures that the network will continue to grow.

6. Re-pin others’ pins to win an audience and make money.

Pinterest is a social network, so the easiest way to get people to re-pin your pins is to be active. Pin others’ pins, particularly those people in your target audience. They will notice you, and may even start following your boards.

7. Make money by teaching Pinterest strategies to others.

As Pinterest continues to grow, a small industry has developed around it, with people developing tools to help Pinterest users.

After you’ve been using Pinterest successfully for a while, consider making money by teaching your strategies to others. Create e-books and courses teaching what you’ve learned.

So there you have it: seven effective ways to make money with Pinterest. You’ll also develop further strategies of your own when you become active on the network.