Pinterest Pays Me $25 Per Instagram Reel ~ Here's How

 One of my business coaches, Maria, has a really viral hook she uses a lot on Instagram to get new leads and sales. It goes something like this: “Instagram paid me ${ } today to post Reels. Not many people know you can do this”.

Usually the amount paid is pretty high; Maria makes about $400K per month. Because it’s such a high number, those Reels and posts get a ton of views and comments. Maria’s process is this: she makes Reels and drives traffic to them. Because she has such a high amount of traffic she gets a lot of clicks on her link in bio, which is her sales funnel. A percentage of those people buy her course, so that’s how she gets “paid”. She also has a chat bot funnel that sends people a free guide to this Reel-payment idea with her sales funnel attached, and some people buy her course from the chat bot.

This is a “controversial” hook because there are always a ton of people who just have to get in the comments and argue that Instagram isn’t paying her; people who come through the funnel are paying her. These people are trying to be haters, but Instagram doesn’t read the tone of the comments; they just count comments. So the more comments she gets the more Instagram promotes her post because it gets such high engagement.

Now, Instagram does have a creator payment program; you may remember a couple years ago I was in it and they paid me to make 10 Reels a day. However, you don’t get paid much at all; just a few cents per Reel and in any case now they changed the program to “gifts”, meaning viewers can opt to send me a gift to pay me. No one ever does it, lol.

Maria always tells us to copy her account and posts and things to replicate her success. I would love to copy that post because it always goes viral. Unfortunately, that wouldn’t be truthful… the vast majority of my leads and sales come from Pinterest.

In a way you could say Pinterest pays me to post on Instagram (and Facebook, and TikTok, and YouTube, and my blog)! Here’s how it works:

First of all, one of my Instagram accounts is linked to my Pinterest as an RSS feed. This is done through Pinterest; instructions are here: https://help.pinterest.com/en/article/claim-your-account .

Please note, you have to have a Pinterest business account and a public Instagram account for this. Honestly if your business Instagram isn’t public, what are you even doing? It makes no sense whatsoever to spend all this time creating content that isn’t public. You can always have a private personal account. You get up to 5 Instagram accounts.

Anyway, this feature automatically uploads all your Instagram posts to a board you designate on Pinterest. I don’t love the way the posts are uploaded; carousel posts go to Pinterest as a bunch of random images with no context. Reels with music not available on Pinterest are muted and there doesn’t seem to be a way to edit them with new music. You can only link one Instagram account and you don’t get to choose which one. So my linked account is my semi-personal face-forward account. I would have preferred to link my business-only faceless account.

However, there’s no doubt the automatic uploads greatly increased the amount of Pinterest pins I’m adding daily and Pinterest and Instagram both reward this feature. My reach and engagement and every other metric experienced a significant boost when I connected the accounts.

Because of my beef with some aspects of the automatic uploads I also send my Instagram posts to Pinterest using the paper airplane on Instagram. This is how I wish the auto-upload worked. I can choose different boards to send the pins and each time I share it creates two pins, a cover photo pin and a text-only pin. The text pins often get more engagement than the photos! It’s interesting to see how Reels perform on Pinterest when I share them this way. Often Reels that flopped on Insta do really well on Pinterest and vice-versa. That means I am reaching different audiences on both accounts, which is exactly what I want: more people viewing my content. Another plus to this is the link goes back to my Instagram account so it lures new followers from my Pinterest to that account.

To do it, go to the post you want to share and click on the paper airplane symbol under the post. Then click “Share To” and then click on the Pinterest icon. Click on the image and/or text you want to pin (you can share these more than once to different boards using different images). Then select the board where you want them to go.

Another way to pin your Reels and posts is to download them onto your device and then upload them as Pinterest pins. This is a great way to repurpose posts because you can choose a different cover image and you can also add a link to any website you desire, not just back to your Instagram.

Note: you should always try to pin different images to different boards and not the same image over and over, which Pinterest views as spam. It’s also best to stagger this out so you are pinning the same web link only once per day (such as your Instagram link). This looks like: Day 1, the pin is automatically sent from Instagram to Pinterest. Day 2, the post is shared to one Pinterest board. Day 3 the post is shared to another Pinterest board. Any day, the downloaded post may be pinned with a different web link and cover. Pinterest does not want you pinning the same web link more than once or twice a day.

Here’s how to download and pin a post:

Click on the paper airplane icon under the post and select “download”. The post will go to your device. It will have the Instagram icon on it. You can use apps that remove it but I prefer to leave that because it shows your Instagram handle which can draw new followers to your account.

Now go to Pinterest and click on the + sign and then “pin” in the app (or select ‘Create” on desktop). Upload your post. Select a cover image if it’s a Reel and music from Pinterest’s selections.

Next to the song you choose you will see an image of two vertical lines with little circles on them. These are the volume controls. Click on that icon and choose “Original Audio”. Turn the original audio volume all the way down. You need to do this because Instagram and Pinterest do not have the same audio licenses and your pin will be muted if you have unauthorized audio on. Plus Pinterest doesn’t like it.

As you can see from these examples I get at least four different Pinterest pins from each one Instagram post! They all serve different purposes, too. Some bring me new Instagram followers. Some increase my Pinterest visibility and bring me more engagement on the platform. Others direct people to the web link of my choice as well as advertise my Instagram account.

How does this make me money? Several ways! First, people coming from Pinterest to Instagram can buy my ebook from one account and my business startup course from the other account by means of the sales funnel linked in my bio.

I also post at least one link in each accounts Stories per day. These go either directly to my sales funnels or shops or they deliver a freebie which then leads to my sales funnels where they can purchase.

Every one of these links (on both Pinterest and Instagram) collects customer emails if they opt-in by getting a freebie or making a purchase. Once the email is collected my email auto-responder sends a week-long series of nurturing email messages introducing me and my offerings, building trust and recognition with customers and potential customers. Thereafter they get my weekly newsletter. I have an extremely high returning customer rate because I build such good relationships with my customers through my email, blog and social media.

Another way I make money is from a chat bot funnel. I use ManyChat to automatically thank and welcome anyone who comments on my posts and stories. My chat bot doesn’t go right into selling. Instead it’s a mini nurture sequence where I deliver free gifts and ask questions to start a conversation. When people reply to my chat bot’s automated messages I then go in and answer personally and hold conversations with people that eventually build into friendships. Some of my best friends are people I’ve never actually met in person but talk to all the time in Instagram messages! Almost all of them have purchased at least one thing from me at one time or another.

A third way I get paid is by sending customers to my shops from both platforms. I got a powerful reminder of that just this week. Right now one of my shops, my Studio Mandaline Postmark boutique, is offering discounted shipping to my customers. I unlocked this customer benefit by listing a whole lot of new inventory on the site. They rewarded me by placing a banner on all my listings advertising the shipping discount. (Use code STUDIOMANDALINE to sign up for Poshmark and get a $10 credit to shop).

I took a screenshot of the banner and made it into an Instagram Reel by adding the ZoomFilm filter to it. Several of Instagram’s effects have movement that can turn still photos into videos. I actually directed the Instagram caption to other Poshmark sellers, to alert them to this new reward, but I also linked my Poshmark boutique in Instagram Stories as well as on Pinterest.

This Reel didn’t get very many views on either platform but I immediately had a sale on Poshmark. The next morning I shipped my orders and then worked on my laptop for a couple hours. When I went back to my phone I had 243 Poshmark notifications! Those are people following me or liking or saving or sharing my products. (My normal amount of notifications in a 2 hour period would be like 10 or so!). Poshmark is not one of my leading shops in terms of sales because it requires you to be in the app sharing your listings all day and I just don’t have time for it.

So then I made another Reel about the free gift I send with any Poshmark purchase. Again, immediate sale on Poshmark. I decided to make a third Reel about the shipping discount, this one directed to Postmark customers. Another immediate sale. Obviously I am about to make another Poshmark-related Reel. This one will be about my last Baby Yoda top but I will also mention the shipping discount and free gift.

All three of these posts have my Poshmark boutique linked in the Stories and on Pinterest. It’s little too soon to tell exactly where the traffic is coming from; also Metricool, my tracker, doesn’t connect directly to Poshmark, just to my social media sites and website. Historically Pinterest has been my number one source of traffic to all my sites and I think that’s probably still the case.

At any rate, each Reel made me an average of $25 from just one shop (I have 14). Because I have been doing this so long I am extremely quick. It doesn’t take me long at all to post and share these Reels ~ I get them done in 10-15 minutes each, which is a pretty good rate of return on time spent! I had no ad costs for any of those sales, either, so my profit margin is much higher.

What I haven’t even mentioned here is I also share my Reels and posts on my Facebook page, in my Facebook groups, and on other platforms like YouTube and TikTok and even this blog. Guess what? I share those to Pinterest too! That allows me even more posts and links to Pinterest each day because they all go to different web links. This, in turn, advertises those platforms to my Pinterest audience so I get fresh eyes on my content. Pretty good reach when you consider each is just ONE post!

Now I know, this sounds like a LOT. And it is, especially when you’re new. I was much slower when I started out. You can use a scheduler like Metricool or Meta Business to automate a lot of this (although Reels and YouTube videos in particular get way less reach when they’re scheduled).

You can also use clever hacks to create content or just use someone else’s. Did you know, 90% of my Instagram content was made by other people? And Instagram rewards me for using it because they are all about “collaboration”. Get my Lazy Content Guide to discover all my secrets to working smarter, not harder ~ just click here.

​Gary Vee directs his team to post 200 different pieces of content every single day, so just remember it could be worse! And don’t worry about people getting bored with your content being shared all over the place; the way the algorithms are set up, only about 2% of your followers even see each post at all, not to mention non-followers! Only like your stalker or your mom is even going to be aware you’re repeating yourself.