Comment by austenallred | Hacker News Reader

Comment by austenallred | Hacker News Reader

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Pinterest's monetization will do great. Seriously, Pinterest could and should IPO in coming years.

I'm bullish on Pinterest not only because my wife and I use Pinterest for everything from planning our wedding to finding outfits and meals, but because I market on Pinterest for a few clients all day long. It consistently brings in more traffic than other sources when you do it right, even for clients that are ranked in the top 5 in high-traffic Google SERPs.

The crazy thing about Pinterest traffic is that it never dies off. If you get a bunch of repins today, traffic will be showing up from those pins months later; it's kind of absurd, and very unlike Adsense or other discovery advertising platforms in that way.

The difficult aspect for Pinterest will be getting the worth of Pinterest ads down to a final cost per action since it is such a long wait before you see how much each pin is truly worth. And that really is the goal for any advertiser: If I know this click will bring me $2 I'll pay up to $1.99 for it. A lot of Pinterest users are in hardcore discovery mode, and as such Pinterest traffic doesn't convert as well as search traffic immediately, but in the long run it always seems to be worth it.

>It consistently brings in more traffic than anything combined when you do it right,

How do you do Pinterest "right"? Just curious.

You're absolutely right about the traffic trend. When Pinterest was first getting a major buzz, I was pinning regularly and those pins are still getting actively repinned.

After a period of no pinning, now when I do pin things, I hardly see any activity.

It's a long process that took me forever to figure out, but here are the basics. I'll probably write a blog post about it.

Pin something, get a couple of repins, then repin that to a very popular community board (it takes work to get invites to those with followings of 150,000+). Follow, like, and comment (sincerely) on the pins of people who repinned your pin.

Rinse and repeat. On the average day for a newer site/account I'll drive between 1,000 and 2,000 visits and get about 100-150 new followers. The average product I pin will get 20-50 repins on day 1. But the crazy part is, as you mentioned, that all compounds over time.

The most important piece of information I'm willing to share is that if I could advertise on Pinterest I would switch all of my clients' ad spend from Adsense to Pinterest today. Promoted pins are going to be worth mad cash.

    Pin something, get a couple of repins, then repin that to
    a very popular community board (it takes work to get
    invites to those with followings of 150,000+).

I'm not intentionally being dismissive, but isn't this a little like saying "Pin something, get a couple of repins, [magic happens]"?

I would imagine that if you can get content posted regularly to any platform with 150,000+ followers/readers/subscribers, the traffic rolls right in.

Is there something particular to pinterest that makes it easier to get content posted to these community boards, vs. getting content posted on a popular blog or retweeted by a popular account?

There's no secret there, there's just a gatekeeper you have to get past, and it's a little bit different for every one. Some will let you right on through, but usually you get to know the board owner really well, interact with them a bunch on Pinterest, and ask for an invite. You can also create generic Pinterest accounts and use a bot to load them up with very similar content to what they're looking for with a couple search functions, but that's probably not worth explaining on this forum.

Also, getting on the community boards is only the beginning of the battle.

when you write Adsense, do you mean Adwords ?

No, I mean Adsense. Adwords is intent-driven search. Adsense is discovery. Pinterest is much more comparable to Adsense.

I thought AdWords was the interface for making ads for AdSense. The logo even says "Google AdWords." And the ads I made look a lot like AdSense.

They're different products. Adwords ads go on google.com, Adsense ads are put on the display network (blogs, gmail, etc.) Now you can create both through the Adwords tools, but they're still separate offerings.

AdSense is a product for publishers that allows to monetize their traffic. AdWords ia a product to place ads on google search and google display network which includes google properties (youtube, gmail). They are two sides of the same coin, directed on publishers and advertisers respectively.

https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/76231?hl=en

AdWords is the portal but you can target search or the content network (aka AdSense).

blah the HN app I was using gave me no notification that a comment was posted. I wasn't trying to spam.

You will be forever shunned for this grievous error.

it sounds like they mean using AdWords but targeting the content network, which is effectively the AdSense network. That is different then search engine traffic that you can also buy through AdWords.

This is mostly semantics.

AdWords is the overall interface. Adssense is the website-owner-focused product that lets people put ads on their website. AdSense is for all intents & purposes google's display network, but is definitely served up through Google's AdWords platform.

I think he means 'Google Display Network', which is what puts adverts on sites using 'Google AdSense'.

Your first sentence is ambiguous. I'm still not entirely sure you mean it in the startup world usage of "killing it" - i.e. doing really well (though I think you do), or the more mainstream usage of "destroy it."

While I agree that the usage is unclear, "killing it" as "doing really well" is very mainstream.

It still means "destroy it", but "it"="the competition/obstacles".

Thank you. I edited it (doing really well).

I'm also very optimistic about Pinterest; especially their discovery and advertising. I think much like Twitter did, the platform will sneak up on us.

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