Appreciation post: I was totally wrong about those 'useless' Pinterest pins for my small business

For a long time, I thought Pinterest was just for recipes and wedding ideas, not for my little online shop. I run a small store selling handmade leather goods, and a friend kept telling me to post there. I finally gave in about four months ago and started putting up a few clean pictures of my wallets and belts. I didn't expect much, but I set up the links right. Last week, I checked my site traffic and saw 15 new visitors came directly from Pinterest, and two of them actually bought something. That's more direct sales than I get from my Facebook page most weeks. It turns out people really do use it to find and plan purchases, not just dream about kitchens. I'm still figuring it out, but I'm adding new pins every Tuesday now. Has anyone else had a simple tactic like this surprise them with real results?

3 comments

3 Comments

rose_hart313mo ago

Hold on, two sales in four months? I mean, that's cool it's working a bit, but calling it a serious sales channel seems like a stretch. In my experience, that amount of traffic could just be random luck. I'd need to see that happen for a lot longer before I changed my whole mind about it.

kevinwilson3mo ago

Right? That's barely any data to go on. I had a similar thing happen last year, got a couple sales from a new place and thought it was taking off, then nothing for months.

barbara3991mo ago

Dug into the numbers more myself after a similar slow start. Broke it down by customer type, found that small businesses ordering repeat supplies were driving the real growth even though it looked slow overall. Started tracking that group separately and sent them a simple email with a discount for their next order. That turned a tiny trickle into a steady stream, took about three months to really show up in the totals though.