How to Pin Etsy Listings on Pinterest (Step by Step)
How to pin Etsy listings on Pinterest the right way: better images, keyword-rich titles, the right boards, and how to scale it across your whole shop.
How to Pin Etsy Listings on Pinterest (Step by Step)
Pinning your Etsy listings to Pinterest is one of the few marketing tasks that keeps paying you back. A pin you publish today can show up in search results for months, sometimes years. Compare that to an Instagram post, which is effectively gone in two days.
There are two ways to pin a listing. The quick way takes ten seconds and produces a weak pin. The right way takes a few minutes and produces a pin that can actually rank in Pinterest search. This guide covers both, then shows you how to do the right way for an entire shop without losing your weekends.
The Quick Way: Etsy's Share Button
Open any of your listings on Etsy, click the share icon, and choose Pinterest. Etsy hands the listing over to Pinterest, which pulls in your first listing photo and your Etsy title. Pick a board, hit save, done.
It works. The pin links to your listing and someone could buy from it. But two things make these pins underperform.
The image is wrong for Pinterest. Etsy listing photos are square or horizontal because that's what Etsy's grid wants. Pinterest's feed is a vertical grid. Pinterest itself recommends a 2:3 aspect ratio, ideally 1000 by 1500 pixels. A square photo shows up smaller than the vertical pins around it, which means fewer eyes and fewer clicks.
The title is written for Etsy, not Pinterest. Etsy titles look like this: "Personalized Name Necklace, Sterling Silver Necklace, Custom Jewelry, Gift for Her, Bridesmaid Gift, Mom Gift, Dainty Necklace." That comma-stuffed format exists to match Etsy's tag system. On Pinterest it reads like spam, gets truncated after the first few words, and gives Pinterest's search algorithm a muddled signal about what the pin actually is.
Use the share button if the alternative is pinning nothing. But if you're going to spend any effort on Pinterest, spend it on the method below.
The Better Way: Build the Pin Yourself
This is the workflow that produces pins that rank. Five steps.
Step 1: Create a vertical image
Start with a 2:3 vertical canvas, 1000 by 1500 pixels. Canva's free tier handles this fine, and so does any basic photo editor.
You don't need new photography. Crop your best listing photo vertically, or stack two photos (product on top, lifestyle shot below). Adding a short text overlay like "Personalized Birthstone Necklace" helps people understand the pin at a glance, and Pinterest's visual search reads that text too. There's more on image design in how to make scroll-stopping pins, but a clean vertical crop already beats the auto-pulled square.
Step 2: Upload it as a new pin
On Pinterest, click Create, then Create Pin. Upload your vertical image. Don't paste your Etsy URL into the "save from site" option, because that pulls Etsy's images again. Upload the file directly.
Step 3: Write a title for searchers
You get up to 100 characters, and only about the first 40 show in the feed. Lead with the keyword phrase a buyer would type, then add a benefit or detail.
Weak: "New in the shop! Check out this necklace"
Strong: "Personalized Birthstone Necklace, 14k Gold Filled, Gift for Mom"
The strong version front-loads the search term and still reads like a human wrote it. If you haven't done keyword research yet, the Pinterest search bar's autocomplete suggestions are real searches from real users. The full process is in our Pinterest SEO guide for Etsy shops.
Step 4: Write a 2 to 3 sentence description
Describe what the product is, what it's made of, and who it's for. Work in two or three keyword variations naturally. Skip hashtags, they don't help on Pinterest anymore.
Example: "A dainty personalized birthstone necklace in 14k gold fill, made to order with the initial and stone of your choice. A thoughtful birthday gift for mom, a new mom gift, or a bridesmaid thank you. Tap to choose your birthstone."
Step 5: Link straight to the listing
Paste the full URL of the specific Etsy listing into the destination link field, not your shop homepage. Someone who clicks a pin of a birthstone necklace wants to see that necklace, not scroll through your 80 other listings hunting for it. Every extra step loses buyers.
Which Board Should You Pin To?
Pin to the most specific board you have that matches the product. Pinterest uses the board name and the other pins on that board as context for ranking, so a necklace on a board called "Personalized Jewelry Gifts" gets a relevance boost that a board called "My Shop" never gives it.
If your most specific matching board doesn't exist yet, make it. A handful of keyword-named boards organized by product type or theme beats one giant catch-all. We cover board structure in detail in how many Pinterest boards an Etsy seller needs.
One rule: never pin the same image to five boards in one sitting. Pinterest treats that as spammy. If a pin genuinely fits a second board, wait at least a few days before saving it there.
How Many Pins Per Listing?
One pin per listing is the floor, not the ceiling. Each pin is a separate entry in Pinterest search, so a listing with five different pins has five chances to rank instead of one.
For a listing you want to push, create several distinct pins over time:
- A clean product shot on a plain background
- A lifestyle photo showing the item in use or worn
- A close-up detail shot
- A version with a text overlay targeting a gift keyword ("Bridesmaid Proposal Gift")
- A seasonal angle 45 to 60 days before a holiday ("Christmas Gift for Mom")
Spread these out over weeks, not all in one afternoon. Pinterest rewards fresh pins published consistently and quietly penalizes bursts followed by silence. A steady pace of a few pins a day beats fifty pins on Sunday, and we break down the numbers in how often to post on Pinterest.
Vary the title and description on each pin too. Five pins with identical copy rank for the same terms. Five pins with different keyword angles cover five different searches.
Doing This for a Whole Shop
Here's the honest math. If you have 60 listings and want 4 pins per listing, that's 240 pins. At five minutes per pin (image, title, description, board choice), you're looking at 20 hours of work, plus the ongoing job of spacing them out day after day.
A few things make it manageable:
Batch by task, not by listing. Make 20 pin images in one Canva session, write 20 titles and descriptions in the next session, then schedule. Switching between design mode and writing mode for every single pin is where the time goes.
Reuse templates. Build two or three pin layouts you like, then swap in new photos and text. Your pins also start to look consistent, which buyers notice.
Start with your bestsellers. Pin the listings that already convert on Etsy first. They have proven demand, and their Etsy tags tell you which keywords to target.
Use a scheduler. Spacing 240 pins across three months by hand means logging into Pinterest every day. This is the part worth automating. PetalBoard reads your Etsy listings, drafts the vertical images, titles, and descriptions for you, and publishes on a schedule after you approve each pin. The free plan needs no credit card, so you can test it on a handful of listings before committing.
However you do it, the order of operations matters: get the pin format right first, then scale. Two hundred badly formatted pins do less than twenty good ones.
Common questions
Can I pin Etsy listings directly to Pinterest?
Yes. Every Etsy listing has a share button that posts straight to Pinterest. It's fast, but it uses your square Etsy photo and comma-heavy Etsy title, which both underperform on Pinterest. Uploading a vertical 2:3 image with a rewritten title ranks better.
Is it free to pin Etsy products on Pinterest?
Yes. Creating pins that link to your Etsy listings costs nothing. Pinterest ads exist but are optional, and most Etsy sellers see results from free organic pins alone.
How many times can I pin the same Etsy listing?
As often as you like, as long as each pin uses a fresh image or a meaningfully different design. Pinterest favors fresh pins, so make multiple versions per listing and spread them over weeks rather than repinning one identical image.
Should pins link to my Etsy shop or the specific listing?
Link to the specific listing. Buyers click a pin because they want that exact item, and sending them to your shop homepage adds a step where many give up. Save the shop link for your Pinterest profile.