Midjourney, the AI image generator, is an incredible and fascinating tool that can be used in many different ways, including for driving traffic to a blog. This post outlines one such strategy that I have discovered and developed by way of Builder Society in the aftermath of Google’s 2023 and 2024 algorithm updates, which has allowed me to monetize a new blog without relying upon Google for traffic.
But first, a disclaimer: No single traffic strategy can be relied upon for sustainable long-term income. The internet is evolving, and like Google, Pinterest may change their algorithm at any moment, rendering this traffic source useless.
You Will Need:
- Midjourney subscription (Standard or higher).
- ChatGPT Plus subscription
- WordPress site
Other AI tools and CMS could also work for this. I have no affiliation with any of the platforms I mentioned. They are just the ones that I used to achieve this.
You can simply grow a Pinterest account with a Midjourney subscription alone, but adding in ChatGPT and a WordPress site gives you a clear path to monetization.
The Process
I am going to outline my entire workflow for this one step at a time. There is more going on here than would appear to be on the surface. The tools are working in tandem with each other to create a fully operational, and maintainable system. All you need are your own ideas, a little bit of patience, and a willingness to experiment.
The whole process is very similar to previous sites that were built for SEO purposes, except this one is built for Pinterest.
Step 1: Find Your Niche
You will need a creative niche for your website that will fit with the user base on Pinterest. It is an extremely visual platform, and its users are roughly 70% women. See full Pinterest audience data here. Certain topics have a better chance of gaining traction on Pinterest, especially with Midjourney.
For example, while Extra Chill does get some traffic from Pinterest, the music niche is much more difficult to succeed with on Pinterest. The main reason is that users are looking for the likeness of a musician, and oftentimes, Midjourney does not do a great job at recreating them accurately enough.
However, topics like beauty, food, nature, animals, and other visual topics do perform quite well on Pinterest. Check out trends.pinterest.com for an idea of the most popular topics on Pinterest at any given time.
Step 2: Build Your Website
This step can be as simple or as complex as you want to make it. For Sarai Chinwag, the project that I have implemented this strategy with, I started with GeneratePress and then moved to a custom theme that I built from scratch after I felt more comfortable with PHP and the WordPress environment.
Ultimately, you just need a well-organized, easy to navigate WordPress site that your users will enjoy coming across. Make sure it loads fast and you pick a good host. I like Hostinger and Cloudways (again, no affiliation, I just use them both).
I will not go too in-depth into the topic of creating a website, because the assumption is that readers will be able to figure that part out on their own. I am simply documenting something that I have found that works.
Pinterest Save Button
No matter what theme you choose, the Pinterest save button is crucial. This will allow users to save the images from your website directly to Pinterest. Since you are focusing on Pinterest as a traffic strategy, this aligns perfectly with the preferences of your users.
Step 3: Find Topics for Articles
There are several ways to go about finding topics for articles, but for purposes of this strategy, I am going to focus on SEO keyword research tools, and using Pinterest itself. There are other ways to come up with topic ideas, such as your own creativity, but these two are concrete and actionable.
Keyword Research
Again, this is so very similar to an SEO strategy, except it is not an SEO strategy. However, you will be using an SEO keyword research tool to get started. You have your niche already picked out, and hopefully it is something very juicy for Pinterest.
Personally, for this I am using Lowfruits, because it allows me to cheaply search for keywords, but you can use any tool of your choosing.
I also recently heard of PinClicks, through Jon Dykstra of the Fat Stacks Blog, which is supposed to be Ahrefs for Pinterest, but I have not tried it.
Using Pinterest Itself
Pinterest will also give you ideas if you spend some time exploring. Topics like “Breathtaking Images of XYZ” do perform well on Pinterest. As I mentioned earlier, Pinterest trends are your friend, and as you get more familiar with the app and your chosen niche, content ideas will reveal themselves to you.
Step 4: Create A Blog Post
Okay, so this is where the strategy starts to get more involved. You have your keyword idea, and your topic all picked out. Now, you will be using ChatGPT to create a blog post. You could technically use regular old ChatGPT, but I recommend creating a Custom GPT for this purpose.
Once you have the text, you will start with one image in the post. I will explain why you should only use one image in the next step.
Your Custom GPT
I have a custom GPT that I have been fine-tuning for Sarai Chinwag for over a year now. I will not share it here, but the idea is that the GPT is primed to write in a voice and a format that I have defined. This is extremely specific, down to the headings, word choice, and title.
The most important thing to do is to make sure that any headline that you feed it is treated as instructions to create a post for WordPress. This way, you simply paste the headline of the article into the chat, and the GPT will produce for you a fully-functional article to be copy-and-pasted into WordPress.
Note that this works much better for topics that are subjective, or non-factual. Sometimes, the chatbot will mess up facts. When there are no actual, or important facts, you do not have to worry about fact-checking. You can simply mass-produce content.
Create an Image with Midjourney
Use Midjourney to create a visually-stunning image that represents your article. If your website is tuned properly, you can use the “–ar 2:3” command in Midjourney to create images in a 2:3 aspect ratio. This will ensure that the images on your blog are optimized for the platform.
The only issue here is that it may mess up the visual representation of your featured images, depending on your theme, which is why having a custom, Pinterest-tuned theme is ideal for this strategy. I may create one and sell it in the future, but for now you can contact me for help with a custom theme.
I also have a Custom GPT for generating Midjourney prompts, which I will also not share here. But, the prompt generation is based on my list of Midjourney Modifier Words, which is public on this website, and helps me to create more unique images. You can use my word bank if you want, or create your own, or simply do this manually.
Step 5: Create More Images
Now, you get to have fun creating more and more images. What I like to do is use Midjourney on Discord to create the images, and then go back and download them in bulk on the web. The Midjourney browser-based creator is also getting really good, but I still like having it on Discord for ease of use.
I will generally create 5 to 10 images for a new blog post and publish them on Pinterest, on a board that is aligned with the post’s most specific taxonomy, linking back to the blog post.
Why Not Put The Images Directly In the Post?
Some of your pins are going to be duds and you don’t need to waste server space right off the bat uploading a bunch of Midjourney images to your site. Let Pinterest handle the server load and you can capitalize on it later.
Step 6: Add More Images to Your Posts
After a couple of weeks to months go by, you should start seeing results for your pins. If done correctly, some of the images you created will be sending traffic to your site. Now it’s time to make money.
For the top-performing pins, you go back and add those images to the blog posts that they are linking to. This allows you to only include proven successful images in your blog posts.
This will increase the time that the users spend on the page. And, if your theme is optimized for Pinterest, you will also have users saving images to their boards directly from your website. This creates a closed-loop system where your website is fully-integrated with Pinterest, and allows it to gain serious traction on the platform.
Step 7: Rinse and Repeat
It may take you some time to get into a groove, but using this strategy you can grow a Pinterest account and send traffic to a website without relying on Google or SEO. You may find that you also get SEO traffic from this strategy, but focusing on Pinterest allows you to diversify away from Google and secure your assets that much more.
Monetization Methods
There are several ways that you can monetize your blog using this strategy. I will give you three of them and you can come up with more on your own.
1. Display Ads
This is the most obvious and straightforward way to monetize a site using this strategy. Simply grind until you get enough traffic to be approved for ads, and then monetize. Personally I went with Mediavine Journey to start, because I use Mediavine for Extra Chill and they have always been good to me. I would say start with this as your goal and then diversify income sources.
2. Affiliate Links
Depending on your niche, you may find suitable locations for affiliate links in your content. You can combine this with display ads to squeeze extra revenue out of your traffic. You could also implement this first, before you qualify for display ads, if your niche is very product-driven.
3. Selling Your Own Products
Since you are running a visually-focused blog, the opportunity exists to make money selling prints, or other merchandise containing the images that you have created with Midjourney. This one should come later, after you have had success with some images, so that you do not waste your time creating all sorts of products that nobody wants. Wait for the demand, then provide the supply.
Pinterest Considerations
Pinterest is an interesting platform that is also dealing with the evolving internet landscape in its own way. There are two specific things that are important to keep in mind when developing this strategy.
Rate Limit
Pinterest will stop you from uploading new pins after you create a certain number per day. When you have a strong workflow going, this happens extremely quickly, at about 150-200 pins in 24 hours. Your niche will help mitigate this, so you are best off choosing something relatively narrow.
If you have the means and the resources, it is recommended to have multiple, narrow niche sites with Pinterest accounts so that you do not hit the rate limit and you can keep working. Obviously this is more work and it will help to use the same theme for all of them.
Aversion to AI
If you look at the Pinterest subreddit, you will notice many posts with users complaining about AI images. My personal belief is that these are the vocal minority, and the vast majority of people are on board with AI images. The engagement on Pinterest shows for it.
However, this is important to keep in mind for the quality of your images. If you are uploading low quality AI images with a lot of imperfections, the Pinterest userbase absolutely will call you out for it in the comments, and this strategy will not work as well for you. Be sure to only upload quality to your profile. Use your judgement and try to keep it high, and you will see the best results.
Closing Thoughts
As I’ve mentioned, this is meant to be just one source for traffic to a website. It is easy to get complacent and adopt an “eggs in one basket” approach to traffic and monetization, but it is absolutely best to find alternative routes. After you create the content, your approach then becomes finding ways to get people onto the website.
Good luck!