S1E18 How to Ride (and Survive) The Pinterest Traffic Roller Coaster

Summary

Pin Talk - Pinterest Tips and Updates for Creators
Episode: S1E18 "How to Ride (and Survive) The Pinterest Traffic Roller Coaster"
Release Date: May 22, 2025
Hosts: Tony Hill and Carly Campbell
Podcast Description: Pin Talk is dedicated to helping bloggers and content creators maximize their Pinterest traffic. Hosted by Pinterest experts Tony Hill and Carly Campbell, the podcast offers practical strategies, expert interviews, and actionable insights to elevate your Pinterest game and grow your online business.

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1. Understanding the Pinterest Traffic Roller Coaster

Overview:
Tony and Carly open the episode by introducing the concept of Pinterest traffic as a roller coaster ride, emphasizing the inevitable ups and downs that content creators experience on the platform.

Notable Quotes:

• Carly Campbell [00:12]: “Nothing goes up and up and up forever. If you're going to be a Pinterest traffic blogger, you're going to go up and then you're going to go down and then you're going to go up again.”
• Tony Hill [00:39]: “Pinterest these days has been just up and down, like sometimes every month, every two. And then you have, like, some seasonality things that we'll talk about.”

2. The Emotional Impact of Traffic Fluctuations

Discussion:
The hosts delve into the emotional roller coaster that accompanies the Pinterest traffic fluctuations. Tony shares how increasing traffic lifts his spirits, while declining traffic can lead to anxiety and panic.

Notable Quotes:

• Tony Hill [02:08]: “There's really two roller coasters we're riding. There's the Pinterest algorithm traffic roller coaster, but there's also the emotional roller coaster that just goes along with it.”
• Carly Campbell [05:24]: “With my giant ship, I'm still like, oh, it's really bad. But with my small site, I'm having to manage my emotions over and over again.”

3. Personal Analogies: Real-Life Roller Coaster Experiences

Overview:
To illustrate the unpredictability of Pinterest traffic, Carly and Tony share their most memorable real-life roller coaster rides, drawing parallels between those experiences and managing Pinterest's traffic fluctuations.

Notable Quotes:

• Carly Campbell [05:57]: “I rode a roller coaster once as a kid and cried the whole time. It made me vow never to ride one again.”
• Tony Hill [06:53]: “I lost my wallet on a roller coaster ride, teaching me to protect what's important – much like protecting your content and mental well-being on Pinterest.”

4. Strategies for Navigating the Highs

Discussion:
Tony and Carly discuss actionable strategies to implement during Pinterest traffic peaks. They emphasize the importance of leveraging high traffic periods to build financial safety nets, expand audience connections, and experiment with new ideas.

Notable Quotes:

• Carly Campbell [52:41]: “When you're up, save money to cover your business expenses during a down.”
• Tony Hill [55:22]: “Use your up periods to test new product ideas and validate them quickly with increased traffic.”

5. Approaches to Surviving the Dips

Overview:
The conversation shifts to handling low traffic periods. The hosts advise content creators to reassess their strategies, focus on making more revenue with less traffic, and avoid negative behaviors like excessive analytics checking.

Notable Quotes:

• Tony Hill [15:16]: “One of the things that can plague us is making very rash decisions.”
• Carly Campbell [21:35]: “I set a timer and tell myself, 'I'm not moving on or closing this tab until I've made three pins.'”

6. The Importance of Data Analysis and Continuous Learning

Discussion:
Tony emphasizes the necessity of delving deeper into Pinterest analytics beyond just top-performing pins. Carly highlights the value of identifying patterns and using tools like Tony’s Chrome extension to gain comprehensive insights.

Notable Quotes:

• Tony Hill [76:29]: “Look at the data because to me, the data is the facts.”
• Carly Campbell [79:48]: “Seeing group board pins perform better has encouraged me to double down on that strategy.”

7. Leveraging Community Support

Overview:
Carly and Tony discuss the significance of being part of supportive communities. They contrast their own positive, proactive communities with negative echo chambers, highlighting how persistent and successful members tend to thrive through dips.

Notable Quotes:

• Carly Campbell [84:51]: “The people that have been in the community for a long time are the successful people that I know.”
• Tony Hill [83:25]: “Join communities that focus on motivation and positive strategies rather than negativity.”

8. Financial Resilience and Investment During Highs

Discussion:
The hosts explore financial strategies to build resilience against Pinterest traffic dips. Carly advises saving and investing earnings from high traffic periods to create a safety net, while Tony suggests diversifying revenue streams and cutting unnecessary expenses during downturns.

Notable Quotes:

• Carly Campbell [55:21]: “Save money to cover your business expenses in your down.”
• Tony Hill [62:42]: “Focus on making more revenue with less traffic by exploring new affiliate programs or offering services.”

9. Conclusion and Encouragement

Overview:
As the episode wraps up, Tony and Carly reinforce the importance of resilience, adaptability, and maintaining a positive mindset. They encourage creators to take proactive steps during both highs and dips to ensure long-term success.

Notable Quotes:

• Tony Hill [69:26]: “The goal is to make every dip feel a little better than the previous one.”
• Carly Campbell [76:29]: “Persisting through the dip is key to reaching the next up.”

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Final Thoughts:
In this comprehensive episode, Tony Hill and Carly Campbell provide invaluable insights into managing the volatile nature of Pinterest traffic. By sharing personal experiences, emotional coping mechanisms, and practical strategies for both high and low traffic periods, they equip content creators with the tools needed to navigate the Pinterest traffic roller coaster successfully. Whether you're celebrating a traffic surge or grappling with a downturn, this episode offers actionable advice to help you stay resilient and continue growing your online business.

For more tips and community support, visit pintalkpodcast.com and join their thriving communities.

Transcript

[Tony Hill]

Hey, welcome to pintalk, the Gozew podcast for all things Pinterest for bloggers and content creators. I'm Tony Hill and with me is my co host, Carly Kimble. So, Carly, what are we talking about today?

[Carly Kimble]

We are going to talk about how to ride and survive the Pinterest traffic roller coaster. Because if you are going to be a Pinterest traffic blogger, then one of the first things, the things I like to tell everybody over and over again, is that nothing goes up and up and up forever. And if you're going to do this, you are going to go up and then you're going to go down and then you're going to go up again. And this can be a really hard thing to wrap your mind around.

[Tony Hill]

Yeah. So with my background coming from Google, I'm used to the roller coaster. I would say it's different. It's a different roller coaster experience with Pinterest. With Google, it was kind of spread out more. Pinterest these days has been just up and down, like sometimes every month, every two. And then you have, like, some seasonality things that we'll talk about. So there's all sorts of reasons why Pinterest is different from Google, but so it's something I've had to get used to, recognize that, okay, this is just a completely different ride altogether and I have to reset my expectations. But that's kind of been the reality for the last, I would say three to six months, for sure. At the time of this recording, there's a lot of us that have been on this roller coaster and. And a lot. And a lot of us that are going down right now and some that are going up, and it's been nice to still see that as well. But we're just kind of all over this roller coaster right now. And this is gonna be the last episode of this season. And so I wanted to end it with just kind of a reality check of where we're at with Pinterest, where a lot of the creators, at least in our community that we talk to every day, where they're at and, like, how can we provide some encouragement and support on just what to do when things are down. What to do when things are up. Because they're gonna be up and down. Like you said, nothing goes up forever. And, you know, generally nothing goes down forever. I think it does if you don't do anything. And so we want to avoid that.

[Carly Kimble]

Yeah. If you quit at the bottom, you will never go back up.

[Tony Hill]

Yeah, yeah. And there when I was thinking about this I was realizing, you know, with this roller coaster for Pinterest, there's really two roller coasters we're riding. There's this Pinterest algorithm traffic roller coaster, but there's also this emotional roller coaster that just goes along with it. I don't know if you're anything like me, but, yeah, if I see traffic going up, I feel pretty good. I'm feeling optimistic, feel a bit lighter. But if I see traffic going down, then I start to feel the weight of that, trying to figure out, okay, I need to panic, like, what's going on. So there's this whole emotional component to it that I just think we need to recognize it. I know I'm not alone in that. I've seen other people talk about it, but that's a very real aspect of this. And so we want to talk about that too. Not just the traffic, roller coaster.

[Carly Kimble]

Yeah, it's been a really interesting quarter one for me. My old established mom site that I generally reference, it's like a monster. It's like, it's Pinterest ship is like a big ship. And so it's been pretty stable. There's been some, like, quarter one decline. And now as we're getting out of quarter one, it's like, starting to turn, but it turns like a big ship. So when I say it's starting to turn, I mean it's up like 1.97%, but it's down. Was also like a much smaller percentage than what a small account a small ship might be on. And I've been talking lately about my newest site, my mediavide site. It's like a small ship, and its roller coaster is wild because it doesn't have that, like, established content that turns slowly. We don't know, with its giant rudder. It's like, we had Thanksgiving and then we went down, and then we had Christmas, and then we went down, and then, then the beginning of January sucked, and then we ran into super bowl and then we went down. And this has played out throughout the course of quarter one on this small site. I've finally adjusted to those swings on the big site. Like, okay, I know that we're slowly going to go up into quarter four. That's nice. I get excited about it. I definitely feel more positive about blogging in general as I go into quarter four, and I feel like it's been such a great year. Then quarter one comes, and I tell myself, like, this happens every year, not a big deal. But by the middle of quarter one, I generally feel kind of like oh, no. This is the end of my business. And. But those swings, even though I have those emotional swings, it'll take, like, that's a span of six months. With this new site, I'm doing this, like, every. For people who are listening, they can't see. I'm, like, winging my finger around the air here. I'm doing, like, up and down every three or four weeks on this new site. And I'll go, like, it's going so great. And then it'll be like, I'm failing. It'll go back. It's been a good experience for me to remind myself what it's like for people who are just starting and to relate to them a little bit more than I've been able to relate with my giant ship.

[Tony Hill]

Yeah, that's right. You kind of handle the waves a little differently with the big ship versus a little one. You know, you can feel it a lot more with those little ones.

[Carly Kimble]

Absolutely. With the. With the big one, I still feel it, like, by the middle of quarter one, I'm still like, oh, it's really bad. But it's just not as often with the small sight. I'm, like, having to manage my emotions over and over again. So, so consistent.

[Tony Hill]

Yeah. So speaking of roller coasters, what is your most memorable roller coaster ride that, like, in real life. Real life roller coaster.

[Carly Kimble]

It is the one singular real roller coaster I have ever ridden on in my life. Because I was eight and my grandma, I knew I didn't want to do it. She talked me into going on this roller coaster with her. She was the kind of person who loved roller coasters. I'm not spoiler alert. And I got on this roller coaster with her and I cried the whole time. Not like a little bit of crying, but, like, hysterical screaming. And then when I got off, I swore I would never do that again. And she, of course, just. Just like, beside herself with regret. She. She eventually recovered. I did not. And I have never gone on another roller coaster other than, like, the little kid ones at Disney with, like, the Mickey Mouse or whatever.

[Tony Hill]

The.

[Carly Kimble]

The yeti one. That's, like, the most roller coaster. Roller coaster I'll ever go on again. I don't like them. Do you have a memorable roller coaster ride experience?

[Tony Hill]

Yes. When I was a kid, I liked to ride roller coasters. So it was the summer of seventh grade, and I was in Southern California for the summer, and my summer job was to clean a horse corral every couple days, which basically means I am raking up shoveling poop. It Was, you know, a lot of work. It was some nasty work, but I worked all summer, and every dollar I made, I saved. And so by the end of the summer, I had like a couple hundred bucks, which, for, you know, a seventh grader in the 90s, was a lot of money. So at the end of the summer was the county fair, and they had a new roller coaster that was basically like a Ferris wheel, except there's a twist with it. And that is instead of just being on the bench with a little bar in front of you, you were in a cage. And at some point, I think when you get to the top, the cage will flip and you start doing flips as you go down the Ferris wheel.

[Carly Kimble]

Oh, that sounds awful.

[Tony Hill]

Well, that's something that seemed cool, but in your case, yes, I think that would be awful no matter what. So I was like, I gotta go on that ride. So I'm standing in line to wait, and I realize, like, I'm hearing this, like, ting, ting, ting every once in a while and. And I look over to the sound of that direction, and I'm noticing that there's, like, coins falling down on the ground underneath the ride. So then I'm, like, watching, I'm putting two and two together and realizing, oh, it's change falling out of people's pockets. Because when they get flipped upside down in the cage, like, they've got all this loose change because it's the 90s. So it's like real physical money that we had in our pockets and everything. And so I just thought that was funny. And I might have picked up a couple of quarters, I think, so you should know. So it was my turn to get on the ride. I get on the ride and had a great time. And I got off the ride and we started to head to something else. And I wanted to get my wallet out for something and reached in my pocket, my wallet was gone. I instantly knew I was like, okay, instead of change falling out, my wallet had fallen out of the ride. And so I went underneath it to see if I could find it. Of course, I had, like, a black wallet. And it's nighttime. Ask the guy who's running the coaster to see, like, if anyone's reported a wallet. And, I mean, there's like 30 different cages. There's no way he's going to stop the whole ride and go through every single one to see if it's in the cage still and everything. And so I just had to walk away with the loss of all that money I had made over the summer. Cleaning horse poop.

[Carly Kimble]

So that is so disappointing.

[Tony Hill]

Yeah. So the first thing that I bought, once I saved up enough money, I bought another wallet. But I bought a fancy chain wallet.

[Carly Kimble]

Because it was the 90s and you could see that.

[Tony Hill]

That's right. And it was just one of those things like, this will never fall out of my pocket again with the chain on it. Yeah. So I eventually grew up and got rid of the chain. Was no longer fashionable anyways. But actually, over the last couple years, I've had this issue because I've got a really small wallet. It's like, made in Japan. It's really tiny, but it falls out of my pocket a lot. And so the last couple years, I've had some anxiety about it. I wonder why. But the last couple of years, it's been falling out. So I've been like, all right, I need to do something about this. Well, now they've been making more and more shorts and pants with zipper pockets, so I've just been buying those with zipper pockets. Got my wallet in there, zip it up, don't have to worry about it falling out again.

[Carly Kimble]

Interesting, interesting. So there's a lot of, like, analogies between how you were up high and then you lost everything, and then you learned from that, that experience, and now it won't happen to you again.

[Tony Hill]

Yeah, exactly.

[Carly Kimble]

Okay, good. Analogies to me.

[Tony Hill]

Yeah, I think so. Yeah. There's a. There's a lot that we can relate to with. With Pinterest. You know, it's like one of those things is, like, paying attention to your surroundings and learning from others. I saw the coins dropping. Right. And I didn't even think about, oh, well, I've got money in my pocket. I should probably secure that because clearly I'm seeing people lose money. It's fallen out, and that could be me. And I didn't think. Even think twice about it. That was my first mistake.

[Carly Kimble]

Right. Yeah. And actually, I think that that is. It's really interesting to hear you say that because one of the things that I believe maintains my bank account at stagnant, unstable is that for the past years, since 2019, I've been hyper aware that these. I mean, I've always known that the fluctuations happened, but it was in, like, 2019 when Pinterest really started communicating with us, I believe, for the first time about volume. The fact that they didn't love volume. And I'm really, really careful not to buy into what I see as risky trends quickly. Am I willing to, like, adjust my strategy over the course of months? Absolutely. Like right now, for example, I see a lot of people moving to, you know, what I would call maybe riskier strategies. And I think to myself, like, I might start testing some of those things, but I'm going to do it very slowly and I'm going to treat my pitch account very carefully because I do look around at other accounts that have these massive swings and. And I think that I can pick up on relationship between some of the things you're doing and some massive swings. And I haven't had those massive swings. I have seasonal ups and downs that feel like a horrible emotional rollercoaster. Yes. But I haven't had crazy swings for years and years like other accounts have experienced.

[Tony Hill]

Yeah. And maybe some of that could be people seeing some trends, and I might have been one of the causes of this. They see what works for. For somebody in the way that they're explaining it in their niche, whatever, and so they're going to go try that. And it might just be the wrong strategy for that niche. And, you know, we've got several episodes about, about that that people can go back to and you can listen to that. And so it's just having more awareness ultimately of, like, different niches, different strategies for different niches before you just take off with an idea that you saw someone post about or go on a podcast about and try to run with it and make it work for you.

[Carly Kimble]

Yeah, I think that's good advice. I think that the vast majority of the advice that you've given about Pinterest is very safe, moderated advice with the, like, you know, all niches to be considered. But. But what I would caution against is just like going into a Facebook group, for example, and having a random conversation with somebody who says, like, I've been posting a hundred pins a day for three months, and in the last three months, my traffic has skyrocketed. Like, that's not enough context for what might have actually contributed to that. And those are the kind of things like, you know, I said that, like, ran talked to a random Facebook group, but I actually talked to somebody this weekend who outlined for me the things that she has been doing based on our advice. And we identified a thing that she was doing based on our advice that is a major change to her account that I think is a negative thing. And I don't think it's anything we've specifically said, but it's maybe something we specifically didn't say. And so it's really hard. It's really hard to hear all the advice coming out about pinterest and then decide what you're going to, you know, what, move forward with. And I think where I'm going with this is just that because Pinterest traffic is such a roller coaster, because there's so many things that affect it, we have to stop wanting to affect our Pinterest traffic in a short period of time. We should make changes planning for the roller coaster going, like, maybe I'm down right now, maybe I'm up right now, whatever. But I'm going to do these things that I believe are positive for these reasons. And hopefully over time my roller coaster is just gonna lean up. There'll still be downs, but hopefully the lows will be higher and the highs will be higher. Hopefully. And that's still not gonna be the case all the time.

[Tony Hill]

Yeah. I think one of the things that can plague us is making very rash decisions.

[Carly Kimble]

Yes, you've said that very clearly. The thing that I could not quite articulate.

[Tony Hill]

Yeah. Like before we were recording this, I was telling you that, Okay, I made a. I made a couple of just off the cuff decisions on deleting some pins that we were discussing. Like, should I have done that? Maybe not. But I have my reasons why I deleted them. Even though they were new and they, they just were underperforming compared to everything else. And. But who knows, like, there's an opportunity there that they could do well. But sometimes we can get caught up in the moment and what we're seeing right in front of us and that it can almost hurt us to the degree of we get tunnel vision. Right. And that we're not kind of slowing down, expanding our awareness a little bit to really understand the platform. Like what is going on with the platform right now. Like, we're stuck looking at our own analytics or we're looking at our own pins, or we're just busy looking at our own content. We're not looking at the platform itself. Like I was explaining to you just a little bit ago how the other day I was just scrolling through. It's been a couple of times that I've done it recently, just going through the home feed and as just a user on my personal account, and I'm just spotting some new trends that I've never seen before. And just taking the time to do that consistently helps with just expanding that awareness of what is going on and avoiding the tunnel vision that we can find ourselves in, even in the highs and the lows. When things are going well. Sometimes things are going well. Like I will kind of let off the gas a little bit, and I will just kind of relax a little bit. And I think there's times to do that, but sometimes you can kind of take that too far.

[Carly Kimble]

Well, that's one of the things that I think that I've made a massive mistake on my last few highs is that in the highs, I'll believe that I'm focusing on, like, the next season or, like, the next piece of the picture. But. But more effort is going into what's happening on the high. And the last few highs that my sights have come off of, I have found myself, like, without quite as much of a net as I would like to have had for the next season. So one thing that I think that. That I need to be more consistent about on my highs is going, okay, well, I know that this high will end because Pinterest is seasonal. How am I planning for what's coming next? And have I put enough effort into planning for what's coming next or emotionally? The last few dips that I've had on my media vine sets, you know, the one that I said, it's really pinging, like, up and down this most recent dip, I was able to look at the previous holidays before that and go, this is going to hurt. And it doesn't hurt quite as much. When you are fully prepared, you don't let yourself have that, like, little bit of hope, like, no, maybe it'll be okay. Like, no, no, it won't. But I can. I can be prepared for that to not be okay. And then I don't need to feel as much involved in it. It's more like watching a movie rather than being on a roller coaster.

[Tony Hill]

Yeah, that probably seems like a much better alternative for you.

[Carly Kimble]

Yeah.

[Tony Hill]

So I'm definitely guilty of just getting too comfortable being on. On the high. But then we go down like, there's inevitable dips, and I think there's some people listening that they just don't have that experience that you have. That length of time, honestly, is one of the things that's on your side. That's on my side. We have a different perspective. I mean, I know there's people listening here that have been on Pinterest for, like, 10 years or longer. And so they also have a perspective of this roller coaster and of the seasonality. And we'll kind of COVID a list of, like, what makes up this Pinterest roller coaster. But I think that there are patterns based on a lot of my conversations with you because you've kept up with Pinterest more than I have over the years. But it seems like there are patterns not only throughout the year of ups and downs, but like every couple years there's a pattern like every, like two, three years. And maybe there's a pattern every, like seven years, every 10 years. As time goes on, we start to see more and more patterns. And that's just the way a lot of the world works. It's funny how that is. But there's just patterns everywhere and just we're kind of pattern oriented creatures anyways, that we do things in rhythms. And so, and you see this, like with, you know, the global economy and the stock market and all that stuff. There's, there's all sorts of patterns over time. You can start to notice them. And so for people who've been on Pinterest for less than a year, this. There's just so much you haven't gotten to experience yet. And so I understand it's hard when you see things drop and you don't have that perspective. Like what Carly has, for example, of just knowing, okay, this is. I've been through this before and I, I learned from first time, like, what works well for me and what doesn't work well for me. Or maybe you figure out what works well for you and how to handle the lows based upon either. Maybe you happen to do it right and like, whatever you did to keep your, your mind and your heart like in a good place during the lows and like, just continue that on. Or maybe you didn't and like, you learn, okay, here's what not to do. So next time I'm gonna try something totally different. And that just comes with time and experience. Yeah.

[Carly Kimble]

And I think that my biggest what not to do for me, no matter what the job is, is when I find myself in the mood where I'm just opening tabs and clicking on things and. But I'll do that for hours and hours. Like, I'll open this tab and I'll click on this thing and I might look at it for a minute or I might even start to do something, but I won't, like, complete a task. Once I get into that mindset, then I need to either, like, set a timer and challenge myself to do something, even if it's something that I don't think is going to be beneficial. Like, I think Pinterest sucks and I don't want to do Pinterest anymore, but I'm still going to set a timer and tell myself, like, I'm not moving on or closing this tab until I've made three pins and pinned Them and forcing myself to take action instead of just letting myself spiral into the, you know, the clicking place. Because that I can spend a lot of time just clicking.

[Tony Hill]

Yes. I've.

[Carly Kimble]

Do you do this, too?

[Tony Hill]

No, I've. I've witnessed you. Like, before we hit record, you were doing that.

[Carly Kimble]

Not a good thing to do. Yeah.

[Tony Hill]

At the same time, it has its time. So I think it is a good thing to do because you spot patterns when you do that, as you open up all these new tabs and you start to see all these different connections over time.

[Carly Kimble]

Okay. Yes. Okay. I think that you make a good point. I would need to be like, I need to be careful of the mood that I'm in. If I'm just in a defeated mood and I'm just clicking defeatedly and no longer looking for patterns, that's probably. Then I'm not using my time well. Because I do think that attitude is a really important part of success. And if I am just going to sit here defeatedly clicking everything, then I'm going to be defeated. I do believe that. So, yeah, if I'm clicking and looking for clues and patterns and plan to act on the information that I'm finding, then I can see where that's beneficial.

[Tony Hill]

That makes sense. One of the lessons I learned from my childhood rollercoaster experience, losing all that money, is to protect what's important. So, like, in my case, I got a new wallet, and I got the chain wallet so I can protect it, because I thought that was the most important thing. My wallet, my money. What's inside is most important. So I was thinking about, like, how does that relate to us creators? My first thought was, like, okay, what's most important is, is the money that we bring in from all this traffic. But that's kind of surface level, because really below that is the content. Without good content, then we're not gonna be bringing in the traffic. But then thinking about that even more, what's below the content level? Like, it's the people behind the content. And so that's you. Right. So it's. I would say you are the most important thing to protect and guard in this. And so that's you. Like, as in, you know, your mind and your heart. And that, at the end of the day, is going to have the biggest influence on how you get through these ups and downs. Because the hard part is. Is, like, we're on this Pinterest roller coaster that we can't control. Pinterest is the operator. That's right. And I'm a control Freak. And so I do hate that part of it. And so if I can just continue to remind myself, okay, I can't control the traffic, but I can control what I do and what thoughts I hold onto, what emotions I hold onto or let go of. Like, that part is in my control and hopefully holding onto. And then sometimes you have to. I have to, like, look for the positive. When I have tunnel vision and things aren't going well, I tend to drift towards thinking, like, you know, the sky is falling and I really need to, like, reset and step back. Like, okay, why am I even doing this? Why am I trying to get traffic from Pinterest? Why am I creating this content? Why am I creating these websites? Why do I want to make this money? What does this money do for me? Just bringing it back down to that core helps me kind of reorient and reset my motivation. But also being able to then kind of add like a highlight reel of, okay, what has this in the past been able to do for me that I've been really blessed with and have really enjoyed thinking about just those highs of things going well with traffic, with money, and what I was able to do, like, take my family on. On trips and just be thankful that I got to do that and just understanding that I can't always just be traveling and doing everything and not having a bad day or a bad month or a bad quarter or a bad year. I think it's just an unfair expectation. So that's been helpful for me. But I have to remind myself of that. Like, that just doesn't come naturally.

[Carly Kimble]

I do think that. Well, I don't think that comes naturally for anybody, but I do think that in any community, it is also easy to get into. It's good to seek out community. And we have. Both of us have communities. There's a lot of free communities online as well. And I do find that when something starts to go wrong in anything. But let's, like, use blogging as an example online, the online industry. When things start to go wrong on Pinterest, it's easy to get into any community and it becomes an echo chamber of negativity because people are more likely to talk about the negative than they are the positive. It's just like this sad bent we have as people. And then people add to the conversation and the conversation grows, and all of a sudden it's a very loud conversation and it can be very hopeless. And so looking at the positive, the wins that you have had, like, you're talking about and remembering that, like, this is just a bad day or just a bad week, not a bad business. That is really important and not letting the, the negative echo chamber drown you out too much. And I often, like, point back to when I very first started. I think I've told you this probably mentioned on the podcast a number of times because it was really pivotal for me. But when I was starting, Pinterest was imploding. You talked about, like, what makes up the Pinterest roller coaster and patterns make up the Pinterest roller coaster. One of the things that was happening at that time when I was starting, Pinterest was literally just imploding. They had just changed the feed to go from real time feed when you pinned to the smart feed that we still have like a version of the smart feed today. And everybody was quitting left and right, and people were saying that there was no point in even starting because there was no future on the platform. There's been an amazing future on the platform since then. And just the people who quit didn't get to experience it. Yeah, I think that we've seen those patterns that you're talking about. So, you know, there was a big dip in general for Pinterest as a platform for creators at that point. And then we had some great years after that. And then we had another really hard period in like, I would say 2019, because that's when Pinterest started communicating differently with us about volume. And that's when my own traffic was just falling and falling and falling. And I became so concerned about it that I turned off rich pins, just made it fall further. And. But like, I remember that time period, I would say that was like another, like, general down for the platform. And then 2020 happened and people were stuck at home and it went up again in. Not for everybody, not for travel, not for, you know, those sorts of sites, but in general for Pinterest as a traffic funnel. It went up again. Nothing goes up and up and up forever. And it's not surprising if we see a dip again now for the platform in general, because nothing. It needs to reset. There needs to be reset. Nothing goes up and up and up forever. So the general, like, you know, platform trends certainly contribute to the Pinterest roller coaster. And there's. There's other things that do. We said we should. We would talk about those things. Should we talk about those things?

[Tony Hill]

Yeah, let's talk about them.

[Carly Kimble]

Okay. So I've brought it up over and over and again. Seasonality is just one of the biggest things on Pinterest these days. As time goes on, it becomes more and more important, I think. And you don't do a ton of seasonal content, but have you noticed seasonality and the importance of it changing on the platform lately?

[Tony Hill]

Yeah, I think we talked about this.

[Carly Kimble]

We have talked about this.

[Tony Hill]

Okay, maybe on the podcast, but. Cause I use the word suppressing. Pinterest will suppress.

[Carly Kimble]

Yes, we have talked about this. You're right.

[Tony Hill]

Content that's non seasonal. Yeah, I think suppressing it more and more when we hit certain seasons. And so the dips, like for example, being in like a non seasonal niche has lowered dips, I would say, lately.

[Carly Kimble]

Yeah. And people will hear you say that, like Pinterest will suppress non seasonal content. And they'll. I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, I think that they'll hear you say Pinterest is suppressing this content on purpose. I don't believe what's happening. I believe what's happening. As more time goes by. There is more seasonal content on Pinterest and so there just is more seasonal content taking up more place in the feed. It's not like Pinterest has on purposely gone. I don't want to put out that evergreen content. They've just have more seasonal content to put out and there's only a finite amount of spaces. So I don't think it's like this, this intentional hate on evergreen content. I think that it's a natural shift that we were never going to avoid. And because we were never going to avoid it, I also don't think it's something that Pinterest can correct. Unless they were to limit the amount of seasonal content that goes into the feed, which actually doesn't make sense if people are engaging with it. So we just have to lean into that. But understanding that it's there is part of the roller coaster. And then there are other things. Like, you know, if the strategy you're using gets outdated, maybe the strategy that you're using is to only publish evergreen content. Which actually was my strategy for years, until the first quarter four where we discovered that Christmas content could do well. And then we shifted. But for some years I only did evergreen content and that strategy became outdated. And that was already a few years ago. So I already think that seasonal content should be incorporated into your strategy at some point now and then. I mean, there's also other tactics that we've definitely seen become outdated. Like what I used to teach, repinning the same pin image over and over and over again to different boards. That's a very outdated strategy. I still see people repinning a pin to one or two boards very successfully, but I haven't seen any, any data to support that it's a overall good strategy anymore.

[Tony Hill]

Yeah. So paying attention to, well, where you've learned your strategy, whether that's through trial and error or through someone else. And like, are they continuing to adapt and update their strategy and their teachings, which I've seen you do over the last six months or so. You've come out with like an update to your course with some of your newer strategies. I'm due for some updates with mine. Mine's about a year old and so I've made updates since then, but I've got some more that I've been testing and others have been testing and starting to go well. So, yeah, it's not letting your strategy go stagnant because what will happen is like, we have to adapt to not only the change in user behavior on the platform, but, but also to, you know, algorithm updates and shuffles that Pinterest has, which is one of those things that's part of the roller coaster that Pinterest is just going to make updates. Some are minor, that we barely feel and some are really big. Some of them. And this wasn't on the list. I'm surprised it didn't make it. But that is like, sometimes there are just bugs.

[Carly Kimble]

Oh, right, yeah.

[Tony Hill]

Glitches. I don't know how they didn't make it on our list here, but we've been experiencing that like crazy for the last couple months here.

[Carly Kimble]

Yeah. And they coincide with, with shuffles and updates. Because as Pinterest updates things, they make bugs.

[Tony Hill]

That's right.

[Carly Kimble]

So it makes sense that that would happen.

[Tony Hill]

Yeah.

[Carly Kimble]

The next thing that we have on our list of like, what contributes to the Pinterest traffic roller coaster is competition. And we just wrote competition, but that is a big up and down because as we, I think as we move through these seasons of Pinterest traffic being phenomenal, which we described, you know, how they've gone the last few years, we see more and more people piling into Pinterest. The competition goes up and up and up. We see a drop. So this is an important thing to remember on our emotional traffic roller coaster. We see a drop as a negative thing, but a drop also resets the ecosystem a little bit. Some of the easy money people who are not going to look at this long term and who are not going to manage their emotions well are going quit. And that's actually great for us because as we get into this Dip where Pinterest isn't sending as great of traffic as they were a year ago to our sites, less people are actually working on it. And as we continue to work on it, we will start to ride the roller coaster back up again.

[Tony Hill]

Yeah, that's right. I definitely have seen a lot of quitters over the last month or so, for sure.

[Carly Kimble]

Yeah. I think that we are, because we're heading into this kind of dip, this kind of harder season.

[Tony Hill]

Yeah. And there's gonna be two different kinds that I'm seeing quit. Either the ones who kind of just got into Pinterest in the last year.

[Carly Kimble]

Yeah.

[Tony Hill]

And they got burned by Google and their algorithm updates, and now they're feeling burned by Pinterest, and they just feel like they're repeating history and they want nothing to do with it, so they're moving on. I'm also seeing some people who've been in Pinterest for a long time, and they're throwing in the towel, like, they're. They're done.

[Carly Kimble]

Interesting.

[Tony Hill]

And I think it's because they had a hard time riding the roller coaster of finding good strategies, not only strategies for. For doing Pinterest, but, like, mental, emotional strategies to handling it. And they. And it just kept building, like, maybe chipping away at them over the years, and they finally reached a breaking point.

[Carly Kimble]

Well, and I mean, do you think that there is ever a time where you have to go, like, oh, this isn't worth my mental health, and I can't get a handle on this, so I need to take a break. And, like, do you think that we. We reach that point? Or should I say, if we reach that point, is there anything that we can do to keep moving forward while kind of letting the pressure off? Like, what would you do if you were like, a. Just can't handle this.

[Tony Hill]

I know that there's seasons to life. There's seasons when there are things that we can do that we really enjoy. We get a lot of life from doing that. And then that kind of comes to an end. Whether that's just with a job, with doing an extracurricular activity, a relationship, there's just seasons to those things. And just recognizing, like, okay, is this just one of those seasons where I really just genuinely have a change of heart on what it is that I really value and am passionate about in life and what's life giving to me versus, like, my values and what's important? If there's a, like, misalignment with those things, then that's something that's to really consider if you're just doing it for, say, the money and that's it, that can be some great jet fuel that can get you off the ground. But ask any millionaire or billionaire, that is not what sustains them for the long term. It's not about the money.

[Carly Kimble]

No, that's a good point. And when I started this business, before I was ever making a penny, even though I was 100% motivated by the money, that is why I started my site. I told myself that there's, like, a famous quote, and I don't. Couldn't tell you who it's by, but it says, hold everything lightly in your hands, otherwise it hurts if God pries your fingers open. And so I think it's very. It's a very true statement. But I told myself that no matter how well this business did, I would approach it that way. I would be grateful to do this while I was allowed to do this, while the Lord has blessed what I am doing, I will do this. If there comes a point when it feels like every day is a battle, then maybe I'll consider, you know, am I holding onto this too tightly? Is God trying to pry my fingers open? But I still believe that, like, I need to put in the effort for my part of it. I mean, so far over nine years, every time there's been a dip when I have stopped just clicking and actually put in an effort, and given that effort, some time, the dip has turned around. And every dip that turns around makes it a little bit easier to do it again next time. So if I get one day to the point where I think, like, I don't have any desire to do this anymore, I believe that I will just let it go and that I'll be okay with that. But until then, I think that as long as I manage my emotions on the way down, it'll be fine.

[Tony Hill]

Yeah, I mean, being able to manage your emotions and keep yourself in a clear mental and emotional state helps you make better decisions and can be more in alignment with what it is that is best for you, for your family. And so otherwise, if we just get caught up in the drama, like in the echo chamber of, you know, community, for example, then it's hard to make really clear decisions, good decisions. So there's. There's something to that. And I think it's just one of the benefits and reasons to continue to stay motivated, like, whatever is good for your mental emotional health, to continue to do those things, even through the dip. If anything, like, if you can double down on that, it feels so counterintuitive to me. I struggle with this for sure. And that is like, when things are down, when say, for example, business is down, I just want to roll up my sleeves and double down on my efforts. And next thing I know, I'm skipping my daily walks. It's like every other day or every couple of days. And what that does to my emotional health, my physical health, it hurts my decision making in many ways. And so I'm not gonna be making great decisions. And if that's the case, then this, like, doubling up of my efforts, what is it really good for? I'm just gonna burn myself out. And I've done that before.

[Carly Kimble]

Yeah, for sure.

[Tony Hill]

I've learned from it. It's really hard and sometimes we just have to like, experience that to get it.

[Carly Kimble]

So whether you're in a dip or in an up, it's important not to burn yourself out online, which is really easy thing to do.

[Tony Hill]

Yes, it is. It can be hard, especially these days, because I feel like things are just moving so fast and changing so fast. With the Internet, with not only with Pinterest, and then bring in AI as part of the equation, I find it harder to step away. I'm actually at a place where I do look forward to the weekends. Like, I've always looked forward to weekends, like more family time and stuff. But it would be like on Fridays, it's like, oh, man, I've got this project. I'm really excited about it, and I still haven't finished it. Now I've got to shut down for two days. But now it's getting to the point where it's like, oh, good. Like, I get two days to just like turn off that part of my brain as much as I can that, like, thinks about work stuff. But it doesn't help. My wife goes away for the weekend because then, like, I'm done for. Like, I'm gonna work. Like, especially we're in the middle of some sort of Pinterest chaos, which seems.

[Carly Kimble]

Like all the time right now.

[Tony Hill]

I know. Yeah.

[Carly Kimble]

Do you check your analytics on the weekend when you are supposed to be off?

[Tony Hill]

No, that really I've been really good about. I have uninstalled, like any sort of analytics access from my phone. Wow. For sure.

[Carly Kimble]

Interesting.

[Tony Hill]

And then there are definitely some times where I know I've gotten to a place where it's like, okay, it's been a hard week and I put in a lot of work and I really do need this downtime for my mental emotional health, and I will just uninstall A bunch of apps on my phone. I leave my computer in my office and Sarah all weekend and I will, yeah, uninstall all the chat apps. So I'll uninstall my email, everything. Wow.

[Carly Kimble]

You can always put them back.

[Tony Hill]

Exactly. And like, it doesn't take long. It takes like a minute or two to get all those apps back. They're usually already logged in anyways. But there's something about that barrier, you know, of just. Okay, the app's just not available right now and it's just a reminder like. Okay, that's right. I'm being intentional about just disconnecting for a little bit this weekend.

[Carly Kimble]

Interesting. That's a really good strategy. I should do that.

[Tony Hill]

Try it. Yeah.

[Carly Kimble]

Because when Google Analytics changed from Google Analytics To Google Analytics 4, it was really life changing for me because there wasn't the same benefit to checking analytics all the time because it didn't mean the same thing it used to mean. So there was no comparison. But as time has gone on and my brain has adjusted To Google Analytics 4, I found myself falling back and, and then starting the newest, then my newest site. I fell really back into the pattern of checking analytics all the time just because I wanted to see what I was doing. And it's really bad for me because I'll be, instead of being present with whatever I'm doing, I'll be wondering how that side is doing. And, and it's, and it's really unhealthy. So. And when it is in a dip, there's nothing that I can do from that moment or in that moment when I check it on my phone anyway to see that it's in a dip, except for feel negative about it. So not looking is the best course of action.

[Tony Hill]

That's right. Because that'll ruin your, your day and your weekend if you let it.

[Carly Kimble]

Yeah, yeah. I, I mean, back when I started and the Pinterest apocalypse was going on, there was a forum for the course that I was taking and somebody posted in there that they were going through a big dip at the time. And she said, I just, I turned off all my analytics and put my head down and did the work. And six months later, my site was larger than it had ever been before. But that was really motivational for me to stop just thinking about it and just start doing. And so when our sights are up, we should be doing and we should just continue this when our sights are down.

[Tony Hill]

Yeah, that's what I'm doing right now. I mean, just to be transparent, I think it's if you're listening, you probably know I run Pin Clicks, which is a product for Pinterest bloggers. And we're seeing a dip in our revenue because we're seeing a lot of people give up or they're trying to, you know, cut back their expenses because their traffic and revenue is down. And so I understand. And so I stopped looking at the revenue. I used to look at the like, the revenue, like every week. It's been weeks since I've looked at it and I've like put my head down and I've built more tools. I could have done, I could have gone two ways. The way I looked at it was I could have just looked at the stats and like wallowed in self pity because, you know, revenue's down or I could just double down and why don't I build more tools? Because I believe that there will be an up to this. And I know I might not sell these tools very well right now, but there will be a season when things will shift. New creators will come in or the ones who stuck it out and actually made changes and took action, they'll come back and like they'll be able to, you know, have the resources to, to pay for these tools. And so I'm, I'm laying the groundwork for that. And same thing with, with my sites, like it's, we could talk about this here in a little bit, like changing some of my strategy there with Pinterest and some of the content. And so I just, I like to use the dip as a time to take action, to do something. Otherwise I just get caught up in my head, in my emotions and I gotta get out of it. And so being able to just take action and do something, at least I can control that in this like situation where I'm out of control with Pinterest. And I don't like that at all. Right.

[Carly Kimble]

Yeah.

[Tony Hill]

So yeah, it's up to you, like to determine, I would say either throw in the towel and walk away or put your head down, get to work, roll up your sleeves, try some new things, but don't stay in that messy middle of like not doing anything or just a little bit of insignificant things that aren't going to move the needle. That'd be the worst place to be. Yeah, my opinion.

[Carly Kimble]

That's right. Like clicking. That's, that's a really bad one.

[Tony Hill]

Clicking.

[Carly Kimble]

Yeah. I mean, I think that, you know, we just did the podcast episode a couple weeks ago about how much time you actually have to give to Pinterest before you should Make a determination about if it's working or not. And we also have to remember that those dips can take significant time. And so we need to be willing to press ahead for sometimes months. You know, this doesn't really feel, like, wildly related to Pinterest, except that it is. I've referenced this mediavine site that I have a few times, and I don't know if we've talked about all the podcasts, but the mediavine site was earning pretty well when it first got onto Journey and then Mediavine in quarter four, it was making decent money. I was pleased. It was making over $100 a day in quarter four. And then January came and there was a dip in its income. So there was dip in its Pinterest traffic that was expected, but the diplomatic dip in its income didn't correspond the way that it should have. It was, like, far more drastic than it should have. But I told myself, like, this is the January dip in income. So I'm talking about income, not Pinterest traffic, but this is the January dip in income. And I know I've conditioned myself to know that dips last for time. So for a month, I just watched the dip. And it took a month before I started to ask, should this be getting better? And I think after about a month and a half, I had identified that there was a further problem that should be getting better. And so I started working on. And I won't go into all of that right now with this. I started working on how I'm gonna solve this problem. And at no point was solving the problem just being sad about it or thinking about it a lot or feeling despair. I did feel despair about it, but solving the problem took taking action. And it took trying multiple things. And what it turned out the problem was, is there was actually an advertising flag on the site that was causing advertisers not to spend on the site. And I have had to persist in trying different things to solve this problem for how long has it been two months since I started trying to solve this problem? And I was looking at the graph. This is where I'm going with all this. I was looking at the graph of the mediavine earnings over the past January, February, March, April, the past four months. And in the last three days, there's this massive spike from an average RPM of like 12 to 14 to an average RPM of 42 to 43 on the site. And I looked at the graph, the dip in. And I know we're not. I'm talking about income, not traffic, but this Same graph can be superimposed across traffic over and over and over again in my business. And I looked at the graph, and I just thought, like, that whole graph does not demonstrate any hope. There's nothing on this graph to think like, oh, you should keep going. But here at the end, you can finally see the result of all of the effort that I've had to put into this over the past four months. And the first month of effort was literally being patient. That was the first thing I tried. That wasn't the answer. I had to persist with being patient throughout the whole four months. It was the first thing I tried. It wasn't enough. Then I tried multiple other things. The first few weeks of things weren't enough. And the reason I was looking at this and thinking this is because my husband has been painting our bedroom. And we painted it. We didn't like the color originally, so he had to paint it again. And he said, it is so demoralizing, painting this again, not knowing if you were going to like it at the end. And I looked at the graph, and I thought to myself, like, this graph. This is such a demoralizing graph. Every day to still be putting all the effort into the site. We were still building the site while it wasn't earning and while I was trying to fix the flag. And I thought, like, every day on this graph was a demoralizing day. Now here at the end of it, I'm really glad that we persisted.

[Tony Hill]

Yeah, that's such a great example of how to get through it, especially in the beginning, not to do anything crazy, you know, and just stepping back, pausing, expanding your awareness a little bit, like, all right, I'm just gonna watch, see. See if anything's going on. Maybe this is just normal. And then, Yeah, I think a month is a good amount of time. And then just knowing you, like, watching you go through that process, my goodness, like, if I've got something I can't figure out, I'm gonna put you on it, because you were, like, leaving no stone unturned.

[Carly Kimble]

That's funny. That's how I feel about you.

[Tony Hill]

Well, with our powers combined, like, we can figure out anything.

[Carly Kimble]

We're gonna beat the Pinterest.

[Tony Hill]

Yeah. Yeah. So before we get into, like, the practical, like, what do we do while we're down, While we're in the dip? I thought we could talk about, like, what do we do while we're up? Because I'd imagine unless, like, you're just getting started and there's nothing happening, I don't know if you're just getting started, really. You have nothing but up to go, which is kind of a nice place to be. But I would imagine that most people listening here, like you've gone through that process of going up. Maybe some of you are still up right now, or maybe you were down and now you're going back up. I know that there are people that are, that are going up right now. One of the threads we have in my community is a wins and milestones thread. It's been a little quiet lately, but someone recently went in there, posted some screenshots, a couple of different accounts that have been growing the last month or so. That's been really motivating. So find communities like that where it's just not the negative stuff.

[Carly Kimble]

Yeah.

[Tony Hill]

But yeah, I think it's important to. I want to lean in on your, your wisdom and lessons on like what's good to do while we're up, whether we're up right now or when we're up again, whether that's up in Pinterest, traffic or revenue. And in general between those those two things, what are ways that we can make the most of those opportunities? Instead of being like me sometimes just coasting the whole time, it's good to take like breaks and celebrate the wins and do something fun and special, but probably not good just stay in that place or not good to just avoid it, which I can also do. Like when things are going well, I just keep grinding because I'm afraid one day there's going to be a dip.

[Carly Kimble]

Dip again.

[Tony Hill]

You know. And so. Yeah, what, what advice do you have for us while we're up?

[Carly Kimble]

Well, I think that one of the best things you can do when you are having a phenomenal up is save money to cover your business expenses in your down. And your business expenses can include what you pay yourself. For some businesses, you know, there might not be a paycheck for yourself there yet. You might just be covering your expenses. But either way, you know, if you save money in the up, you to put towards the down, knowing that the down will come, it'll be easier to ride that, that out. So we, we did this in 2020. That wasn't the first up we had had in my business. We had had some, you know, really good years before that. But 2020 was astronomically up. And my husband and I went, what if we saved all the income? We said, you know, we're not spending any money. It's 2020. So it's actually pretty easy to save money in 2020. What if we didn't take any paycheck from this company. And it just sat there. And the company had resources going into next year. We did that. And then what that's allowed us to do is always stay a little bit ahead inside of our company so that we never need to worry about where the paycheck's gonna come if there's a dip. And it takes off that pressure to, you know, feel like if I don't fix this right now, it's all over. So save money. And even if that's just enough to cover your expenses next month, that's fine, you know, start small. But the other thing that I like to do is save connections that I can make with my readers. Because when things are up, I'm reaching more people and letting the opportunity pass by to be able to reach them again is sort of short sighted. So when your traffic is up, you should be directing those people to find you in another place. Whether that is email or whether it is your Facebook community or whether it is your Instagram account. I mean, whatever it is, direct them to find you elsewhere because they've connected with you on your blog. They don't know it's you, it's just a webpage to them, but somehow be pushing them over to where they'll connect with you again so that you're building out more than one business using the easy reach when things are up on your website. And then lastly, I think when we're up, we should use some of that extra revenue to experiment with new things, you know, new things that you never tried before, just to try it. It's easier for one thing to get conversion data if you actually have people converting.

[Tony Hill]

That's right.

[Carly Kimble]

Or people to try to convert.

[Tony Hill]

Yeah, exactly. Like to test new product ideas. Maybe you've never created like a digital product before. That's a great time to test it. You got all this free organic traffic. Make the most of it. Because you can learn much more quickly because to your point, you've got more traffic and so you can validate ideas much faster. You can also leverage the influence that you can have with that much traffic by other business relationships you can form. Right. You can reach out to people, maybe more people might start reaching out to you, but you have some leverage because of the traffic and influence that you have. So making the most of that, even if it's. That's like maybe negotiating better terms on something related, like with your ad network, for example, or affiliate deal, because of that traffic. And a lot of times those terms will stick with you through the Dip.

[Carly Kimble]

Absolutely. That's a great point. It's something that I haven't like actively pursued on my main website in a long time because I have done a poor job of leveraging that traffic into income. As I've put more and more focus on my teaching Pinterest traffic business, I kind of just let that website operate as a traffic based business. And I think that's kind of exactly what we're saying. Like, don't do that while you're up. Don't just let it be a traffic based business. Take that opportunity. Just start to utilize that traffic to your benefit overall. And there were, you know, lots of instances years ago where I was really focused on affiliate income on my main site. And I would go to brands and say, will you pay me a 15% commission instead of a 10% commission because I can send X number of clicks to your website. And they would, they would say yes. Tell them. I mean, sometimes they would say no or like, don't talk to us, we don't talk to you. Go to shareasale or whatever. But for the most part, yeah, they were excited to work with people who had traffic to send to them.

[Tony Hill]

Yeah, being able to, going back to almost your first point of leveraging that money so that you can benefit from it down the line. So in your case, the one strategy was to let's basically save this up. And now I've got like a year safety net of income, which is a really great financial goal. You know, Dave Ramsey's a big fan of like having six months as like your first milestone or something and then 12 months, which I followed. And just having that safety net puts you into a different state. Like the way you're thinking and the way you're feeling is a little bit different when you've got a year's worth of income that you can rely on. If everything hits the fan and you're not bringing in any money, you will make better decisions because of that. So you know, don't blow all your money while, while you're up, save it, but also use it as a safety net, but then also have that money make you more money. Right. That's the secret to millionaires and billionaires. Like they're not exchanging their time for money. They're not creating content for money. Most of their money is not coming from their businesses, but it's coming from their money. They're figuring out how to invest that money to get a good financial return on it. Whether that's through stocks and other types of investments. I mean, that's one of my goals is just continue to have my money, make me more money. And that's a big, I've learned it's a big mindset shift for a lot of people and a different place to be. But it's a good goal to have and something to start from the beginning. Even if it's just a little like it's like a hundred dollars a month you're going to set aside, you're going to put it into some sort of, you know, investment account that you're going to end interest off of it just to develop that pattern. And if you can do it based on a percentage, then that's great because then as you grow in your revenue and grow in your income, then you just continue to take that percentage. And so what you're saving and investing just continues to grow. And you'll be thankful during the dips that you've done that because now you have assets that are still making you money. Like I can lose everything right now except my assets that I have. That's making me money that can bring in income right now because I've been able to take advantage of the highs. So start small. Like don't think you have to make a ton of money to do that. Part of it's just developing the habit.

[Carly Kimble]

Yeah. And something you just said reminded me right, right before we were talking, right before we started recording, we were talking about the people who are afraid, afraid to invest money in their business. And I see a lot of people who, they are afraid to lose money in their business. And that's something that was really difficult for me to begin with. When I started working online. I would never have put money into an ad or hiring someone to do something that I couldn't do because I was afraid I would lose that money. But seeing the way losing money in my business on some things, like on ads, seeing the way that that's part of the dip and how it's part of like that flatline journey to the up has made me look differently at it. I mean the whole time that with the media buying site, for example, the whole time that it was earning its really terrible rpms, I was losing money on that site because I had the long term vision for like I could see that wasn't how it was supposed to earn. I could see that that wasn't right. I've got that perspective from having years online which I, I understand that a newer person wouldn't necessarily have that perspective. So I guess in a way I'm asking you just have Like, a little bit of faith in us here, but. But, like, Because I had that perspective because I knew that this should really be a dip that should be correctable, I just continue to lose money on that by choice. I don't think I would have done that forever. There would have come a point. But I know from experience at that point is it's more than a few months generally. And so, you know, sometimes when you are up, it is easier to do experiments that costs money that you might be afraid to do when you're down. Like, you know, if that experiment is run an ad here or invest in this new program for whatever here, do those things while you're up because it won't be quite as painful as when you do.

[Tony Hill]

Yeah, yeah. Or hire that VA and finally, like, let go of some control and delegate a few things maybe that you're not as good at. I've done that, and I've also been through the dips where I've had to let people go. And that there's, like, it's feels terrible to have to lay off a bunch of people because you're in the dip and revenue's down. And like, yeah, you had some cushion in there to pay people, but you've burned through that. And I've been there, and it sucks. But I believe that I was still in a healthier, better place because I had made those hires, because I had made more money, because I had made those hires.

[Carly Kimble]

Okay, that makes sense.

[Tony Hill]

So there was more that I made, but I lost less when the dip did come.

[Carly Kimble]

Right. Less dip to dip less.

[Tony Hill]

That's right. Yeah. I mean, there was still. I didn't have to let go of everybody. And so there's still money there. And that was a huge cushion between them and my personal income. Sometimes. Sometimes, like, I'd make that sacrifice my personal income for a little while, but there's still cushion there. And I think I only got there because I delegated and I hired, and because of them, I was able to grow more.

[Carly Kimble]

So that's, you know, you're talking about what you did at the high was higher, and then something you did while you were down was you had to let people go, which it really sucks when we're talking about people. But something else that I've. Or something that I have found that is really beneficial for me to do in the dip is that sometimes the dip makes me reassess where I'm spending money on my business. And so sometimes the dip is beneficial for me because I take a step back and I Say like, okay, well, I'm investing in this and it looks like there's ROI there, but when I lay it out in front of me, really put it under a microscope. The ROI that is there isn't the same as the ROI that is here. Maybe if I stop putting effort in there. And so the dips have caused me to reprioritize and reorganize, often in a way that that also contributes to a lesser dip next time. Because this time in the dip, I've put more resources into the things that have proven themselves better and kind of distilled my focus a lot of the time. That's a terrible thing to say when you're talking about people and letting people go. But, you know, when it comes to where I'm focusing my time or tools, being forced to let go of those things in a dip has sometimes been beneficial in the long run.

[Tony Hill]

Yeah, yeah, we see that even with giant corporations like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, I mean, they make big cuts with their staff when things are. When they don't have a great quarter, for example, or, you know, they're afraid of, like, what's to come. You'll see them make some staffing cuts. I think it's wise decisions that they're making because what can happen, and I've experienced this, is you can over hire when things are going really well. You can get kind of bloated and you end up hiring more than what you really need. Like, you think you need it and then you've got the resources, so why not let's try it? Which sometimes that works out well and it's good to like, test those things. But yeah, during, during the dip is when it becomes a very refining process and you realize, okay, what can I really accomplish with less? And it's been surprising being able to, you know, see what I can do, what my team can do when we have to make a bunch of cuts. Somehow we were still able to get a lot accomplished even though we just like cut half the team. And it was quite revealing in many ways.

[Carly Kimble]

Yeah, yeah. And I think that if you find yourself in that situation where, okay, you've made this, I mean, again, we don't have to talk about it with people because that can be like, really emotional. We could talk about it with tools. For example, I held onto ahrefs like for over a year after I wasn't really doing Google anymore. I think that I still told myself I was doing it a little bit and I needed to look at it or whatever, but I was paying $197 a month for it. And so when the dip came that I finally, like, cut that tool and saw that it wasn't really affecting anything. I also told myself, like, I'm not gonna sit here and add up, you know, okay, it was $2,400 that I wasted, and I'm not gonna be super sad about that. I'm chalking that up to the cost of doing business and a lesson learned. And now I'm gonna move on and I'm gonna make better choices in the future. So I also not gonna wallow in the fact that I, you know, wasted $2,400 for a year on Ahrefs. It was sad, but I'm not gonna wallow in it because it's done. So one thing that we can do when we're down is reorganize, reprioritize. What are some other things that we can do when we are down that can just help us move through that dip? Those demoralizing days on our graph before our graph goes up?

[Tony Hill]

Yeah, so we've got less traffic. So one part of that equation is the revenue side of things. So how can we make more revenue with less traffic? And so that's where we can try new ideas, the things that we've been wanting to do, but we got caught up in other ideas while. While we were on up and up. But now, okay, let's focus on the revenue side of things. Because nothing keeps you focused on revenue like when things are down. And so you just, you think of different ideas and new ways of making money. And that could be different affiliate programs you can check out. Maybe you make a pivot with some of your content and what you're talking about and what you're pinning. And maybe it's something that lines up more with affiliate stuff and different products. Maybe you try out, you know, providing some sort of service. Go to upwork, put in some of your big keywords from that you target with Pinterest into upwork or fiverr. You might be surprised at what you find where maybe you just need to like, work hourly or project level for some people to like make up for that. But I think there will be some things that you will learn through that experience that you can take with you when you are going back up. You'll be able to leverage that.

[Carly Kimble]

Interesting. I've never ever considered putting any keywords into upwork.

[Tony Hill]

It's kind of like how I'd never considered putting keywords into Etsy if someone had ran that idea. I don't know if you've ever done that too.

[Carly Kimble]

I don't think I've ever used Etsy for much, to be honest.

[Tony Hill]

Yeah, Etsy, ebay. You might be surprised at some opportunities there that other people have taken advantage of that you haven't even thought of. That just wasn't even on your radar.

[Carly Kimble]

Right. Because they aren't on your radar when things are out.

[Tony Hill]

Yeah. So figuring that out, you know, or creating that newsletter that you've been putting off forever, even though you're probably not going to get a lot of signups, you have a case that you've been doing that you've finally put together a newsletter for one of your sites. There's not a lot of traffic and you're not getting a lot of signups, but you've done it. And really you only have to do it once. I mean, to begin with, like you got put up a lead magnet, you have the opt in. Right. And then now like you just kind of set it, forget it. And then as traffic comes up, you'll start seeing more people subscribe and you're going to be much better positioned down. Down the line.

[Carly Kimble]

That's right. So the next dip isn't as dippy.

[Tony Hill]

That's right. Yeah. That's the goal is to make like every dip maybe feel a little bit better than the previous one. Whether that's, you know, financially or even mentally or emotionally. At least every dip gets a little bit easier in some way.

[Carly Kimble]

Yeah, yeah. And I think that the only way to make a traffic based dip be better financially is to start to extend the ways that you're making money. And so you need to find ways to make money that are not just ads. Now. I mean, if you take a page that is making $50 a week on ads and you add affiliate links to that page, it might continue to make $50 a week with half the traffic because you start to make some sales. So just finding ways that you can make more with the same amount of traffic is an easy way to make the next step less dippy.

[Tony Hill]

So another thing you can do is, well, really it's an evaluation not only, as you mentioned earlier, like evaluating what you're spending and looking to see what you can cut, but also evaluating like, what are the things that I'm doing on a daily basis and are these things still working? Because sometimes we're in a dip because what we're doing is no longer working. And sometimes we're in a dip that's outside of our control. Like what we're doing should be working, but it's not. It's outside of my control. Maybe there's like a glitch with Pinterest, right? And they removed the button to visit your site or blocked all your links and like all you can do is just complain to support every day, but generally just to sit back and evaluate what you're doing. Maybe it's your content. Is it still relevant today? What does it look like to put in some of your keywords? Just try to put them into Google search use there's a filter there for time period and put it in there to see what have people been saying about it in the last 30 days or the last 60 days. Put it into Google Trends to see if there's been anything or even Google News to see if there's any mentions of some of your topics you've been covering. Has that changed? Has the conversation about those things changed or are they not even really showing up and you're not even getting very many results across the web on that topic. That then may be a sign that, okay, maybe you should stop covering that topic and. And pivot to some other ones.

[Carly Kimble]

So something that I've seen people asking. This is kind of, kind of sidebar, but very relevant to what you just said. Something I've seen people asking repeatedly in the last couple weeks. While Pinterest is, you know, kind of doing this dip thing that it's doing is can I start pinning in like other niches in my Pinterest account or my website? And I think that in a dip is just as good a time as I need to test those things out. If it's like related to the same user, I would go ahead and do that. Just exactly what you just said. Should I start talking about other things? I'm about to start adding another very related niche to one of my websites because as I face my Easter dip, this is a seasonal dip. I know what the reason is that it's that it's dipping. I see the potential to pad these dips out with a very related like, it's like a shoulder niche that I haven't covered yet. They'd be crazy enough to do it.

[Tony Hill]

Yeah, that's a good idea. One of the ways that you can find that out is if you go to Pinterest Trends, then there's an option to look at. Actually it's through your analytics, Pinterest analytics. But you can look at your, your demo. There's a breakdown of demographics that follow or engage with your account. And it will also show you other interests that they are often in and so you can get ideas to find some of these shoulder niches over there.

[Carly Kimble]

Yeah, I'm excited to try it and see what happens. And I think the only reason I feel excited to try it and see what happens is because I've seen it work so successfully so many times in the past. So, I mean, I've been in a dip. I've introduced a new topic and seen that topic pick up and take off and it leads my business into whole new places that I didn't think I would go before. And that has generally been really good for me. It keeps me interested in business when things change a little bit.

[Tony Hill]

Yeah, that's, that's true. I would say, I don't know, 8, 9 out of the last 10, like significant needle moving business ideas has come from being in some sort of down season, just following kind of this advice of, okay, let's try something new. Let's get out of that tunnel vision of just looking at my sites and my content and looking at, you know, the bigger landscape of things and getting ideas from other people, especially other people that are doing well right now. If I'm down, then a lot of times that means some other people are up. That's not always the case in the sense that if there's like big platform wide changes that we've seen Pinterest make, like where a lot of the majority of the people are down because it could be from a glitch or whatever or a shakeup in the algorithm where it's favoring more product oriented E commerce, you know, pins, then that's hard on, on creators. But we've seen even that kind of go up and down with what Pinterest tends to favor. So yeah, being able to just take that time, it's, it's really. I'm excited for the season as, as hard as it is in some ways that I see for a lot of people and just how frustrated they are and disappointed and anxious, I get it. But I'm excited to see what's going to be on the other side, who's going to be left standing and what they have done. Because there's a lot that we can learn from, especially in these communities, like in, you know, six 12 months from now, I'll be really curious to see what people share through what they've learned over the last six to 12 months as they've been able to turn things around. And we'll start to see these anecdotal stories of, of things that people did and they tried and it generated some new ideas and so it's just a refining season. I'm excited to see that. There's a really famous quote about this as it relates to the market. And we're going to have to edit this because I need to look it up because it's, I don't have it memorized, but this quote is by Warren Buffett and he says in the context of investing, and he said investors should be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful. And that, that has served him well over the years. So right now we see a lot of people who are fearful of what's going on with Pinterest and platform. And when I, when I see the word greedy, I just think of what's the opposite of fear? What does that look like? What would I do if I wasn't fearful? And again, for me, it's taking some risks and taking action. Like that's the opposite of what a lot of people want to do right now. And that has been a lot of things that I've done during the dips. And I feel like that's served me well.

[Carly Kimble]

That's really good advice. I think that when I think of like, you know, greediness to like in, in the greediness cycle, if you're going to compare that, I think of it as like the easy money cycle. And obviously when things are easy, you get just what we talked about, a ton more competition, a ton more platform changes because of the competition. And that, you know, gives way to the harder money and it is just not letting that harder money season hold you back that gives way to the next cycle. It's just all, it's all cycles roller coaster.

[Tony Hill]

That's right. It is. The other thing that I like to do during the dip, it's productive for me is that is to look at the data because to me, the data is the facts. So when I say data, that's like looking at Pinterest analytics, which can be limiting because it's kind of like your highlight reel, you know, but that's one of the reasons why, you know, building Pentry analytics, I can now see a lot more history, at least of that highlight reel, but also be able to look at the dips, being able to see the pins that have really dropped that haven't done well or even at the URL level. We're going to be rolling out a feature so you can see the big dips in the URLs and see what kind of story that that's telling to see maybe there's certain, you know, kind of topics that aren't doing well. Certain topics that tend to get a higher click through, and I've kind of been ignoring those. I've been chasing the. The shiny objects of the highlight reel. Right. So we were talking about this before. We have record. One of the frustrating things is that on a monthly basis, it's hard to know exactly all the pins that sent you traffic for that month, because we just see the highlights from Pinterest Analytics. Right. And even Penra analytics is just pulling in data from Pinterest Analytics. And so it's, again, it's more of the highlight reel that you're seeing. And so, you know, I'm trying to work on a solution to be able to see more beyond the highlight reel, because I think it can do us a disservice if all we do is focus on our top 50 performing pins, where it could. It could be the 80, 20. I mean, I guess you can kind of estimate how much traffic. If you're like a Pinterest only site and you really don't get traffic from anywhere else, then you can kind of guesstimate, like, you can look at. All right, my top 50 pins last month got X amount of traffic. And then in total, looking at my Google Analytics, I got X amount. I can, you know, kind of do the math and figure out, okay, I'm top 50, probably sent about 50% of my traffic. What about the other 50% of all these other pins? You have no idea which ones really sent you that traffic. And those pins could be very different than what your top 50 look like. And you're kind of ignoring those and being able to find those and double.

[Carly Kimble]

Down, that will be really cool because the older and more established your account gets, the more of those you have.

[Tony Hill]

Yeah, that's right.

[Carly Kimble]

Yeah. It's not as big of a consideration for newer accounts, but every year that goes by, you've got another. Hopefully, you know, a few thousand pins out there that are the top 50 is just the tip of the iceberg. And so you're not seeing the whole iceberg underneath.

[Tony Hill]

One of the things that I recommend if you continue to subscribe to pin clicks is we've launched a Chrome extension where you can go to your all Pins page and you can see all the pins that you've created. And, you know, it shows the stats of them underneath each pen. It's kind of a pain to, like, really understand the data there. So we have an extension that basically puts all those pins and all the stats into a table and that you can sort by column and it highlights the pins that are performing really well and the pins that are not, at least for now. And that's been interesting for me. It's been a good experiment and process of looking at my pins through this new lens and seeing, like, what takes off early, what doesn't. And I've already noticed some trends that I wouldn't have considered, but now, like, it's been consistent. Like, okay, I noticed this. This topic tends to this topic on this board. These pens tend to take off very quickly. Let's do some more of these pens.

[Carly Kimble]

It has been really interesting to see actually, board level data with this extension that you've created, because I've noticed that group board pins that go on group boards, some particular group boards, a handful of them, certainly enough of them that I can't ignore. Group boards are taking off faster than pins that go on my own account. Like, I knew that there was group boards that performed really well for my account, but seeing the data laid out in new way with this extension that you've created has allowed me to identify that maybe we should double down on our group board pinning. You know, that group boards are a whole nother conversation. Maybe one day we'll do a podcast episode on group boards specifically. But right now, that's working. And you can really see it outlined now that I'm. I'm seeing the data in a new way. So, yeah, digging into the data. On the flip side of that, though, you know, as we're kind of in this down season on Pinterest, the opposite of that is that I'm seeing that my own boards are not performing as strongly as I'd like them to be. And I have to start to ask the question, why is that? So, yeah, looking at the data is really. It's a good thing to do as long as you don't let the data bring you down too much.

[Tony Hill]

Yeah, that's right. So this is gonna be our last episode of this season. Yeah. We decided, as we preface the first episode, we wanted to do this to follow the school year so we can take the summer off. So this is it. If you've been with us since episode one, thanks for joining us for this. We're still around. We're just not here on the podcast for a while. And hopefully you're in one of our communities. If not, there's an opportunity to join. And with my community, when I started it with my friend Jesse, we were like, we want a no drama community because we didn't want to become that echo chamber of drama. Now I Mean, when you bring a bunch of people together, there's going to be drama. And so we. That's just the way we drift and, and actually do things. And so, you know, we've had to. To work on minimizing the drama there. And so it's a community that I look forward to going into every day because a lot of people are down in this dip, but yet they're still. You can see their brains working. They're trying different ideas, they're thinking about things differently, they're creating new posts and asking questions that they would not have been asking, like, three months ago because of the season that they're in. So it's been fun to, like, go in there and have conversations with them about all this stuff. So hopefully you're part of some sort of community that's like that. If not. Carly has one. I have one.

[Carly Kimble]

Yeah. Actually, the longer that I have my Pinterest mastermind community, the more and more I see the importance of. I mean, obviously it's. It sounds obvious when you say it, but persisting through the dip, the people that have been in the community for a long time are the successful people that I know. I mean, the people who come in and out kind of, you know, when things are great on Pinterest or, you know, when. When things are great anywhere online, they're the people that are never achieving success. And, and when I say success, I don't mean that everybody who is successful in the community has a million pages a month from Pinterest. I don't have a million pages a month from Pinterest. That's not what success means. Or, I mean, I guess it is for some people, but for me, success is creating an income online, utilizing the Pinterest traffic that I'm able to get at any given time, and persisting through the dips so that the next up is a little bit higher. And I find the people that have been there a long time are the people that have experienced the dips, are the people that are going to continue to persist through the dips. And, and so they are really healthy places to be over maybe free groups that do become echo chambers of negativity or forums where everybody is just kind of lamenting the state of the Internet. So, yeah, stay out of those places.

[Tony Hill]

That's right. Yeah. So we hope to see you in one of our communities, and if you have any questions or ideas about getting through the dip, just reach out to us in one of them and let's talk about it. So thanks again for joining us. On this season and we look forward to talking to you guys again. Hey, thanks for listening to this episode of Pentalk. Head over to pentalkpodcast.com to get the show notes and the resources mentioned. And hey, if you like this episode and want to hear more from us, please rate and review our show. Thanks.