If you weren’t aware, I started a challenge to grow a dead SEO site to $3k monthly in 2025.

I started growing the site in the first few days of 2025. Below, I’ll walk you through my method. This entire process may have taken me 4-6 hours over a few days.

Results so Far

I will share updates in the future, but it’s far too early to see results right now. It will take some time before the pins I created over the past week start to see traction.

Analyzing and Planning

I didn't do any analysis or planning at this stage. Typically, I would start with PinClicks to get a good idea of which interests and keywords to target. I sometimes also check the Pinterest trends tool.

I had a pretty good idea for some general recipes related to this niche, and I wanted to bias towards action early on. So, I just went with my gut on these. I hope this pays off.

I’ll talk about how I use PinClicks and why it is essential in future updates.

I did check to see if any of my pins were flagged using flaggedpins.com. This tool shows you any pins that were flagged and might be causing issues with your account. Luckily, I had no flagged pins.

Creating the Content

I used Content Goblin for all the content creation, and it was way too easy. I cranked out 20 recipes in no time. Then, I took those recipes, dropped them into the listicle tool, and used the custom outline option to create a round-up article of all the recipes with internal links.

Then, I used Content Goblin's newest feature: Pin Generation. I recently added this feature to the tool and am very happy with the results. I haven’t seen pins look this good from any other tool. I generated about 800 pin images using Content Goblin.

Scheduling Pins

I’ve previously mentioned that I use two scheduling tools: BlogToPin and Pin Generator. I will use BlogToPin in the future to automate my pinning for the month, but for now, I used Pin Generator’s more manual approach.

I took each of the 21 links and put them into Pin Generator. Pin Generator allows you to make custom pin templates. I created a 9:16 template that is only the image so that it fits the pins I generate. I then uploaded the pin images for each URL that Content Goblin generated.

I use the AI tool in Pin Generator to generate unique titles and descriptions for each pin. I seed the tool with keywords from the top of my head, then see what it returns and select the best ones. The tool also gives you some volume estimates.

Sometimes, I’m not happy with the AI-generated titles, so I go in and edit them. I often do this with the round-up articles because I like to keep a number in the title. For example, it might generate “Delicious and health recipes for {niche},” but I used something along the lines of “25 Easy {niche} Recipes for 2025.” I’ll do some different variations on different pins.

I scheduled over 940 pins using Pin Generator. I used the smart shuffle option to ensure it did not post the same URL repeatedly. I started at 10 pins per day. I always modify the default posting window that Pin Generator uses to the entire day. By default, it has two tiny time windows. Once I increase the number of daily pins, I don’t like to flood Pinterest during these times, as I think that could trigger a spam flag.

Monetization

I initially thought this site was not on an ad network, so I would wait to apply until I could meet the requirements. However, I found that it is approved and using Google AdSense. Therefore, I will leave AdSense on until I can apply for a better-paying network. This site made a whopping $1.90 last year…

I installed the Grow plugin from Mediavine. This is necessary because the Journey by Mediavine ad network approves traffic captured by the Grow plugin. Once I have 10,000 monthly sessions, I’ll apply for Journey because it pays much better than AdSense. 

That’s all for this update, but stay tuned to see where this challenge goes next. If you want to create content optimized for Pinterest, check out my tool: Content Goblin. 

- John Ward