App Comparison

Rawly vs Pinterest: Two Visual Platforms, Opposite Economies

Rawly Team · May 2026 · 6 min read

What Pinterest is — and how it earns

Pinterest launched in 2010 as a visual bookmarking tool. Users save images — called Pins — to boards organised by topic. The platform functions as a search engine for visual inspiration: home decor, fashion, recipes, travel, DIY. It has over 500 million monthly active users.

Pinterest earns from advertising. Brands pay for Promoted Pins — ads that appear in search results and feeds alongside organic content. In 2025, Pinterest reported approximately $4 billion in annual advertising revenue.

Like Instagram, Pinterest pays creators none of this directly. The platform monetises the visual content creators produce and keep none of the ad revenue for distribution to those creators.

How Pinterest creators earn — and what it actually takes

Pinterest creators have three main income paths. None of them are direct platform payouts.

Affiliate links

Creators embed affiliate links in their Pins. When a user clicks through and completes a purchase, the creator earns a commission — typically 3–10% depending on the retailer and product category. Income scales directly with click volume, which scales with monthly views, which scales with content age and follower count. A creator with 500 monthly views earns nearly nothing from affiliate. A creator with 500,000 monthly views may earn a meaningful side income.

Creator Marketplace brand deals

Pinterest's Creator Marketplace connects brands with creators for paid content partnerships. Brands search by niche and audience size. Access to meaningful brand deals typically requires substantial monthly impressions — industry benchmarks suggest 50,000–100,000 monthly views as a realistic floor for paid partnerships.

Creator Rewards programme

Pinterest has run Creator Rewards in limited markets — a programme that pays for specific content formats (Idea Pins, video content) based on engagement metrics. The programme has been inconsistently available, with changing eligibility requirements and payout structures. It is not a reliable income source for most creators.

What Rawly is — and how it pays

Rawly is built around a different premise entirely. Instead of building an audience over months to unlock indirect monetisation, Rawly pays creators directly from challenge prize pools — starting from the first challenge they enter.

A challenge is posted with a prize pool in Jeton (€0.06 per Jeton). During the submission window, creators take a photo live in the Rawly app and submit it. No gallery uploads. No edited files. The community then votes on the best submission. The winner and top placers receive their share of the pool, withdrawable to EUR via bank transfer.

There is no follower requirement. A day-one account competes on identical terms as any other account in a challenge. The community votes on the photo — not on the profile behind it.

Content philosophy: curation vs. capture

Pinterest is a curation platform. Users collect and organise images from anywhere on the internet. The best Pinterest creators are curators and synthesisers — they aggregate the best visual content in a niche, building boards that become reference points for their audience. The content does not need to be original; it can be re-pinned from other accounts or sourced from websites.

Rawly is a capture platform. Every photo must be taken through the Rawly camera at the moment of submission. Gallery imports are blocked. Filters are blocked. On supported devices, simultaneous dual-camera capture creates a hardware-level proof of authenticity. The content must be live and original — there is no curation path.

These are genuinely different creative activities. Pinterest rewards the ability to discover and organise visual content. Rawly rewards the ability to take a compelling photo right now.

Audience overlap and differences

Both platforms attract visually-oriented users. The overlap ends there.

Pinterest's audience skews heavily toward lifestyle niches: home and garden, fashion, food, travel, DIY and crafts. The majority of Pinterest's user base uses the platform for inspiration and planning — saving ideas for later, not sharing original creative work. Most Pinterest users never create a Pin; they only save others' content.

Rawly's audience is broader: anyone with a phone camera who wants to be paid for what they photograph. The challenge format accommodates any visual subject — urban photography, food, architecture, portraits, nature. There is no niche requirement.

Rawly vs Pinterest: side by side

Who should use Pinterest vs Rawly

Pinterest suits you if:

You are building a niche content library over time and want search-driven discovery. Pinterest's SEO longevity is real — Pins can drive traffic for years after posting. If you have an existing blog, product, or brand that benefits from visual discovery, Pinterest is a powerful long-term traffic channel. Affiliate income, while slow to build, is passive once established. The lifestyle niches Pinterest dominates — home, food, fashion, travel — have large, purchase-intent audiences.

Rawly suits you if:

You want to earn from photos you take this week. No library to build, no traffic threshold to cross, no brand deal negotiation. Take the photo. Submit to the challenge. Win the community vote. Get paid in EUR. The path from zero to first payout is short. Rawly is built for active creators who want direct income from original photography, not passive curation income from visual bookmarking.

Use both:

The workflows are compatible. Pinterest content — curated boards, lifestyle photography, link-driven Pins — and Rawly content — live challenge submissions, unfiltered original photos — serve different purposes. A creator could build long-term Pinterest traffic for affiliate income while winning Rawly challenges for immediate direct earnings. The two platforms do not compete for the same creative energy.

For more on platforms that pay creators directly, see apps that pay you to take photos and creator economy apps that actually pay in 2026.

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