Seven essential tricks for Pinterest power users

You are a Pinterest power user. You spend quite some time curating your boards, pinning original content, and you might even have a substantial following. Your friends flock to you with Pinterest-related questions, and as Pinterest veteran, you're always ready with the answers.

Considering all the time you spend on Pinterest, you might benefit from a new set of tricks that will help you streamline your pinning and even solve a few issues you run into all too often.

Check out these tricks, and leave yours in the comments section.

1. Find the original source of a photo.
How many times have you stumbled upon an awesome item and clicked the pin, only to stumble upon a defunct Tumblr blog? With a few extra steps, you can almost always find the original source of the image, so that you can pin it with the proper source, or even purchase the pictured product.

Right-click the image in the Pin and select "Copy image URL." Then head to http://images.google.com/ and click the camera icon in the search bar. Paste the image URL, hit Search, and browse through the results until you find the image's original source.

2. Browse Pinterest without comments.
When all you want to do is look at pretty pictures, comments on pins can be distracting. And let's be honest: they're never useful. Luckily, an indie Web developer created this bookmarklet that lets you hide and unhide comments. Just click the bookmarklet and the comments will disappear.

3. Highlight text before pinning.
Head to a page you want to pin and highlight some text, like the blog title. Then click the Pin It button in your bookmarks bar and that highlighted text will automatically become the pin's description. This saves a lot of time when you're on a pinning rampage and don't feel like being creative with the descriptions.

4. Add a price.
Here's a little-known feature you've likely missed. If you're pinning a product, include a dollar (or euro) sign with the price in the description and a price banner will automatically be overlayed on the pin when you publish it. It's superuseful when making wish lists, plus it helps your followers avoid clicking the pin just to find out how much the item costs.

5. Focus on niche boards.
Instead of pinning to a collection of boards with broad topics, create many niche boards. For example, your overpopulated "food" board can become "Desserts," "Drinks," and so on. By doing so, you'll be able to quickly find a pin when you're ready to view it. And as a bonus, your followers will appreciate being able to pick and choose pin boards specific to their interests.

6. Pin a photo-less page.
We've all been there: you click the "Pin it" button, only to be told that "...there are no big images or video to pin on this page." Because Pinterest requires that Web pages have large images or compatible videos to create a pin, this issue isn't uncommon for Pinterest addicts.

To work around the problem, pin any photo related to the page you initially wanted to pin. Click "See your pin" to view it on Pinterest, then click Edit. Now change the link so that it leads to the page you initially wanted to pin. It's not the simplest solution, but works if you're desperate to pin a page.

7. Install the Pin It button on your smartphone.
Pinning content you find is always better than simply repinning things you find in your feed. This is easily done with the Pin It bookmarklet on your desktop browser, and as an avid pinner, you're probably wondering how you can do the same thing on your phone.

On the iPhone, head to this page and follow the instructions to install the bookmarklet. Once it's set up, you'll simply head to your "Pin it" bookmark whenever you see something pin-worthy. If you have the official Pinterest app installed, it will be called up when you select the image you want to pin.

Unfortunately, the Pin It button can't be installed on Android just yet, but I'll keep you posted with any developments.

Happy pinning!