Pin something, get a couple of repins, then repin that to
    a very popular community board (it takes work to get
    invites to those with followings of 150,000+).

I'm not intentionally being dismissive, but isn't this a little like saying "Pin something, get a couple of repins, [magic happens]"?

I would imagine that if you can get content posted regularly to any platform with 150,000+ followers/readers/subscribers, the traffic rolls right in.

Is there something particular to pinterest that makes it easier to get content posted to these community boards, vs. getting content posted on a popular blog or retweeted by a popular account?

There's no secret there, there's just a gatekeeper you have to get past, and it's a little bit different for every one. Some will let you right on through, but usually you get to know the board owner really well, interact with them a bunch on Pinterest, and ask for an invite. You can also create generic Pinterest accounts and use a bot to load them up with very similar content to what they're looking for with a couple search functions, but that's probably not worth explaining on this forum.

Also, getting on the community boards is only the beginning of the battle.

when you write Adsense, do you mean Adwords ?

No, I mean Adsense. Adwords is intent-driven search. Adsense is discovery. Pinterest is much more comparable to Adsense.

I thought AdWords was the interface for making ads for AdSense. The logo even says "Google AdWords." And the ads I made look a lot like AdSense.

They're different products. Adwords ads go on google.com, Adsense ads are put on the display network (blogs, gmail, etc.) Now you can create both through the Adwords tools, but they're still separate offerings.

AdSense is a product for publishers that allows to monetize their traffic. AdWords ia a product to place ads on google search and google display network which includes google properties (youtube, gmail). They are two sides of the same coin, directed on publishers and advertisers respectively.

AdWords is the portal but you can target search or the content network (aka AdSense).

blah the HN app I was using gave me no notification that a comment was posted. I wasn't trying to spam.

You will be forever shunned for this grievous error.

it sounds like they mean using AdWords but targeting the content network, which is effectively the AdSense network. That is different then search engine traffic that you can also buy through AdWords.

This is mostly semantics.

AdWords is the overall interface. Adssense is the website-owner-focused product that lets people put ads on their website. AdSense is for all intents & purposes google's display network, but is definitely served up through Google's AdWords platform.

I think he means 'Google Display Network', which is what puts adverts on sites using 'Google AdSense'.