If you’re still unsure, maybe seeing how Instagram influencers are earning hundreds or even thousands per post will help inspire you. Sprout Social’s research also shows that because Instagram has the highest engagement rates, many established brands actively seek to engage Instagram users and pay them dearly for it.
There is no doubt that Instagram is powerful. It has grown to over a billion users in just 8 years!
This photo-sharing platform has managed to establish itself as one of the most important social media of our time.
And the best part is that you don’t have to be a mega-celebrity to take advantage of opportunities on Instagram. Sure, being Kylie Jenner and making over a million dollars per post might sound great, but we’ve seen plenty of influencers with just a few thousand followers earning a decent income. The best part is that it costs nothing or a very minimal financial investment to get started.
How do they do it? What are their strategies?
In this post, you will find out how some of your favorite Instagram influencers manage to make money on the platform. We’ll highlight the top 11 strategies and give you details on how to make money on Instagram.
Here are our top 11 ways to make money on Instagram. Let’s dive into the heart of the matter.
1. Publish sponsored articles
It’s one of the most popular ways to make money on Instagram. If you’re a big fan of the platform, then you’ve probably come across #sponsored or #ad.
But how does it work?
Well, first of all, you have to be an… influencer . This word is so often used these days. It can be difficult to understand what it actually means. In summary, influencers are people who have gained notoriety online by posting relevant content to their audience. Their audience also respects their views and opinions on certain topics.
Good influencers establish themselves as authority figures in certain industries, and the more valuable content they share with their audience, the more trust they gain. As you already know, whether in your personal or professional life, trust is something that is earned over time, and brands know it. They therefore partner with influencers who have a good relationship with their audience, and whose content is related to their brands, and sponsor their posts.
A sponsored post is when an influencer creates content around a specific product from a brand. Since honesty and transparency are important, especially online, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requires influencers to indicate that the post is sponsored, which is why we often see the #ad on sponsored posts.
For you to make money from sponsored posts on Instagram, you need to have a decent following. Research has shown that influencers with over a million followers earn thousands of dollars per post. If you’re a micro-influencer, that’s okay too. Your 20,000 or even 10,000 followers still have value for brands.
What’s important for brands is to make sure your audience engages with your content, which includes liking, commenting, and sharing the content.
A great example of an influencer who has managed to make a lot of money from Instagram is Anthony Carboni. He has more than 30 Instagram accounts and earns around 1 million euros per year. $20,000 to $25,000 per month from the platform. But if you’re just starting out, you can aim to earn $0.25 – $0.50 for every “like” and $1.00 for every comment on a sponsored post.
2. Become a brand ambassador
A brand ambassador is “someone who promotes a brand and its products to their network with the aim of increasing brand awareness and helping to drive sales”.
So how exactly does it differ from sponsored posts?
The main difference is that brand ambassadors regularly talk about a product, whereas sponsored posts can be a one-time operation. The possibility of working with an influencer for the long term and having them speak positively about their products often to their followers is naturally very attractive for brands.
This is why many brands are looking for brand ambassadors, and they are also ready to compensate them well. Studies have shown that the standard salary for a brand ambassador is in the following range $40-50,000 per year.When looking to become a Brand Ambassador, we believe the key is to choose a brand in your niche and a brand that aligns with company goals. your brand. For example, if you regularly post workout videos, it makes sense to align yourself with a fitness brand. Of course, human beings are multi-faceted, and we can be more than one thing. However, it’s important to remember that your audience pays close attention to the content you upload. It will be difficult to retain your audience if you talk about the importance of eating organic one week and partner with a fast food brand the next week.
3. Promote Affiliate Links
Affiliate links have become a popular way to make money on Instagram, and getting started is easy too.
First, you need to identify a brand with an affiliate program that you want to work with.
Then you sign up for their affiliate program. After registration, you become an affiliate partner and get your unique and trackable link or promo code.
Third, you promote the product on your Instagram account and include the link or promo code when you do. If one of your followers follows the link and buys, you earn a commission on the sale.
Teami Blends is a popular detox tea brand that has an affiliate program. Although they have worked with many celebrities, such as the Kardashian-Jenner sisters, they also work with micro-influencers around the world.
For example, Dr. Raga is a general surgery resident in Dubai. She is also a YouTuber and Instagrammer and recently joined their program.
It is not enough to include affiliate links. As seen in the image above, it’s also important to talk a bit about the product, why you like it, and some of its benefits.
The money you earn on an affiliate program is commission-based. If this is the route you want to take to make money on Instagram, make sure the brand you choose has a great reputation and is relevant to your audience so you have a better chance of achieving it. these sales.
There are so many companies and brands that have affiliate programs where you can easily join. You can also check out RewardStyle, ClickBank, and Amazon Associates, which also offer affiliate programs.
4. Sell physical products
Making money on Instagram isn’t just about promoting other brands. If you are a creator or entrepreneur and want to grow your brand and promote your products, you can also sell your physical products through your Instagram business account.
One account that does a great job at this is The Magic of the Moon. They sell gemstone jewelry and regularly feature their products on their Instagram account.
The advantage of this option is that you don’t have to worry about posting messages from other brands or remembering to include the correct promotional code. You can just focus on your brand and products and promote them to your audience.
A great strategy you can use to sell physical products on Instagram (and online in general) is to sell…products with a print-on-demand service. So if you are selling t-shirts, coffee mugs, pillows, or any other physical product, these will only be printed and shipped once the order has been placed.
One of the great tools you can use to sell products through Instagram is the following. Square online.
These platforms automatically turn posts from your Instagram feed into an e-commerce store. Setup is super simple and can be broken down into 3 simple steps:
- Connect to Carre on your Instagram account
- Mark in your Instagram posts the items you want to sell.
- Click “Publish” and launch your own shoppabe page.
While Instagram is great for gathering your fanbase in one place, it’s difficult to sell products online on Instagram alone. That’s why setting up a separate website can be a good idea, and it looks like Square’s new offering makes the whole process super quick and easy.
As a first step, you can start with Square Online Free . This way, your only costs will be the transaction fees once someone actually makes the purchase. When you find your Instagram business growing, you can upgrade to a paid plan that lets you create a website with your own custom domain.
If you’re looking for more advanced shopping tools, you might consider choosing an eCommerce platform or website builder to launch a fully scalable eCommerce store, and then use Instagram as one of your main marketing channels.
5. Sell digital products
This one should come as no surprise because while you can sell physical products on your Instagram account, you can also sell digital products.
What kind of products are we talking about here?
Anything.
Instagram has become such a powerful sales machine. Do you have an e-book that you recently finished writing? An online course? Are you a graphic designer and have great design templates? You can sell these products and more on Instagram.
The business account is equipped with useful features such as the “shop” button, online payment and product labels, which make it easy for your customers to buy your products.
Although it’s much more affordable to advertise your products and sell on Instagram, it can be difficult to drive sales.
Big brands often have their online store on platforms like Shopify and then use Instagram to promote their products. This strategy works well because, as pointed out earlier, Instagram has a lot of users.
To effectively promote your products to your market on Instagram, you can:
- Research hashtags and make sure to always include relevant hashtags in your post.
- Partner with other influencers to help spread awareness of your products.
- If budget allows, run Instagram Ads.
6. Create visual content for sale
Did you know Instagram users upload over 100 million photos and videos a day? Creating visual content to sell on the platform therefore makes sense. What type of visual content?
Well, the more authentic, the better.
You see, there are a lot of brands uploading their professional images to the platform. However, simply uploading their professional photos, with perfect lighting and composition, is not going to help them stand out from the crowd. To grab the attention of consumers who are constantly bombarded with images all day long, they need to provide them with user-generated content (UGC).
UGC is “all content – text, videos, images, reviews, etc. – created by people, rather than brands”.
This type of content is effective because it tends to be more authentic.
The Starbucks #RedCupContest contest is a great example of UGC. Every December, the famous coffee company encourages its customers to take photos of their coffees to win a prize.
This can also apply to different industries, including the travel industry, where you can be rewarded by staying at a certain hotel chain for free, and the beauty industry, where you can receive their latest home launch. It’s hard to gauge how much you can earn with this option, as the reward can be in the form of cash, a gift card, or loyalty points.
7. Printing photos
Photo printing is also a creative way to make money on Instagram. In the digital age, people will often upload the photos they take to their social media accounts. These photos are usually saved on a memory card or in the cloud for convenience. But how often do they go through some of these photos? We live very busy lives, and if you’re like most people, it’s hard to find the time to go back and relive some of those precious moments.
This is what makes printing photos and making photo books a great way to make money on Instagram.
Chatbooks is a brand that does this very well. Customers reach out to them, and they turn their Instagram posts into photo books.
They are usually great gifts for anniversaries, Valentine’s Day, birthdays or any other special occasion. Prices also vary depending on what customers order. However, many companies charge around $10 – $15 per book, excluding shipping.
To start doing that, take a look at some of the upcoming parties. Advertise your services before the holidays, and you’ll have plenty of orders in your DMs.
8. Provide social media marketing services
At the beginning of this post, we mentioned how powerful Instagram is. One of our favorite things about Instagram (and social media in general) is that you don’t have to have a huge marketing budget to promote your brand. Social media has given startups and small businesses, who typically have little money and resources, the platform to connect with their target markets and experience exponential growth.
However, even though many companies know it is powerful, around 49% of companies do not have a social media marketing strategy. Sure, they might have a few accounts on different social platforms, but they don’t have a clear plan on how to use social media to grow awareness and sales.
If you’re savvy in social media marketing, this is a great opportunity for you because you’ll be providing a service that businesses appreciate.
You can expect to earn around $16 per hour to $75 per hour depending on your expertise and experience.
To get started with this option, you must first know how Instagram marketing works. This includes understanding important tactics like posting frequency and the proper way to use hashtags.
Once you have a good understanding of Instagram marketing, then you can start building a strong portfolio and marketing yourself to your target market. If you are a beginner, you can reach out to local businesses and NGOs and help them with their Instagram accounts. You can then provide case studies of how you have helped these businesses grow through your services.
Your services as a social media marketer typically include content creation, account creation, account administration or management, and account promotion.
9. Write Captions for Business
Do you have a gift for words?
Are you able to hook readers with just a few characters?
If so, you can make money on Instagram by writing captions for businesses.
We have already talked about the importance of social media, especially Instagram, for all businesses in the 21st century. Because of the value of this platform, many businesses large and small will turn to social media marketing to help generate awareness and sales. These companies will often post clever, witty, or memorable captions whenever they upload photos.
For a big brand or a company, it is usually not cost effective to hire a team of professionals to take care of this task. Most look to their internal content staff.
But for startups and small businesses that are already short on time and resources, this presents a challenge. Instead of hiring full-time staff for their social media marketing, it’s much more affordable to hire contractors or freelancers to help with their social media accounts, especially creative caption writing. and memorable for their posts.
If you’re creative and like the challenge of creating engaging captions, this could be a great way to make money on Instagram.
To attract your ideal customers, you need to know how to optimize not only your posts with hashtags but also your profile.
For example, in Victoria’s profile, she makes sure all visitors know that she is a digital marketing strategist who can help you find customers and sell online.
10. Create Photo Masks and Filters for Instagram Stories
The launch of Instagram Stories in 2016 has to be one of the platform’s defining moments. Of course, it wasn’t original (we won’t forget the fact that it was… copied from Snapchat). Nevertheless, this content format has undoubtedly been engaging and exciting for users.
Studies have shown that 500 million Instagram users either create their own stories or watch Instagram Stories daily!
So what makes this content format so appealing that hundreds of millions of people feel the need to watch or create it every day?
It’s the simple fact that Instagram Stories are only available for a limited time. So whenever celebrities or influencers post an Instagram story, their audience is instantly hooked and engaged because they don’t want to miss out on content that won’t be there forever.
This has created an opportunity for users to create Instagram Stories masks and filters. While big brands will most often look to their in-house creative team, smaller brands are more likely to partner with creatives who can create fun and exciting Instagram masks and filters.
Brenda Cardenas is an Instagram filter creator who showcases some of her work on her Instagram account.
If you’re wondering how much you can earn from this, well, it depends on how creative your filters are and how effectively you manage to sell your services. For example, Carmen Kroll, an influencer from Germany, has managed to get over 3 billion views. She now collaborates with other influencers and charges €6.99 for each filter, which, at the time of writing, amounts to $7.62.
11. Find freelance clients on Instagram
Gone are the days when Instagram was just about posting your outfit of the day or your cute little pup. Of course, you can still do that. However, if you are a creative looking for networking opportunities, this is the place to scale your business.
Whether you are a photographer, author or makeup artist, you can easily create your account and use this platform as your online portfolio.
The key to getting started is to optimize your account. Tell your visitors that you are a freelancer and specify what you do. You can also easily contact the brands or companies you want to work with by simply sending them a DM.
How to make money on Instagram – FAQ
How many followers do you need to make money on Instagram?
If you regularly look at some of your favorite celebrities or influencer Instagram accounts, you can quickly assume that you need to have millions of followers in order to make money on Instagram.
This is not the case. Indeed, whether brands work with macro-influencers or micro-influencers, what matters to them is the relationship you have with your followers and their level of engagement with your content.
Remember, at the end of the day, brands want ROI from their Instagram marketing efforts. They want listings or sales. So whether you have 1,000 or millions of followers, focus on creating authentic content and building a community of engaged followers. This will help make you very attractive to brands that want to work with you.
How to get followers on Instagram fast?
There are many tactics you can use to grow your audience. Some of the most popular options are:1. Write a strategic profile and biography2. Strategize to create engaging content for your target market3. Consistently create quality content4. Be consistent with your brand image – content, voice, colors, etc.5. Promote your Instagram content on your other social media accounts.6. Post content regularly.7. Network with influencers in your niche and make a cameo on their accounts to reach more relevant followers.8. Join other Instagram communities (relevant to your niche) and actively participate in discussions in those communities. This will help you get noticed by relevant people.9. Add up to 30 relevant hashtags per post. You can use a hashtag to help you find the most relevant hashtags for your niche.10. Make it fun – run contests or promo codes to entice users to follow you.11. Buy Instagram Followers Through Instagram Advertising
How do I manage my Instagram?
If there’s one thing we all agree on, it’s that managing our social media accounts can be a full-time job.
To help you get organized, some apps on the market can help automate the whole process. Some of our favorites include Buffer and Tailwind, which help you plan and schedule your posts to make it a seamless process. If you have the budget, you can also hire social media managers who will take care of your entire account for you, for a fee.
Take full advantage of Instagram
Instagram is more than just a social media platform for users to connect with their favorite friends and influencers. When used correctly, it can also be a powerful sales tool and a way to earn money. The fantastic engagement rate that the platform offers is one of the most attractive factors for brands. So take advantage of these opportunities. Choose one of the tactics mentioned above and get started!
Have you tried making money on Instagram? What was your most successful tactic? Share with us in the comments below!
