There has never been a better time to make money on Instagram.
If you’re still unsure about this, maybe seeing how Instagram influencers earn hundreds and even thousands per Instagram post will help motivate you. Research from Sprout Social also shows that because Instagram has the highest engagement rates, many established brands actively seek to collaborate with Instagram users and get paid very well for it.
There is no doubt that Instagram is powerful. It has grown to over 1 billion users in just 8 years!
This photo-sharing platform has established itself as one of our time’s defining social media channels.
And the best part is that you don’t have to have mega-celebrity status to take advantage of opportunities on Instagram. Sure, being Kylie Jenner and making over $1 million per Instagram post sounds great, but we’ve seen plenty of influencers with only a few thousand followers who make a decent income. The best part is that it costs nothing or requires minimal financial investment to get started.
How did \? What are your strategies?
In this post, you’ll find out how some of your favorite Instagram influencers for make money on Instagram. 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 in.
1. Post sponsored posts
It is one of the most popular ways to make money on Instagram. If you’re a big fan of the platform, you’ve probably come across #sponsored or #ad before.
But how does it all work?
Well, first of all, you must be an influencer marketing. This word is used a lot these days. It cannot be easy to understand what it means. In a nutshell, influencers are people who have built a following online by posting content relevant to their audiences. Your audiences also respect your 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 from them. Trust takes time to earn in your personal or professional life, and brands know it. So, they partner with influencers who have a good connection with their audiences and whose content connects with their brand and sponsors their posts.
A sponsored post is when an influencer creates content around a specific product from a brand.
To make a lot of earn money from sponsored posts on Instagram, you need to have a decent following. Research has shown that influencers with more than 1 million followers earn thousands of dollars per post. If you’re a micro-influencer, that’s fine too. Your 20,000 or even 10,000 followers are still valuable to brands.
The important thing for brands is to make sure that their audience engages with their content, including liking, commenting, and sharing.
A great example of an Influencer who has managed to make a lot of earn money from Instagram is Anthony Carboni. He owns more than 30 Instagram accounts and earns around $20,000 to $25,000 per month. But if he is starting, he 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 to increase brand awareness and help to drive sales.”
So how exactly is it different from sponsored posts?
The main difference is that brand ambassadors regularly talk about a product, while sponsored posts can be a one-time deal. The opportunity to work long-term with an influencer and have them often speak positively about their products with their followers is understandably very attractive to brands.
Because of this, many brands are looking for personal brand ambassadors and are also willing to pay good money for it. Studies have shown that the standard salary for a brand ambassador is $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 your brand. For example, if you regularly post exercise videos, aligning yourself with a fitness brand makes sense. Of course, human beings are multifaceted and can be more than one thing. However, it is important to remember that your audience is paying close attention to the content you upload. It will be a challenge to create a loyal following if you talk about the importance of eating organic food one week and then aligning yourself with a fast-food brand the next.
3. Promote affiliate links
Affiliate links have become a popular way to make money on Instagram, and getting started is simple.
First of all, you need to identify a brand with an affiliate program that you are interested in working with.
Second, you sign up for their affiliate program. After signing up, you become an affiliate partner and get your unique and trackable promotional code or link.
Third, you promote the product on your Instagram account and include the link or promo code. If any of your followers follow the link and buy, you earn a commission on the sale.
It is not enough to include affiliate links. As shown in the image above, it’s also important to talk about the product, why you love it, and some of its benefits.
The money you earn in an affiliate program is based on commissions. If this is the route you’d like 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 making those sales.
There are so many companies and brands with affiliate programs where you can easily sign up. You can also look into Reward Style, ClickBank, and Amazon Associates, offering affiliate programs.
4. Sell physical products
Making money on Instagram is not 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 is doing a great job is Magic of the Moon. They sell gemstone jewelry and regularly showcase their products on their Instagram account.
The best part about this option is that you don’t have to worry about posting sages from other brands or remembering to include the correct promo code. You can focus on your brand and products and promote them to your audience.
A great strategy you can use when selling 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 arrives.
One of the great tools you can use to sell products through Instagram is Square Online.
This platform automatically transforms your Instagram feed posts into an eCommerce store. The configuration is very simple and can be divided into 3 easy steps:
- Contact us Square to your Instagram account
- Tag items in your Instagram posts that you want to sell
- Click “Publish” and open your Instagram shop page.
While Instagram is great for gathering your fan base in one place, it’s hard to sell products online from Instagram alone. So creating an own separate website could be a great idea, and it looks like Square’s new offering makes the whole process super fast and simple.
You can initially get started with Square Online for free. Your only cost will be transaction fees once someone makes the purchase. Once you see your Instagram business growing, you can upgrade to a paid plan that allows you to create a website with your custom domain.
Suppose you’re looking for more advanced shopping tools. In that case, 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 key marketing channels.
5. Sell digital products
This one shouldn’t come as a surprise because if 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 with great design templates? You can sell these products and much more on Instagram.
The business account has useful features like a buy button, in-app payment, and product tags so that your customers can easily buy your products.
Although it is much more affordable to advertise your products and sell them on Instagram, it can be challenging to drive sales.
Big brands often have their online stores on platforms like Shopify and then use Instagram to promote their products. This strategy works well because, as highlighted above, Instagram has a lot of users.
To effectively promote your products in your marketplace on Instagram, you can:
- Do some hashtag research and always include relevant hashtags in your post.
- Partner with other influencers to help spread the word about your products.
- If budget allows, run Instagram Ads.
6. Create visual content for sale
Did you know that Instagram users upload more than 100 million photos and videos per day? So creating visual content to sell on the platform makes sense. What kind of visual content?
Well, the more authentic, the better.
You see, many brands are uploading their professional images to the platform. However, simply uploading your professional photos with the perfect lighting and composition will not help you stand out from the crowd. To grab the attention of consumers who are constantly bombarded with images throughout the day, you need to provide them with UGC (User Generated Content).
UGC is “any 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.
A great example of UGC is Starbucks’ #RedCupContest. Every December, the famous coffee company encourages customers to take photos of their coffees to win prizes.
It can also apply to different industries, including the travel industry. You can be rewarded by staying at a certain hotel chain for free and in the beauty industry, where you can have your latest release delivered to your doorstep. It’s hard to calculate how much you can earn specifically with this option because the reward can come in cash, a gift card, or loyalty points.
7. Photo printing
Printing photos is also a creative way how to make money on Instagram. People often upload the images they take to their social media accounts in this digital age. These photos are usually saved on a memory card or in the cloud for convenience. But how often do they browse 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 in time and review some of these precious moments.
It makes printing photos and creating photo albums a great way to make money on Instagram.
Chat Books is a brand that does this very well. Customers reach out to them and turn their Instagram posts into photo albums.
They tend to be great gifts for wedding anniversaries, Valentine’s Day, birthdays, or other special occasions. Prices also vary, depending on what customers order. However, many companies charge between $10 and $15 per book, not including shipping costs.
To get this started, take a look at some of the upcoming holidays. Advertise your services before the holidays, and you’ll have plenty of requests 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 need to have a huge marketing budget to promote your brand. Social media has provided the opportunity for startups and small businesses, which typically have limited money and resources, the platform to connect with their target markets and see exponential growth.
However, even though many companies know what it is, around 49% of companies do not have a social media marketing strategy. Sure, they may have a few accounts on different social platforms, but they don’t have a clear plan to use social media to drive awareness and sales.
If you know about social media marketing, this gives you a great opportunity as you will be providing a service that businesses value.
You can expect to earn anything from $16 an hour to $75 an hour, depending on your experience and skills.
To get started with this option, you first need to know how Instagram marketing works. It includes understanding important tactics like how often to post and how to use hashtags correctly.
Once you understand Instagram marketing, you can build a strong portfolio and market to your target market. If you are a newbie, 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 helped these businesses grow through your services.
Your services as a social media marketer may typically involve content creation, account setup, account administration or management, and account promotion.
9. Write captions for businesses.
Do you have a way with 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 networks, particularly Instagram, for all companies in the 21st century. Due to the value of this platform, many businesses, both large and small, will turn to social media marketing to help drive awareness and sales. These companies often post clever, witty, or memorable captions whenever they upload photos.
Getting a team of professionals to handle this is usually not a financial concern for a large brand or corporation. Most turn to their internal content staff.
But for startups and small businesses that are already strapped for time and resources, this presents a challenge. Instead of hiring full-time staff for your social media marketing, it’s much more affordable to get contractors or freelancers to help you with your social media accounts, particularly writing creative and memorable captions for your posts.
If you’re creative and enjoy 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 learn how to optimize
not only your posts with hashtags but also your profile.
For example, on Victoria’s profile, she makes sure all visitors know she’s a digital marketing strategist who can help you get customers and sell online.
10. Create Instagram Story Skins and Photo Filters
The launch of Instagram Stories in 2016 has to be one of the platform’s defining moments. Sure, it wasn’t original (we won’t forget that copied this from Snapchat ). However, this content format has undoubtedly been attractive and exciting for users.
Studies have shown that 500 million Instagram users create their own or view Instagram Stories daily!
So what makes this content format so compelling that hundreds of millions of people feel they need to tune in every day to watch or create it?
It’s the simple fact that Instagram Stories are only available for a limited time. So, every time celebrities or influencers post an Instagram story; their audiences are instantly hooked and engaged as they don’t want to miss out on content that won’t be there forever.
It has created an opportunity for users to develop Instagram Storie’s skins and filters. While big brands more often turn to their in-house creative team, smaller brands are more interested in collaborating with creatives who can create fun and exciting Instagram skins 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, it depends on how creative your filters are and how effectively you manage to sell your services. For example, Carmen Kroll, a German influencer, has managed to get over a billion views from her filters and now collaborates with other influencers and charges €6.99 per filter, which at the time of writing is €7.62. Dollars.
11. Find independent clients through Instagram.
Gone are the days when Instagram was just for posting your outfit of the day or your cute little dog. Sure, you can still do that. However, if you are a creative looking for networking opportunities, this is the perfect place to help scale your business.
Whether you’re a photographer, author, or makeup artist, you can easily set up your account and use this platform as your online portfolio.
The key to getting started is optimizing your account. Tell your visitors that you are a freelancer and specify what you do.
You can also easily reach out to brands or companies you’re interested in working with just by sending them a DM.
FAQs on how to make money on Instagram
How many followers do you need to make money on Instagram?
Suppose you regularly look at some of your favorite celebrity or influencer Instagram accounts. In that case, you can quickly assume that you need to have millions of followers to make money on Instagram.
That is not the case. Whether brands work with macro or micro-influencers, what’s important to them is their relationship with their followers and how engaged they are with their content.
Remember that brands ultimately want ROI on their Instagram marketing efforts. They want subscriptions or sales. So whether you have 1,000 or millions of followers, focus on creating authentic content and building a community of engaged followers. It will make it very attractive for brands to work with you.
How do I get Instagram followers fast?
There are numerous tactics you can use to help build your following. Some of the most popular options are:
1. Write a strategic profile and Instagram bio
2. Strategize to create compelling content for your target market
3. Consistently create good, quality content
4. Be consistent with your brand: content, voice, colors, etc.
5. Promote your Instagram content on your other social media accounts.
6. Post content regularly.
7. Connect 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 these communities. It will help relevant people notice you.
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 things fun: Run giveaways, contests, or promotional codes to get users interested in following you.
11. Buy Instagram followers through Instagram advertising.
How do I manage my Instagram?
If there’s one thing, we all agree on, managing our social media accounts can be a full-time job.
To help you get organized, some apps on the market can help you automate the entire process. If you have the budget, you can also contact social media managers who will handle your entire account for you for a set fee.
Get the most out of Instagram.
Instagram is more than just a social media platform for users to connect with their friends and favorite influencers. When used correctly, it can also be a powerful sales tool and a way to make money on Instagram. The platform’s fantastic engagement rate is one of the biggest drawing factors for brands. Take advantage of these opportunities. Please choose any of the tactics mentioned above and run with it!
Have you tried to make money on Instagram? What has been your most successful tactic? Could you share with us in the comments below?