Do you know that Instagram has more than 1 billion monthly users? That’s a lot of numbers. And those number of users are waiting for you, to find out about you, and what you have to offer.
Nowadays, many users have even started shopping directly on Instagram. It has become the most popular, eCommerce-friendly social media platform with the launch of business-friendly features such as Shoppable Posts, etc. Growing competition in SEO, you cannot rely on organic search traffic to get sales leads, especially among eCommerce companies. You need to bring innovation and start exploring other growing sales channels.
In the last few years, Instagram’s feed of stunning photos has evolved.
About 70% of whom are under 35, Instagram is the platform of aspiration and inspiration with over a billion monthly users.
How to make money on Instagram?
Depending on your unique niche and brand, your followers and visitors, and your level of engagement, you can make money on Instagram through the following ways:
- Become an affiliate and earn a commission selling other brands’ products.
- Do sponsored posts for various brands that want to reach a maximum audience.
- Selling licenses for your photography or videos.
- Create and sell physical products through an eCommerce business profile or offering a paid service.
You can read and learn all about the above points in the further article and various other methods to make money on Instagram.
Chasing a specific revenue stream doesn’t rule out another.
Let’s start with the most common approaches to Instagram monetization.
There are the following most common approaches to make money on Instagram:
- Become an Instagram influencer
- Become a brand ambassador
- Start an online eCommerce store
- Showcase your freelancing services
- Storytelling consultant
- Become an affiliate marketer
- Advertise on Instagram
Become an Influencer
An influencer has built a reputation and A+ following by regularly sharing on their social accounts. They have a good following and the ability to convince their followers to buy certain products and jump onto different trends. After reaching an Instagram influencer status, you can promote all kinds of products from various brands using your Instagram profile.
Influencers have the power of making things trendy and gaining followers because they’ve spent a lot of time creating and building trust and relationships with their followers.
Instagram influencers recommend services or products on their profiles in exchange for compensation. As its format highlights images, Instagram is ideal for growing an influencer business about B2C goods. Any product that makes for the right image is considered best on Instagram. Following are the trendiest categories of all time regarding how to make money on Instagram:
- Fashion
- Health/fitness
- Travel
- Cooking
Brands partner with Instagram influencers to do sponsored posts that spread the information about their products. For getting this, you need to have a vast size and reach of your Instagram account with regular posts that create strong engagement from your followers.
Top Instagram influencers make thousands of dollars per sponsored post. But remember that it takes a long time and a lot of hard work and talent to become an influencer. It’s reachable, but if you choose this route, make sure you manage your expectations.
Become a brand ambassador
When you find success as an Instagram influencer, you also have a chance to become a brand ambassador; this happens when a brand or company wants to have an ongoing partnership with an influencer and create a certain number of posts over time and maybe even regularly.
As Instagram is the most favored platform for influencer marketing, it’s an excellent site for users to collaborate with companies and find brand ambassador programs to promote their products. Frequently, large brands also send free products to influencers so they can promote and review them.
Sponsored posts work great on Instagram, and for establishing long-term relationships with influencers, they try out brand ambassadors who can regularly and effectively promote products.
If you have a specific niche, then you’re also likely to be more successful. Take an example of the influencer accounts you follow; you follow those accounts or users who share your interests. Like you’re following world travelers or chefs or a couple of fashion bloggers. That is your niche; those numbers of accounts define your interest, So whenever you’re having difficulty finding your interest or niche or being a beginner, this example might help.
Open an eCommerce store
You’re probably thinking by now that the only way to make money on Instagram is to become an influencer or have a significant following or collaborate with brands. But that’s not it. Instagram is an excellent platform for you if you’re a content creator of any kind to market your products.
You also require a place where you can keep your products, like a room. You’ll need a place to store everything before they’re ordered by and delivered to customers.
eCommerce retailing requires stocking some files, meaning you’d need to spend some startup capital to buy your products. The products are an extension of a brand, so build a business around them, focusing on your audience.
To turn your Instagram account into an eCommerce store, you’ll need to complete several steps:
First, Convert your Instagram profile to a business profile:
To move further, you must have an Instagram business profile. It’s free to make a business profile or switch from your old account, and creating your business profile is a straightforward process to sell products or services on Instagram.
Create your product catalog:
To feature products in your profile, you’ll need to pull them from your store catalog.
Get your business profile approved:
When you’re ready, Instagram will review your business profile. You’re ready to start adding your products and services once Instagram approves your profile for shopping into your posts.
By selling your products on Instagram, you don’t have to worry about integrating brand words into your posts. Just focus on your brand. You can incorporate a link to your eCommerce website or a page in your bio. For a better experience, utilize the “Shop Now” advertising button that Instagram added to help e-commerce businesses.
Showcase your freelancing services
The key to showcasing your freelancing services is to attract interested clients by showcasing your services and work in the posts you share. If you’re a content creator or a photographer, share some of your most stunning work.
While big brands have an excellent in-house content creation team, small business owners often seek freelance services to reduce social media marketing costs. So, they usually look for creative specialists who write captions or create content for their businesses at a low price.
Sites like Canva will let you create posts with embedded quotes from your creative writing.
Moreover, you can stay active and offer your best services. Find Instagram accounts that must be interested in working with you.
Finally, the key to success is to stay reliable in your niche, so it’s essential to show your work on Instagram and tell your audience and visitors that you’re open to new freelance work.
Storytelling consultant:
Every picture tells a story. And if you’re particularly good at using photos to tell a story, you can monetize this talent. Leverage your talent for storytelling to help companies and brands write compelling stories for themselves.
That is distinctive from being a social media consultant; both are different things. Storytelling consultants are responsible for creating content for companies and brands to post on their Instagram accounts. Typically, you’d avoid posting the same content on your account.
Become an affiliate marketer
Many users make money from Instagram through affiliate programs. There is a difference between an influencer & an affiliate marketer. The influencer mainly aims to create awareness where an affiliate is working in making sales for the partnering products and brand in exchange for a commission.
Once you’ve got a sizable following, affiliate marketing can be a good revenue stream. It involves getting partnered with a brand to generate both awareness and sales in exchange for a commission.
That is usually done via a unique promo code or an URL that the influencer adds to their posts. You’ll earn a commission for the number of users who use your link to make a purchase.
You can focus on only one product when considering Instagram doesn’t let you add links outside your bio. That is why including promo codes in your bio and posts is a good option for affiliate marketing.
You need to join affiliate high-paying programs to make money in affiliate marketing so that you can add affiliate links to your Instagram posts and bio and earn a commission on the sales you generate.
Advertise on Instagram
Instagram Ads are a useful tool to make money on Instagram by adding product-purchase links through product tags or CTAs.
Also, Instagram Ads lets you target a specific audience relevant to your niche and products.
You can choose where you want your ad to be displayed, how much you want to spend, and for how long. It also provides the advantage of targeting a specific audience based on a variety of methods.
Now, let’s take some of the common questions of all:
Should I Make Money on Instagram?
Instagram’s users’ numbers are staggering, and the platform is catching so much popularity between users. Instagram’s growth has reached 1 billion users over nine years since its launch in 2010.
It’s no surprise that Instagram users are becoming unstoppable with Instagram continually growing in popularity. There are different ways to earn money on Instagram, and they’ve figured it out.
These stats will answer some of your questions, and where the common ones are “should i make money on Instagram?”.
- Every month, there are 1 billion users active.
- Five hundred million users are active every day.
- There are about 2 million Instagram advertisers every month.
- Fifty percent of Instagram users follow at least one business account.
- Time spent on Instagram by users increases by 80% every year.
- Five hundred million Instagram accounts use Instagram Reels, Stories every day.
- Instagram users by age:
- 18 to 29 years old: 59%
- 30 to 49 years old: 33%
- 50 to 64 years old: 18%
- 65+ years old: 8%
So yes, you can make money on Instagram, and in that way, you can also gain popularity.
How do I get Instagram followers fast?
To quickly expand your Instagram and build up your follower count, there are many different approaches. Here are some of the top ones:
- The easy one: Buy Instagram followers online. You can find many websites and services that sell you real and legit Instagram followers, like $2 (or even less). You can also buy likes, comments along with the followers.
- And these are the natural procedure to attract followers- Based on your target audience, plan an Instagram strategy.
- Create a well-planned and attractive bio & profile.
- Have consistent color and branding schemes.
- Start sharing high-quality pictures and videos.
- Promote via other social channels.
- Use hashtags more often. To find relevant hashtags, use the hashtag tool. Hashtags help in trending scenarios of the Instagram world, and it also plays a huge role in gaining followers.
- Schedule and post consistently.
- Interact with your audience, giveaways, run contests, sweepstakes, and provide promo codes to attract users to follow you.
- To connect and interact with other influencers in your niche, use influencer marketing tools to get featured on their accounts.
- Use the Instagram advertising method to pay for more followers.
- Join Instagram communities and be an active member of the community.
How many are Instagram followers considered acceptable or average?
There is not a specific number that is satisfactory for the followers. The average number of followers is around 150, while the number of followers varies widely by Instagram account. There are many Instagram profiles with 100 followers or less up to millions of followers.
If you have a small business or an individual with a personal account, you may have a lower follower count. The solution is to maintain an active and engaged audience rather than focusing on show metrics.
How do you get sponsored on Instagram?
Sponsored on Instagram- requires a lot of work and a consistent approach to building your followers. Most of the time, you’ll have to dive for paid sponsorships rather than brands approaching you. Here are some tips to get sponsored:
- Define your brand and know your audience.
- Post consistently with geotags and hashtags.
- Tag brands in the posts of your niche.
- Include contact information and important links in your bio.
- Start reaching out and finding paid sponsorships.
Can I sell products on Instagram?
Yes, you can. Instagram recently featured a Shop Now button for Shoppable Posts. Also, it’s best to use an eCommerce platform with Instagram to increase your sales channels. Go through these steps and start:
- Switch your Instagram account to a business account.
- Ensure that you have a Facebook Page with a dynamic product catalog.
- Ensure that you are selling real and physical products.
- Once your profile gets eligible by Instagram, you can add product tags to your posts.
- Select a picture you want to tag, tap on the product in the image from your catalog, enter your product name, and click done.
These are the most simple steps to get you to get started then. What are you waiting for? Let’s do it!
Earn Money on Instagram by Selling Your Services
You can make money by selling your services on Instagram.
On Instagram, many accounts sell services like personal training sessions, tattoos, photography sessions, hair styling, makeup, eyelash extensions, etc.
Most of these businesses are run from home, so they may not have a company website to share their talents. So, Instagram is the perfect platform for reaching out to a maximum audience and attracting clients.
An excellent way to get yourself out there is by finding accounts within the geographical area and the same niche, filtering ones with a massive following, and following as many of their followers as possible.
Chances are, those users are the ones that will want to see your posts. And, if you offer a cheaper or better service than your opponents, they’re more likely to buy your services; this is a great way to get referrals. And it’s possible to do without 10k followers.
Final Words
Instagram is growing at an excellent speed while maintaining a tremendous engagement rate. Many small to world-famous brands are investing an excessive sum of their marketing budgets on this platform.
So Instagram presents an excellent opportunity for smart folks to build an audience and monetize it quickly.
Anyone can earn money from Instagram with so many potential business opportunities. There are many possibilities out there with a large online audience of people. It’s this unique appeal that you have that opens the door, but only you can walk through it.
