You’ve probably heard the story of Instagrammers who earn money on Instagram with the photos they snap and share every day. You even saw the following in your own size and thought, "Maybe I can do that too".
Just as bloggers, YouTubers, and anyone else has gathered audiences around the content they produce, Instagrammers have delivered and influenced their images - two issues that many organizations struggle with.
Together, these two things allow Instagram creators to explore multiple streams of potential earnings, whether they want to build empires or just earn some extra cash and free stuff.
Need a quick guide? Read our post - Sell on Instagram: How you can optimize posts to increase your Instagram bio, hashtags, and sales
How many followers do you need to make money on Instagram?
If you are wondering right now how many followers you need for this, the short answer is "not as much as you think".
The long answer depends on:
- What niche you are in and how easily you can tie it directly to a product category (popular niche for fashion, food, beauty, and fitness based on top Instagram hashtags)
- How your followers are employed (100K will not be the number of fake followers).
- Which earning channels do you tour?
Naturally, the more followers you have, the better. Check out our tips on how to get followers on Instagram.
Top Instagram users are likely to start making money with thousands of posts per photo-sharing platform, even with less than 1,000-but-employers.
A free workshop with field-tested Instagram marketing tips. Learn how to grow your Instagram audience and monetize with an online store.
How do you make money on Instagram?
It fully depends on your unique brand of Instagram content, your audience, and your level of commitment, you can be monetized Instagram in the following ways:
- Make sponsored posts for the brands you want to get in front of your audience.
- Create commissions to approve and sell products of other brands.
- Creating and selling it as a physical or digital product or providing a paid service.
- Selling licenses for your photography or videos.
The beauty here is that chasing one earnings stream doesn't necessarily surpass another.
So let’s start with the most common method of monetizing Instagram: partnering with brands as influencers.
How do I work with brands in sponsored posts?
The term “influential” is widely used nowadays.
An influencer is a person who has built a reputation online by doing and sharing great things on online platforms. To their listeners, influencers are tastemakers, trendsetters, and trusted experts whose opinions on specific topics are respected.
Many brands simply can’t compete with it, and so they partner with influencers instead of sponsored posts that help spread the word about their product.
It's not the size and reach of your Instagram account that brands want from you. It involves trusting your audience and engaging with your content.
Furthermore, it can be difficult to balance your earnings as an influencer and your integrity as a manufacturer, but if you don't rely on your Instagram income to stay consistent, you always have the freedom to choose the brands you're working with. There will be selections about Instagram makers working with.
How do you decide what do you want to charge as an influencer?
These influential deals typically involve creating content - an Instagram post, video, or story - and sometimes include permission to use the content in the brand's own content or in an ad.
Most of these deals are negotiable and may involve a post or an entire promotion in exchange for a fee, a free product, a service, a gift, a promise of exposure, or some combination thereof.
When discussing, keep in mind that you are providing content and giving your audience access, one of the most popular social platforms in the vicinity, possibly the right to reach and use.
In a survey of 5,000 influencers, about 42% said they charged 200 to 200 to $400 per post - just to give you an idea of what some brands are willing to pay and how to discuss based on the cards you hold.
Finally, knowing your own audience is also important as an influencer.
What is your audience's makeup, and what is your engagement rate (total engagement divided by the number of your followers)? If you switch to a business account, you can dig up numbers to back it up in your Instagram Analytics report. This will help you to be ready when it comes time to negotiate.
You will learn how to grow and monetize your Instagram account? Instagram marketing expert Greta Van Real shows you how to grow your business through Instagram, a free course inside Shopify Academy.
How can I work with brands?
If you are big enough, chances are brands will find you. But you can also look to work with brands that are at the same level in terms of personality and values so that your audience doesn’t feel like you’re “selling”.
You can reach them directly to try to execute a deal, but you can list yourself in one of the many influential markets there to increase your chances of being discovered:
- Foher Card: Connect your Instagram, blog, YouTube channel, and other social platforms to create an impressive “card” that shows the total reach of shopping brands for your various profiles and brands to shop for partnerships. You can also access the list of brands and their preferences so that you too can take the initiative to reach out.
- Grapevine: If you have 5000 or more followers, you can list yourself in the grapevine market for the opportunity to work with like-minded brands.
- Crowd Tap: Work on creating short content to win prizes. It is great if you have a smaller audience. Available in the United States only.
- Inda Hash: Promote brands so you can participate Post a picture with specific hashtags on Instagram Instagram and pay. You need 700 employed followers to qualify.
Rules vary for sponsored content but consider adding a #sponsored hashtag to indicate sponsored posts to stay on the safe side and respect your audience's trust. If you need reassurance, in one report about 9% of influencers said that being transparent about sponsorship does not affect how customers perceive their recommendation.
You can find examples of sponsored posts and how Instagram can integrate brands into their stories or captions.
Instagram also has a "Payment Partnership" tag that precisely identifies sponsored posts, which you may need to reveal their relationship with certain brands.
In contrast to an influencer, a partner brand - not just creating awareness - is invested more in sales in exchange for an approved one.
This is usually done with a trackable link or unique promo code to ensure that the clicks can actually be translated into sales. Since Instagram still doesn't allow links anywhere out of your air, if you want to rely on authorized links you can only focus on one product, promo codes are created as a better alternative to Instagram since you can actually include them in your posts.
Note: Instagram plans to roll out links for stories that will open up new opportunities for you as an influencer.
Consider reaching out to one of the many online merchants that offer authorized online programs that you can be a partner with or popular markets like:
- Clickbank: An authorized platform with a level-based commission that is open to all.
- Rewards Style: An invite-only fashion and lifestyle influencing network that offers 20% commission.
- Amazon Affiliate Program: A popular option that offers 10% commission.
- Tip: Authorized links can be long and ugly, so I suggest shortening a URL a Bit. li, especially if they're running in your Instagram bio.
Open your own online store
So far, the only way to make money on Instagram is to sell and work with other brands.
But all kinds of creators are in a good position to “sell” their own products: physical products, services, or digital items that could be extensions of their brand, creating a business with the audience at the center.
By selling your own stuff, you don’t have to worry about merging your other brand’s messages into your posting strategy. Even better, you can get your own brand out there on the products you sell.
Fans can buy from you to show their love and support for your work - a purchase that they can feel good about.
There are several ways to do this:
You can use the print-on-demand service to print and ship your own T-shirts, pillows, coffee mugs, wall art, and more.
You can sell services such as photography or advice, using your bio to point directly to interested people in a contact email or a link to your professional website.
Additionally, you can sell digital products such as courses, e-books, or design templates.
You can use your Instagram account to start a business by selling your own original products or even a book.
If you plan to sell several items in your Shopify store, you can also make purchases via Instagram on one of the available Instagram Gallery applications.
Take it one step further with our shopping at Instagram Integration to enable product tags and product stickers that make the experience from Instagram stories and posts more seamless and fluid in your own products. To use it, you need to switch to an Instagram business account, have a Facebook page, and an authorized Facebook shop (all things you can set up without additional expense).
Sell your photos online or in things
Someone may be famous for telling 140-character jokes on Twitter, but Instagram is basically a photo-sharing app. And photos are an asset that can be licensed, printed, and sold in a variety of ways.
If photography brings you first to the Instagram game, you can list your photos in markets like 500px or T20 where brands and publishers can license them.
However, you can sell your photos as print and other physical products using the same method described in the last section. Services like Pain and T Launch allow you to put your photos on posters, phone cases, pillows and more, to take care of complementary ordering and customer service so you need to think about sales
Check out the story of Daniel Arnold who went from "eating toast 3 meals a day" according to a Forbes interview, making $ 15K a day by printing his popular controversial photos. If you already have a demand, all you need to do is take the initiative and give your audience a chance to buy your photography.
Do it for the village (and pay)
What started out as a hobby - laughing at people, having silly photoshoots with your dog, or sharing photos of food - can snowball the opportunity to turn Instagram into a source of income by following your agility.
There’s a world of possibilities as a creator with a larger online audience that people can’t help but stop when they scroll your post into their feed. This special door opens the door to you. You just have to go through it.
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