Being active on Instagram as a content creator really does pay off your efforts and creativity. The platform can bring in a plethora of opportunities to make money, be it becoming a social influencer or earn a few extra bucks to add up to your savings.
In a way that best suits your Instagram profile and the value you add to your audience lives, here are four ways you can make money on the popular media sharing platform.
- Be an influencer
By 2020, there were 500k active Influencers on Instagram. The number of these influencers are constantly increasing and you could be one of them!! Guess how? By promoting sponsored posts of new businesses and brands that seek the attention of your audience.
By sponsor posts, there comes a question in every Instagrammers’ mind, how many followers do I need to be an influencer on Instagram?
This image has just the right answer for you.
After self-validating yourself as a specific type of influencer from the above image, it comes down to the engagement rate you get on your images and videos on your profile to decide the pay rate for sponsored posts.
Based on your engagement rate and follower count, you can earn from $10 to 10k+ as a mega influencer.
- Create and Sell Digital Products or Services :
A lot of users on Instagram sells digital products like courses, e-books, apps, graphic arts, podcasts and other web elements. It’s one of the great ways to earn reputation and money selling such types of digital goods if you’re an artist, educator, freelancer or marketer.
You can also promote your physical products to sell on this platform and get potential leads for your website and drive sales using business resources.
- Be an Affiliate Marketer :
Be an affiliate for new brands and businesses offering a commission whenever they make a sale with a reference from your promotion. If you too want to become one, start with a product or service that you enjoy and look out on their website. If they have an affiliate program available, sign up and promote it to your followers.
Whenever someone from your audience makes a purchase, you earn a commission based on the rate you have signed up with them.
Tip: Sign up as many affiliate programs as you can, set your commission rates and evolve as an affiliate marketing professional.
- Sell License for your Digital Media :
As an artist or a content creator, you have the rights to protect the digital media you create for selling purposes. You can sell the acquired rights of the digital media you’ve created for videos, images and documents. It is also possible someone might take interest in purchasing your artwork or digital media, getting impressed by your work.
So the bottom line is to start connecting with as many people as you can on the platform. And continue to network with people of your niche and learn from how they promote themselves. Most importantly, consider being true to your followers and keep adding value to their life.
Here’s how it usually goes for most influencers(or people in general who make some cash from Instagram).
1 : Niche : They pick a certain niche in a market. It can be anything really; from cruise ships, gym clothes, MMA fighting, hunting or italian exotics.
2 : Consistency : People who succeed on Instagram(but in life as well) have consistency. Consistency requires discipline, effort and commitment.
3 : Content : This is the biggest one to be honest with you. Why do gamers/entertainment influencers get more views than for example real estate investors? Plain and simple. Completely different target groups, since it’s a lot easier to blow up with let’s say a killer K.O. than investing tips. So just model what already works in your niche(or configure it to your specific industry), replicate success. As picasso said; great artists steal.
4 : Distribution : Producing or finding content is one thing, but distributing it is the other. Find relevant hashtags, reels, use IG’s newest features as much as you can.
5 : Network : Help other big brands get what they want and they’ll do the same to you. Don’t look at your competitors as trash, but look for opportunities to work together, as you’ll both benefit from a bigger apple tree in the future.
6 : Money : Most Influencers on IG make money with commissions, through other brands(either through affiliate marketing, promoting other businesses, contracts). Few of them run their own businesses though. There are a lot of accounts out there with huge followings but have never made a dime out of it(or barely). But having a big following(100k+) is not a prerequisite to success(although it helps, especially if you’re a personal brand).
Comment below!!! If you have any questions!!