Do you know you can make money on Instagram? Well, if you don’t know or you want to know more, you are at the right place. Irrespective of where you are based: Nigeria, India, United States, Canada, anywhere at all, as long as you have an Instagram account, you can make money.
Some years ago when Instagram was created, no one would have thought it would turn into a lucrative platform for making money. But many years down the line, it has emerged as great platform which you can use to make money. Depending on the uniqueness of your Instagram content, brand, audience coupled with your commitment level, you can make money on Instagram.
Why Instagram is a lucrative platform to make money
You can make big money and build a career on Instagram. I have assited someone close to me make money on Instagram, but I was surprised the day I stumbled on the list of the highest earners. The figures they were making from Instagram were intimidating! This is a platform, I was using for fun, but others were using for business! The highest earner was Selena Gomez making £425,000 per post! That was ridiculous. Yes, you will say she is a celebrity. But the list was made up of two part, one for celebrity top earners and the other for non celebrities. Someone with the name Huda Kattan was at the top of the none celebrity top Instagram earners, making $18,000 per post. Can you beat that? Now imagine she makes 20 of such post in a month!. You can see the full list here.
Why is Instagram such a lucrative platform to make money? The reason is simple, people love Instagram and Instagram is visual. There are over 800 million monthly users on Instagram and over 500 million people use it every single day! That is huge! Very huge!. If you have a good number of following, you can make good money.
Building your presence on Instagram
To start with, you do not just get on Instagram and start making money. You have to set up your account to make money on Instagram. You have to make your Instagram profile attractive and attract followers. Here are some tips.
- Pick a niche: Decide what you want to focus on. By this I mean what your Instagram account will primarily be about. It could be about beauty, music, comedy, gossips, tutorials, news, football, fashion and more. You can dive into different areas once in a while but you need to have a dominant field.
- Fill out a good bio: When people want to know more about you, they check your Instagram Bio. You have to optimize your bio. Write a very nice and convincing bio. Include your area of focus and your email.
- Use hashtags relevant to your content: Whenever you are making a post on instagram make sure you use relevant hashtags that relates to the post to help more people discover your content. If you develop a good hashtag strategy, you can get a lot of followers through this method. Let’s assume at MakeMoney we are making this post on Instagram, we will likely use an hashtag like #MakeMoney. That will help people searching for ways to make money find this post on Instagram. You can use tool like hashtagify to see popular hashtags people are searching for and use them as related to your content.
- Take good photos and make good videos: Make sure that whenever you are a posting a picture or video, it should be of top quality. Make sure it stands out. Remember Instagram is very visual, it is all about what people see. And try to make them relvant to your target market. Don’t just post random stuffs, post for a purpose.
- Be consistent: You have to be consistent! Post everyday. Keep posting! That will make your followers have something to look forward to. When you are consistent, people will normally come to your profile to check what they have missed.
- Engage: Make sure you engage with your followers. It is very important! Reply comments. Go on other relevant profiles in your niche and engage, people will want to checkout your profile!
- Give shout out and ask for shout out: Once in a while give shout out to popular brands and profiles in your niche. And also slide inbox and ask for a shout out. There are big Instagram accounts that curate contents from different users, use hastags and find them, ask for a shout out.
- Promote your contents: if you have a few penny to spend, you can boost some of your interesting posts to reach more people. This will attract lots of followers and likes.
How to make money on Instagram
Here are effective ways that you can make money on Instagram:
1. Affiliate Marketing
You can make money on Instagram by promoting other people’s products and you will get paid a commission. That is what affiliate marketing is all about. Post about a product of someone and whenever someone buys through your link, you get paid a commission. Using your Instagram page, you can post nice pictures of different products and then drive sales to that product using your affiliate link.
It is very easy as that. Let’s assume your niche is about clothing. You usually post pictures of you and other people rocking different amazing cloths. Chances are that there are many people among your followers who may be loving those cloths. You can register as an affiliate for companies that produce such cloths and they will give you a link. At the end of your post, you drop the link and you can include it in your bio. So whenever any of your followers use that link to buy, you get a commission.
Imagine you have an Instagram account with over 100, 000 followers. You post a picture of a cloth and 100 of your followers develop interest and use your link to buy. You get commission for each of the sales. That might just make you over $1000.
There are several companies that you can work for as an affiliate and get paid. Find a good company and register for their affiliate program and after being approved, start promoting their products. Example of affiliate networks that you can find companies to promote includes: Ebates, Shareasale, Commission Junction
Every time your follower buys anything using your affiliate link, you will get a commission. You can learn more about affiliate marketing by reading: How to make money through affiliate marketing.
2. Partner with brands for sponsored posts
You can make money on Instagram posting original sponsored contents for brands. You can achieve this by sharing a sponsored video or picture that features a particular brand or product. Usually, such a post is accompanied by a caption that has either a link or a hashtag or a @mention. The concept of sponsored posts is to show your followers how the brand you are promoting is essential in your niche.
Always ensure that you only promote brands that are relevant to your niche or you may lose followers. Once the sponsored post blend with your post, your followers might not even notice!.
If you are already a big Instagram blogger, chances are that you already have brands reaching out to you for sponsorship. But if you are not, there are influencers network you can join and find opportunities to partner with brands.
- Buzzweb: This is ideal for starters who wants to make money on Instagram. You can join if you have up to 5000 followers. You will have chances to run some campaigns and get paid in 24 hours!
- TapInfluence: This website will match you with brands after you have set up your profile. So you can promote and start making money.
- Influence: Influence has a large poll of brands and once you join, you can submit application to these brands which are in over 65 countries in the world to promote their brand.
3. Sell your own products
For the business minded person, this will be the best way to make money on Instagram. If you are an entrepreneur, you can use Instagram to market your products. Whichever products you are dealing with, take beautiful pictures and post them on your page. After you have uploaded the images of your products, allow your followers to share or repost these images. This way, many people will get to know your products. And you can get sales.
Always make sure that that you use creative hashtags that will attract various customers.
If you do not have products to sell. You can quickly create an online shop. Then copy products that are relevant to your niche from big suppliers around the world into your shop. Advertise this product on your Instagram. Whenever your followers goes to buy from your online shop, the suppliers will ship the product to them and you make money. You can learn how to create your own online shop now, read: How to create online shop very easily with Shopify
4. Sell Your photo
Whether you are an amateur or a professional photographer, you can use Instagram as a medium of advertising your photos. And you can sell these photos both to agencies or individuals who might want them.
For every photo that you post, make sure that you add a watermark.
Use hashtags that will attract clients to your photos. You can also tag sites that sells Instagram photos on your photos, for example: foapcommunity.
5. Sell Your Account
Another simple way of making money on Instagram is to sell your account. If for any reasons you are not able to use your Instagram page anymore, you can sell it. There are some sites you can actually sell your Instagram accounts. This way your hard work will be paid off. Some of the sites that buy Instagram accounts are viral accounts, TooFame and fame swap.
Conclusion
Now that you have learned how to make money on Instagram, it’s time to take action. You can use any of the methods discussed above and start earning today. However, make sure you maintain the reputation of your brand and treat it as a business. The most difficult part is building followers but if you follower our guide in step one, it would be easier.
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