How to make money on social media

Social Media is the trending thing worldwide. From Nigeria to South Africa, India, the United States, the United Kingdom, and all over the world, social media is playing a big part in the life of most people. People spend most of their days on social media. From chatting on Facebook to Tweeting on Twitter, Sharing pictures on Instagram, or watching videos on YouTube, social networks have become an everyday thing for billions of people.

While a lot of people spend much time and energy having fun on social networks, there are other sets of people who spend time making money from these social networks. In this article, we will show you how to make money on social media.

Note: If you have ever googled and looked for ways to make money on social networks, beware of websites asking you to pay money to join a program. Most of them are scams. All the ideas mentioned in this article are free. You can start trying them out today. In some cases, you may require a little knowledge. But with the internet, you can learn for free.

As at January 2019, there are about 3.48 billion social media users world wide. That means social media is like a large city. The largest city on earth. Think of it like a market or a city center, where over 3 billion people are gathered. With that huge number of people, you can make money. You can sell snacks, you can sell anything and you will find buyers. Such is the impact of large gathering of people on finance. Because of the number of people on social networks, they are like gold-mines. Let’s look at ways you can generate income from this cluster of people.

How to make money on social media

Follow these steps to make money on social media;

1. Become a social media marketer

This is one of the best ways to make money on social networks. Your job as a social media marketer is promoting of services, products and image of companies or individuals on different social media platforms in order to help them find leads or grow their brand.

This s a very lucrative job worldwide. You can even create a company that specialize in it. It is estimated by Payscale that people who work as social network marketers earn above $49,000 per year.

There are many companies, individuals and brands who needs help finding customers online, building their brand online and all of that. You can be their helper and smile to the bank as a result.

You should read this article: How to become a social media marketer

2. Make money posting ads on social media

This is a very common way to make money on social networks. Anyone can make money on social networks posting ads.

Ads is simply the abbreviation for advertisements. To make money on social media posting ads is all about posting advertisements on your social network pages for money. There are many ways you can do that.

If you are a social media influencer, you will likely have brands reach-out to you to share their products or content on your platform and in exchange they pay you. You can also join platforms that find that connects you with advertisers who will pay you to post ads on your social network profiles. Such platforms include: Famebit,  Izea, Dealspotr, Ifluenz and many others.

Another way you can make money posting ads on social networks is by sharing news content with short links. If you share a lot of links, be it news, sports or whatever links you share, consider using a link shortener service to share.  Some of the shortener service will pay you for how many people that click on the link. They generate their income from showing ads with your link. Let’s say you are posting a news story on your social network profile from BBC. And you use the link shortener to shorten the link. When your followers click on the link, it will show them a little advert before redirecting them to BBC. That way you make money as people click and read. Example of link shorteners are: ADF and OUO

You can also make money by posting ads for your products and selling them. There are many customers you can reach and convert.

3. Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is all about recommending products and services for commission. Depending on what you post about on your social network platforms, you can leverage and make money through affiliate marketing.

For example, if you share contents on your profile about fashion, you can sign up with a fashion company as an affiliate. You will include their link in your post. Whenever anyone clicks to buy, you get a percentage (Commission). Fashion is just an example, you can do same for phones, cars, whatever it is your profile is focused on.

If you are concerned about establishing contacts with these companies to promote their products or services, there is no need to worry. There are Affiliate marketing networks that you can join and you will have access to a lot of companies in different sectors to promote whatever you desire. Example of affiliate networks are: Commission Junction, Linkshare, Impact Radius, Amazon Affiliate, Jumia Affiliates, Konga Affiliates

You can start by writing reviews on your social network profiles about products and services and then leave a link where your followers can either buy the product or subscribe to the services.

Recommended reading: How to make money through affiliate marketing

4. Sell your product or services

If you have a skill, you can promote your own skills to your followers and you will be surprised at the number of people willing to patronize you. Do not just promote, package it well. Remember, presentation maters, how you present it to them will go a long way to determine how they react to it.

You can sell products too. If you have products you sell, leverage on your profile and drive more sales. A lady I know started selling bags on her Facebook profile where she has less than 3000 friends. In 4 days, her stock finished!

If you do not have products and do not want to stock products you can create an online shop with Shopify, copy inventories from big manufacturers and suppliers around the world into your online store. When people visit and order for products, the suppliers will send to them and you get your share!

5. Partnership program

Some of the social networks have a partnership program you can partake and make money. This works if you are a content creator. For example, if you love making videos, you can join the YouTube Partner Program and earn money doing what you love.

If you are a blogger, app developer or you make video content, you can join the Facebook Audience Network and make money with your passion.

Additional resources

If you want to learn more about making money on different social networks, we have written interesting guides that you might want to read. Find them below:

Facebook: If you are interested in making money on Facebook, we recommend that you read this article ‘how to make money on Facebook.‘

Twitter: If you want to learn the many ways you can make money on Twitter then read this article ‘how to make money on twitter.’

Instagram: To learn the many ways you can earn money on Instagram, read this article ‘how to make money on Instagram.’

YouTube: If making money on YouTube interests you then read ‘how to make money on YouTube.’