Can You Make Money Using Instagram? Here’s Everything You Need to Know

Yes, you can definitely make money with Instagram.

Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty!

Many influencers are earning their whole living through Instagram. The influencers who have millions of followers, brands are inclined toward them to pay a substantial amount to feature their products on their profiles, which means many influencers are surely to generating the crazy revenue from Instagram.

Shirley Braha, for example, earns revenue through her Instagram account “Marnie the Dog”, where she used to post pictures of helping her puppies. Braha has over 2 million subscribers and claims to make the more money trough Instagram than her full-time job.

But the point here is, only the photos and videos of dogs on Instagram can’t give you the money. You need to use some other tactics that can generate the actual income from your Instagram account.

The Ground Rules for Making Money on Instagram

If it was easy to make money through Instagram, every user of Instagram would be doing it.

Makes sense?

But It’s not very hard as well. Nevertheless, to increase your income through Instagram, you need to learn some basic necessary actions to increase your probability of success.

Here are two key elements that you need to know to dig money out of your Instagram account:

1. The more the followers, the better you get paid

Of course, you won’t make enough money if your Instagram photos really don’t reach to enough number of people. You need an audience.

But keep in mind that we are talking about “big size”, not big numbers.

We’re not denying that having a large followers base on Instagram can help a lot. In fact, influencers with 7 million followers, have earned an impressive average of $150,000 per sponsored post (which is crazy, isn’t that?)

However, the “millions of followers” isn’t a prerequisite to make money with Instagram. You just need to have followers, but not necessarily the millions of them.

So, how many followers there should be? The number followers may vary depending on the market segment and the level of participation of your followers.

• Have engaged followers than the dead ones

While talking about engagement, this is another vitally important thing while you are thinking about earning on Instagram.

In order to make money on Instagram, most often you’ll be wanting your followers to perform some actions. Maybe you want to increase their interest in your post and want them to “like” ones, or maybe you want them to purchase a particular product. This can be difficult if you have a huge fan base that is completely dead or unengaged with your posts.

In nut shell, The more active your followers you have, the more likely you are to make money through Instagram.

Remember, it’s always a great idea to use hashtags in first comment of post and keep the title friendly and interesting as you are presenting them in front of the persons who are eager to see your posts.

Strategies for Making Money on Instagram

Once you have established your account with proper followers, it’s time to take the next step: learning how exactly you can make money on Instagram.

Alright, regardless of whether you are an individual or a brand, you can find several ways to make money on Instagram.

How exactly?

Let’s take a look at eight common methods people are using today to generate revenue from Instagram.

1. Sell Your Physical Products

Have you ever considered selling products to your audience on Instagram? It could be an artwork, cakes, handmade jewellery, or other similar products.

If you are unaware of how to ship your products to consumers, there are many free websites that can help.

An example of this is Teespring. Give them your design and Teespring will print this item when you want to sell. For example: t-shirt, hoodie, home decor, and sticker. It will be their responsibility to print and ship it to your customers. All you need to do is create your own designs and link your PayPal account to your Teespring store.

It’s quite simple! Share the link with your fans and they will be happy to buy your product. You will get a percentage of each sale and the rest is up to Teespring.

Moreover, if your product is homemade, or you have a stock at your place, you can make a contract with local courier companies around you.

• Sell Your Digital Products

You can sell digital products as well. Like if you want to share your knowledge, you can create a course or even an eBook and promote it to your Instagram audience. Although making a course or writing a book may take a lot of time and effort. You can decide how long your book/course will be and how much time you can invest on it.

There are popular sites like Amazon Kindle, you can use sites like Payhip which works just like amazon. Udemy is a famous website to sell online courses. If you are a good artist, you can sell your digital art as well.

• Sell Your Services

You can easily convert your Instagram followers into your clients. People pay you for your freelance work, such as writing an article or writing a song. When people see who you are and see your posts, they will trust you because they think they know you.

You can also advertise your talents like motivational speaking, lawn mowing, singing, etc. You will be amazed at how many people wants to pay you for this kind of services.

• Deal with Brands

As companies are always looking for ways to promote their products and grow their business, they will attract influencers like you. For this, you are not in need to have 100,000 followers. If your engagements with your followers are admirable, and followers do buy what you share, the companies want you. They pay you because you help them build their brand and increase their audience.

You are suggested to go to small businesses to promote their product and offer a reasonable price. Particularly if you continue the efforts to keep growing you audience, you can make a lot of money by making deal with brands.

• Do Shout-Outs

You can find many people who are willing to pay money for shout-outs on your account. Instagram shout-out means to post a picture of some other brand, product, or an individual on your account. Instagram shout-outs normally last for 24 hours which are posted on story. You task is to encourage your followers to support that person / business when you give a shout-out.

People who are just starting out and want to push their fans to grow faster do not mind sacrificing a few dollars to achieve this.

Here is a pro-tip that only advertise about what you trust. If you advertise some spammy content, you are in danger of losing your credibility.

• Redirect Traffic to Other Media

Although Instagram is limited to the number of views on your posts. They may not charge you, but there are other sites that can pay you. If you have a YouTube channel, more traffic means more money. Let your Instagram followers visit your YouTube channel and let them know when you post a new video. It generates views on your channel. The more viewers you have, the more likely you are to make money on YouTube.

If you have a blog, same concept applies on that as well. Bring your followers to your blog! It is a quite simple method for you followers to contribute because they do not have to pay for it.

But you still earn.

• Participate in Competitions

You can find contests and competitions in almost every field on Instagram. There are art competitions, writing competitions, photography competitions, and much more!

Do not be afraid to show the world what skills you have got! You can win even $1000 by winning the Instagram contest.

The opportunities are limitless!

So, why hesitating to give a try? Go, find one!

• Find Affiliate Programs

You will also find endless opportunities in the world of Affiliate Marketing. If you want to become an affiliate marketer, I suggest you create the Amazon Affiliate Program or ClickBank. Your followers will use the referral link provided on the Instagram page to purchase the product (the buyer does not have to pay more) and you will be receiving a specific percentage of the price in the form of commission for each transaction.

Are You Up for This?

You can find infinite directions when you make your mind to earn money using Instagram. You can find many direct and indirect ways to make it happen. In direct way you can consider affiliate marketing and sponsored posts etc. While in indirect ways we have discussed participating in competitions and redirecting your traffic to YouTube and blogs etc.

So, have you already made your goals?  Are you ready to:

• Engage with your follower?
• Build a brand awareness?
• Increase your sales?
• Increase your traffic on other platforms?

Or other than this, what goals do you have?

Making money on Instagram is a big plus. But it is not for everyone!

So, make your strategy and see where your Instagram account fits in.

Rest is Up to You

All of the above, from brand recognition to customer acquisition, will ultimately help you increase your earnings.

The more followers you have, the more people you can advertise. The more you talk to them, the more they will share with others. The more they share with others, the more your audience will grow. And look! How the progress goes on… So, even if you do not invest in even a single penny directly, Instagram will remain a solid platform that will eventually be pushing your brand (and increase your income).