How To Make Money On Instagram: 13 Strategies That Work

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If you’ve started to build up a strong social media following, you’re probably wondering how you can use it to make money on Instagram? The good news is that there are plenty of ways for content creators to use Instagram to generate revenue.

There are all kinds of Instagram hacks, features, and strategies that you can use to start monetizing your account and generating a new stream of income. 

If you want to make money from Instagram, then you can try out the following 13 strategies that each offer lucrative possibilities.

How To Make Money On Instagram: 13 Strategies

1. Use Instagram To Sell Products

If you sell products of any kind, then Instagram is a great place to reach a lot of interested customers. Many Instagram creators use the platform to boost their entrepreneurship. This could be to sell any kind of original products, merch, photo filters, and more. 

A well-used and effective approach is to advertise your link-in-bio. You could also promote your products through a dedicated Instagram page. Using Instagram to promote products works well because the visual aspect of the platform is a great way to show off products and entice new customers. 

Make sure you use the right hashtags to reach as many customers as possible and make it easy for your followers to be directed from your posts or stories to your products.

kaicollective profile on Instagram

2. Use An Organic Instagram Growth Service

If you want to start using Instagram to make money, you’ll need a decent amount of followers. Quite simply, the more followers you have, the more potential you have to work with brands and monetize your content. No matter what route you take to make money on Instagram, having more followers will help you maximize your revenue. 

Instagram growth service Kicksta

And what’s the easiest way to get more followers? Using an organic Instagram growth service. With a platform like Kicksta, you’ll be able to quickly grow your followers without doing anything like using bots or buying fake followers. Anyone who wants to start earning an income from Instagram should definitely consider this. 

3. Start An Instagram Shop

Instagram shopping is a more recent addition to the platform. Now business profiles can create their own customizable storefront that accommodates shopping directly on the platform. Instead of redirecting your customers to your online store, you can sell directly off Instagram. This is the easiest way to promote your products directly through the platform. 

To set up an Instagram shop, you’ll need to have an eCommerce store. Integrate this store with the shop on your business account, and you can start to tag products in your posts. Let’s say you upload a photo of a model. You can turn this into a “shop the look” post, and tag your different products in the image. 

Now users can easily check out the products right on the app. 

Instagram shopping feature

4. Monetize Your Content With IGTV Ads

We all know about content creators making money from YouTube. Well, now Instagram offers an alternative through IGTV. Creators can now receive 55% of advertising revenue through this platform, which is the same rate as Youtube. 

In March 2021, IGTV ads became available to creators in the UK, US, and Australia. These ads allow Instagram content creators to monetize their videos on IGTV. If you get a lot of views on your IGTV channel, then this could be a lucrative opportunity.

5. Use Instagram Live Badges

Live Badges are a tool that creators can use to make money when they broadcast Instagram Lives. When a creator goes live, they can offer three different badge options on the screen, each with a different price value.

When viewers like what they see, they can select a badge and contribute their chosen amount directly to the content creator. This can be thought of as a kind of online tip system. Instagram badges work really well for creators like musicians or fitness instructors who can broadcast their services to their audience in return for badge donations. 

Instagram live badge example

6. Advertise Your Brand

No matter what kind of business you run, you can use Instagram to generate more sales. Instagram allows you to reach loads of potential customers, vastly increasing your reach and your revenue. You can use the platform in many different ways to sell your services and your products. 

The more followers you can attract on Instagram, the more traffic you can send to your business website. You can achieve this through all kinds of marketing tactics, like posting fun Instagram reels, highlighting your products in use, and posting helpful and interesting content for your followers.

7. Become An Influencer

The first thing that most people think of when they want to make money from Instagram is influencers. Influencers can take many different shapes and forms on Instagram. The basic idea is that you need to have a lot of followers and use them to promote different products and brands. You also get micro-influencers who operate on a smaller scale. 

Once you have enough of an engaged community, you can start to get paid for sponsored posts. Basically, businesses will pay you to mention them in your posts where you generate important content for them. 

Of course, becoming an influencer isn’t as easy as it might sound. You need to remain your authentic self, while still making your life seem exciting and glamorous. Influencers should focus on a specific niche in order to attract a very particular audience that brands can tap into. If you want to become an influencer, then you’ll need to focus more on mentioning brands and products in your posts.

micro-influencer to make money on Instagram

8. Partner With A Brand

If you are an eligible creator, you can use Brand Collabs Manager to find brands that align with your niche and interests. In order to use this, you will have to have an active business or creator account, at least 10,000 followers, and 1,000 engagement examples (Instagram comments and likes) in the last 60 days. 

If you qualify for this, then you can find brands that match your values and personality and start to include them in your posts.

brand collab on Instagram

9. Promote Affiliate Links

Affiliate marketing is when influencers earn a commission for each sale that they promote through a link. You can post traceable links on Instagram to a certain product, and each time someone buys that product through your referral, you’ll earn a portion of that sale. 

Different companies have different affiliate programs and entry requirements. Affiliate marketing is relatively easy to get into if you match the brand’s criteria, and it can be a pretty simple way to make some passive income. There are various affiliate programs that you can join to partner up with brands that offer affiliate programs to match your online presence. 

Instagram is also starting to test out its own native affiliate tool to help influencers find and earn through affiliate products.

affiliate link liketoknowit

10. Sell Info Products

Info products are when you teach people how to do certain things, or share valuable information, in exchange for a set price. Many Instagrammers use info products to generate a solid income from their audience. And before you start worrying about info products being things like dodgy dating advice, this is actually a perfectly legitimate way to make money. 

You could sell any type of knowledge within your specific skillset. This could be a cooking course, teaching a language, or showing your followers how to practice meditation. Use your Instagram account to establish an audience, and directly sell them an info product. This is a great way to generate an income through the platform without having to sell physical products or promote other brands. 

Selling info products on Instagram

11. Sell Your Photography

Instagram is a visual platform, so it makes sense to use it to sell your photos. If you produce high-quality images that your audience loves, then Instagram is the perfect place to make some money from them. 

You could sell your Instagram photos on various marketplaces where publishers could license them. You could also offer your beautiful Instagram images as physical prints that your followers can buy. You could print them on posters, mugs, T-shirts, phone cases, etc. 

If you dove into Instagram because you wanted to share your amazing photos, then you should definitely consider selling your photography through the platform. 

Selling photography on Instagram

12. Assist An Influencer

Many people are attracted to the influencer life, but they don’t necessarily have the personality or audience to become influencers themselves. If this is the case, you can always use Instagram to assist other influencers.

Many influencers require a virtual assistant (VA) to help them run their Instagram business. This can include doing things like responding to DMs, filtering requests, responding to comments, scheduling posts, and even coordinating sponsorships with brands. 

Just because you’re not in the photos, it doesn’t mean you can’t manage an influencer account. Many popular influencers use the assistance of a VA to help them run their busy accounts. 

13. Sell Dropshipped Products

Dropshipping is a hot topic in today’s world of eCommerce. Basically, dropshipping is a fulfillment model that allows you to sell physical products without having to keep stock or manage deliveries. Your supplier will handle this for you, while you just focus on generating sales. 

This is a great way to start selling products online without having to hold any inventory or figuring out all the complicated logistics of running a regular eCommerce store. You can use Instagram to build up an audience of potential customers interested in your niche, and you can sell to them directly through the platform. 

How To Make Money On Instagram: Frequently Asked Questions

How do Instagram users get paid?

You can get paid on Instagram by working with brands, doing sponsored posts, becoming an affiliate, selling products, or monetizing your content.

How many followers do you need to make money on Instagram?

You could have anything from 1,000 to 1 million followers to make money on Instagram, but having at least a couple of thousand followers is best. High engagement rates are also important.

How much money does 10k Instagram followers make?

Instagram accounts with 10,000 followers, also called micro-influencers, generally make around $88 per Instagram post.

Start Making Money On Instagram Today

Instagram is so much more than just a tool for creating brand awareness. You can also use it to generate an income. There are various ways that Instagrammers can utilize the platform to earn themselves some money. 

The 13 strategies listed above cover a wide range of opportunities that businesses, influencers, and regular individuals can implement if they want to monetize their Instagram usage.

Author Bio

Tom is a marketing content writer at Wishpond – the all-in-one marketing platform that helps businesses achieve real growth.

Author

  • Sam Hackett

    Sam is an Instagram consultant who specializes in helping small businesses use the platform to grow their customer base. With a background in entrepreneurship, Sam understands the challenges that businesses face and loves providing practical solutions through social media. When she’s not advising clients, you can find Sam exploring new hiking trails or working on his next big idea.

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Picture of Sam Hackett

Sam Hackett

Sam is an Instagram consultant who specializes in helping small businesses use the platform to grow their customer base. With a background in entrepreneurship, Sam understands the challenges that businesses face and loves providing practical solutions through social media. When she’s not advising clients, you can find Sam exploring new hiking trails or working on his next big idea.

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