Make no mistake: the days of social media being merely a pleasant place to hang out are long gone.
While many of us may still have a great time on social media, it has become increasingly monetized.
Networks were able to pay their expenses early on thanks to advertising in the form of paid social and display adverts. For the most part, it still does. However, social media has evolved into a platform where influencers may earn money in ways that most people are unaware of. What are the ways that influencers generate money? Let’s have a look at how they may make money from their influence.
How Do Influencers Make Money?
As with many parts of the mass media and internet space, influencers have several options for making money. They generally choose based on niche, individual talents, opportunities presented, and more. Besides this, there are options that require larger levels of commitment that an influencer might not be interested in.
Instagram has quickly risen to become one of the most popular social networking platforms. Its followers definitely appreciate the emphasis on photographs and visual images. Instagram has become the most popular way for individuals to exchange photographs thanks to its supporters.
In The Surge of Influencer Marketing on Instagram, we recently examined its fast rise in popularity. Since then, Instagram’s user base has grown to 12000 crore, with 8000 crore of them using it on a daily basis. To far, more than 40 billion photographs have been posted.
Is it any wonder that individuals make a livelihood off of Instagram with these kinds of numbers? It may not have the same well-structured revenue model as YouTube, but there are still plenty of ways that popular and active Instagrammers make money from the platform.
1. Make Sponsored Posts
Probably the best-known way of making money on Instagram is as an influencer, where you make sponsored posts on behalf of a brand. You will need a sizeable following for brands to consider you viable, so spend your time building up your following and engagement before you attempt to connect with brands.
It is important that you keep your content authentic. Your followers will rapidly lose interest in you if you come across as simply making posts for marketing purposes. If you do manage to gain brands interested in you, there is little point in working with any where you can’t feel enthusiastic about the product. If you can’t authentically post about a product, there is little point in taking on the contract, no matter how much money they offer you.
2.Do Affiliate Marketing
If you are an affiliate you sign up with a company and try and sell their product. You get to keep a certain percentage of each sale you make.
As an affiliate, you will be given a trackable link for the products you sell. This means that if somebody follows your link and buys the good, the selling company knows that the customer came via you, and knows to pay you the commission.
One problem with Instagram is that you can’t place clickable links in your posts. The only place you can put one is in your bio. This means that you can realistically only promote one affiliate product at a time.
You can use your posts to promote the product, directing people with a statement like “link in profile” in your photo caption. By sending people to your bio you can encourage them to click through to the actual affiliate link.
Companies offering affiliate products include:
3.Promote Your Online Store or Other Business
If you operate a business you can use Instagram in the same way as any other brand. This is particularly valuable when you sell products that you can showcase with your photography. Instagram is ideal for promoting fashion, beauty and food products.
You can create posts giving special offers. Just remember the 80-20 rule, though. For every promotional post, you need four posts that don’t promote your product.
You can still showcase your store or business in more general posts though, by emphasizing its more human side. For instance, you could share images of your customers using the product. Alternatively, you might show your followers what truly happens behind the scenes. They are likely to respond well to these posts showing your more human side.You need your Instagram posts to show that you are trustworthy.
4.Sell Your Photos
If you take high-quality photos then there is a chance that people may be willing to pay for your best images. Think how many people willingly purchase stock images online.
To a large extent, this does depend on your photography skills. The more you work on these, along with editing and composition, the greater the chance that you will be able to make some money from your images.
You are far more likely to sell an authentic photo than a staged one. Think of all those cheesy stock photos that you see, parfocality on the free sites. You want your images to look real, not played-up for the camera.
5.Use Instagram to Improve Your YouTube Income
Instagram and YouTube go together very well. Both channels are highly visual media that rely on their users’ graphical content.
As we have previously discussed, YouTube has a clear system of rewarding its top performers. While Instagram lacks the convenience of a centralised Adsense monetization, it does provide an excellent way for you to promote your YouTube channel.
You can even post teaser trailers for your YouTube videos on Instagram.This helps build up excitement in anticipation of your full-scale YouTube productions.
Successful YouTubers can also use Instagram to engage with their audiences. They can even ask their followers to suggest ideas for future videos.
Conclusion
Instagram can be a highly lucrative way of making money. However, you do need to do the groundwork first. Once you have put in the time and effort building up an engaged audience there is no reason why you can’t earn a very good living, solely from your Instagram activities.