6 Ways to Make Money on Instagram That Really Work in 2020
Have you ever thought to make money on Instagram?
Instagram has over one billion users worldwide and is one of the top social networking platforms for business.
People spend more than 50 minutes each day on Instagram on average, and more importantly, 80 percent of them follow a minimum of one business profile on it.
With the existing global crisis of COVID-19, people are increasingly using Instagram to find their favorite products/services.
Instagram has numerous capabilities like Stories, IGTV, and Live that are suitable for marketing. It’s also a great place for influencers who are becoming thought leaders in every niche across the world.
There is a bold trend among brands, marketers, influencers, and even common users to take advantage of the app to make money.
To know how much this is serious, you can just Google “make money on Instagram” to face more than 3 billion results.
In this post, you will learn all top ways by which you can make money on Instagram.
Ways to Make Money on Instagram
Generally, you can divide money-making ideas on Instagram into 6 major groups as:
- Becoming an Instagram influencer
- Running a social media marketing agency
- Selling products/services
- Creating content
- Driving traffic to your site
- Selling Instagram accounts
You need to know your capabilities to choose the best way for making money from Instagram. Here is how:
1. Becoming an Instagram Influencer
Influencer marketing is one of the newest ways to make money online. Around 70% of companies consider influencer marketing to be the best way for increasing engagement rates and brand awareness.
Instagram is the top social media platform for influencer marketing and Instagram influencers are making tones of money from it.
Instagram influencers can be sorted into four categories:
· Mega-Influencers
With millions of followers, they usually charge brands $5,000 to $20,000 for a single post. The price can be way higher for some superstars and celebrities.
· Macro-Influencers
With less than 1 million followers, they can earn $1,000 to $5,000 for every sponsored post on Instagram.
· Micro-Influencers
They’re highly-engaged users in a specific area with a following of around 100K. They can earn $100 to $500 for each post.
· Nano-Influencers
They usually have around 5,000 followers and can earn up to $20 for each post
Of course, the prices are strongly dependent on the niche and also the economic situation. For example, COVID-19 has forced many Instagram influencers to cut their rates by up to 30%.
Also, many brands are willing to establish long-lasting relationships with Instagram influencers and make them act like their brand ambassador. Obviously, the price will be significantly different in these cases.
Joining affiliate programs is also another way influencers can earn money on Instagram. Affiliate marketplaces like ShareASal offer such programs that help influencers to earn money by promoting links on their accounts.
Additionally, if they have more than 10,000 followers, they will be able to add links to their stories in addition to their bio and make extra money.
So influencers can easily make money on Instagram by advertising a company’s products/services, publishing sponsored posts, affiliate marketing, or even becoming their ambassador.
2. Running a Social Media Marketing Agency
Social media marketing is so important that many brands prefer to assign the task to agencies. These agencies take control of the brand’s social presence on all social media platforms, especially Instagram.
They usually build a strong Instagram marketing strategy for brands including the below items:
- Competition research
- Defining SMART goals
- Finding target audiences
- Generating content
- Engaging with community
- Promoting
- Analyzing and reporting the performance
If you run a social media marketing agency for Instagram campaigns, you can make hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.
Of course, you need a professional team to take care of the Instagram accounts 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Becoming a social media manager of brands is also a good option if you can’t afford to run an agency. Managing Instagram accounts of brands is a sought-after job and you need to be skillful enough to take it on merit.
3. Selling Your Products/Services
As I said earlier, Instagram has developed into a strong advertising tool over the last decade. Particularly, the Shopping feature on Instagram has changed the way many social users search for products.
So you can boost your company’s sales using this feature by easily tagging your products in:
- Feed posts
- Stories
- AR filters
In fact, Instagram can take the position of websites such as Amazon.com but you can also use it to promote your advertised products on Amazon.com.
You just need to twitch into a business profile and start promoting, advertising, and selling your products and services.
Another effective way of using Instagram to make money is to insert a link to your shopping webpages in your bio.
Writing a convincing Instagram bio with a call-to-action item can significantly increase your online sales.
Even if you don’t have a company, you can still trade on Instagram and make money. Trading other company’s products/services on the platform is also another way of making money.
It’s clear that you need to be a good dealer with strong community links to be able to act as a middleman.
4. Creating Content
Content marketing is an efficient way to reach organic audiences that search for niche relevant posts, blogs, etc.
Users are posting over 100 million pictures/videos on the platform, and it’s no mystery that Instagram is all about visual content.
Great multimedia features like feed posts, Stories, Live videos, and IGTV has made Instagram unrivaled among other platforms.
The truth is that being persistent in the content generation is not an easy task and brands need skilled content generators for it.
So there is a great opportunity to make money on Instagram by:
- Designing compelling info-graphics
- Writing viral hashtags
- Writing convincing captions
- Editing videos and images
- Creating animations
There are a lot of advertised positions related to content generation on sites like LinkedIn, Freelancer, FreeUp, etc.
It’s good to know that you can even work remotely and earn money from home as a creative content generator. This can be very helpful, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic which you need a minimum physical presence.
5. Driving Traffic to Your Site
Another way of making money on Instagram is by using your accounts to drive traffic to your blog.
Blogging has proved to be a good way of making money and you can boost that by promoting your blog posts on social media.
Instagram is one of the best social media platforms for driving traffic to your blog and making more money.
A link in your bio is a great chance to convince your profile’s visitors to go to your blog. You need to make a sense of urgency so they feel they’ll lose something if they don’t visit your blog.
Also, you’ll have the chance to insert your link in your stories if you gain 10,000 followers or more.
6. Selling Instagram Account
Trading Instagram accounts is against the app’s terms of services but it’s also one of the most lucrative businesses on the platform.
Many brands, especially small businesses, try to acquire existing Instagram accounts that have thousands of followers.
Because gaining Instagram followers in an organic way is a time-sucking procedure and not all businesses can wait that long. So many companies are ready to buy your Instagram account if you have a considerable number of relevant followers.
If you want to know how to sell IG accounts, you need to know that there are two main ways.
First, you can insert a call-to-action in your bio, your blog, or forums and tell “account for sale”.
Using suitable hashtags like #sellinginstagram and #instagramforsale on Instagram can really help you get maximum exposure and find a buyer sooner.
Also, you can use middleman sites for selling your Instagram accounts and make money. There are countless Instagram accounts for sale on these sites and you can easily find someone to sell them your account.
Although they might charge you the transferring process is really safer in this method compared to the first one.
By the way, if you’re a good content generator in any niche, you can start creating Instagram accounts and gaining followers to be able to sell them.
Getting More Instagram Followers to Make More Money
Now that you’re familiar with the main approaches for making money on Instagram, it’s time to know how to increase your income.
It’s obvious that the more niche followers and the higher engagement rates, the better. In fact, no matter which way you choose to make money on Instagram, you have to increase your niche followers and engage with them.
Here are tips to increase your followers organically:
· Keep Posting Consistently
A consistent presence is a key to having a huge following on social media, and Instagram is no exception.
The thing is that the number of your posts must be kept within a reasonable range. If you don’t post for a while, your audience will forget you. Also, if you post too much, you’ll bother your followers.
So you need to have a certain schedule for your post to get the maximum attention from your followers.
This is dependent on your niche, location, and also the condition you’re in. For example, people are using Instagram more frequently during the COVID-19 pandemic compared to the past.
So you should be prepared for it to be able to align your social presence regarding the new circumstance.
Try to use social media automation tools like Crowdfire to schedule your posts and increase your impressions. This will greatly help you get more niche followers.
· Shift Towards Videos, Especially Instagram Live
Nowadays, social users prefer visual content more than anything. That’s why Instagram and other multimedia-sharing platforms like TikTok and YouTube are on the rise.
Videos are particularly popular among people, especially youngsters who comprise a majority of Instagram users.
They found more fun and entertainment in watching a video rather than reading the long text. Additionally, videos are much better in teaching, educating, and generally, informing people of facts.
So using videos can greatly increase your visitors and more importantly, your engagement rates.
Live videos are also very effective in building a close relationship with your audiences. In fact, you cannot find a more transparent and friendlier way to communicate with your community.
· Engage On a Personal Level
Remember that social media is all about socializing. So, although you’re using it to make money, you can’t speak with social users like a vending machine.
You have to build a community of engaged followers regardless of your purpose. Without that, you’ll lose your followers and won’t make money as you wish.
You need to speak with your followers just like them and try to build a long-lasting friendship. Use a funny and informal tone when replying to their comments. This helps you gain the trust of them.
It’s also recommended to interact with them immediately after their reactions to make them feel you’re ready for them.
· Leverage User-Generated Content
One of the smartest ways to keep your Instagram accounts up is to share UGCs.
When you share a piece of content generated by your followers, you’ll at least find the chance to get higher engagement rates. Because those users will certainly share your post with their followers.
Also, you can reduce the pressure of generating content by yourself and assign part of it to your followers.
In this way, you’ll get more diverse content and higher engagement rates that definitely leads to more followers.
· Collaborate With Your Community
Another useful way to increase your followers is by collaborating with other accounts in your niche.
Reach out to them and encourage them to promote each other’s accounts. Sharing their content and engaging with their posts will definitely entice them to do so with your posts.
· Build a Hashtag Strategy
Hashtags are playing a key role in being discovered on Instagram and subsequently, it is very important in increasing your followers.
Try to have a unique set of branded and niche-related hashtags and use them in your posts. You can also search for the top-searched hashtags in your niche and use them.
It’s useful to take advantage of all 30 possible opportunities for hashtags under a post and 10 in a story.
This helps you to be discovered by more audiences and your followers will significantly increase.
· Use Analytics to Optimize Your Activities
Finally, you need to constantly analyze your marketing performance to be able to detect your best/worst-performing content.
This helps you to optimize your future posts in terms of scheduling, content, graphics, tone, etc.
When you align your activities with the user’s feedback, you’ll certainly have higher chances to get more followers.
Takeaway
Making money on Instagram might be straightforward but you have to know that there are numerous rivals in this field. So you can’t win the competition with a mediocre performance. Try to master all skills required in social media marketing to be able to outperform your rivals and make more money on Instagram.
We hope you enjoyed this promoted piece as much as we did!
