Instagram is the world’s second-most favorite social media platform after Whatsapp. With more than 2 billion active users in 2023, Instagram is the go-to platform for millennials and GenZ.
People use the platform to search for brands and goods and even consider the presence of an Instagram account and regular posting a standard of credibility when choosing a brand.
(image source WeAreSocial)
Social media marketing teams schedule posts with Adublisher on Instagram to make the process easy and stay in touch with their followers without any halts.
[Here is a detailed guide on “how to schedule a post with Adublisher on Instagram.”]
Making money with Instagram was only possible in 2020. Meta introduced monetization for Instagram business and creators’ accounts to keep the competition in check.
After allowing monetization, the platform offers various options for generating revenue.
Can you make money with Instagram? If yes, then how much?
Can you make money with Instagram? Yes! Of course, you can.
The revenue stream is different for businesses and individuals and how they can benefit from the platform depends on their skill set and niche.
People who started Instagram as fun or a side hustle are quitting their day jobs and focusing solely on Gram and their followers.
How much money can you make with Instagram? This is a complex question as there is no one precise answer. This is because celebrities and Instagram influencers are very tight-lipped about their earnings.
Revenue from Instagram is very volatile and strongly dependent on your popularity, i.e. your number of organic followers.
If you paint something and a gallery or a celebrity buys your art piece, even posting it as a product, it is an earning. If you sing a song and it goes viral, and you get to feature in a famous singer like Beyonce or Drake, that is an earning with Instagram.
(image source Instagram)
Seems like a fairytale? It’s not as it has happened to people; rapper Saweetie rapped on Instagram and went viral, ending up performing with DojaCat and releasing her label in 2018, according to Wikipedia.
In 2023, according to Influencer Marketing Hub, Christiano Ronaldo is making a whopping $2,397,000 per post; that’s right, he is making more than $2 million because of his 597 million followers on Instagram.
(image source Instagram)
Of course, you can’t make Ronaldo money on Instagram, but you can make an honest living.
Instagram Influencer Categories.
To understand the metrics of Instagram influencers, here are the main categories of influencers,
- Nano-influencer (below 1k followers)
- Micro-influencers (1k – 10k followers)
- Mid-tier influencers (10k – 100k followers)
- Macro-influencers (100k – 1 million followers)
- Mega-influencers (1 million + followers)
Different reports on the Internet give different values of how much an influencer is paid, but the common numbers among them are,
- Micro-influencers ($100-$1000 per post)
- Mid-tier influencers ($500-$1500 per post)
- Macro-influencers ($1000-$5000 per post)
- Mega-influencers ($10,000-$25,000 per post)
It is vital to mention that these figures vary a lot and mostly depend on the quality of your followers. One thousand organic, trustworthy followers are way better than 10,000 fake ones.
Now that we have established that we can make money with Instagram and how much, it is time to find out how to unlock this income stream.
Brand Awareness.
At the beginning of this blog, I mentioned that we would be exploring how different entities can benefit from Instagram; brand awareness is shared equally.
According to the Global Media Consumer Research Study report shared by Instagram on their official account in 2021, Instagram is the number one ranked social media platform to connect with brands.
(image source Instagram)
Most Instagram users start their brand search with the platform and even consider the presence of a brand’s account and number of followers a standard of trust and credibility.
Small businesses and large enterprises like Pepsi and Coca-Cola benefit from the platform’s enormous recurring audience.
If you want to grow your business sales, Instagram can help you achieve that. Create a professional account for your business and regularly post about trending topics, share your thoughts (especially if they are controversial), exciting news, countdowns, engage with your audience, and you can skyrocket your revenue.
As an artist, just a normal individual, or a blogger, you can create a community of like-minded followers and share your recent work with them, value their opinion, and learn from their ideas and insights while growing a sense of trust. Stay in their feed constantly by scheduling posts with Adublisher on Instagram.
Sponsored posts.
The most common form of making money on Instagram is using sponsored posts. This is a “quid pro quo” business model where Instagram Influencers post about a product and, in return, get a percentage of the earning.
Influencers get paid per post or campaign, depending on the sponsorship deal they sign outside the jurisdictions of Instagram.
We are all suckers for a good deal, am I right? Celebrities endorse brands by simply posting about their product or using their promo code, and they get their cut of the sales from the sales made by using these codes.
You can create your own post and share it with the brand by tagging them in the post, or you can use the ad they made about the product and share it with your followers with a #sponsored tag.
You must collaborate with brands that align with your audience. Try to balance the sponsored and generic posts and stay in the green line of your followers.
(image source Hubspot)
Paid Partnerships.
Occasional sponsored posts are good for business, but marketing is not a sprint; it’s a marathon, and if you are steady in your approach, a few setbacks won’t hurt you.
Paid partnerships allow brands and influencers to stay in touch for a long and share each other’s posts and resources ( in this case, followers ).
Partnerships are mostly long yet flexible agreements with several options to get paid, either by post engagements, conversions, or as an affiliate.
When partnering with a brand or influencer, you must share some common merits. An example would be the paid partnership between Gigi Hadid and Coca-Cola, a famous model, and promoter working with a famous soft drink company.
(image source Instagram)
Affiliate Marketing.
Affiliate marketing differs slightly from sponsorships, as it’s a numbers game. Amazon is the largest affiliate market in the world. Some other options, like ClickBank, also offer affiliate marketing opportunities.
Affiliate marketing is where you create a post about a specific product, and people buy from your link, and you will get a small amount of the profits, in the case of Amazon, 10%.
Unlike sponsored ads, the affiliate is a long-term game; you can make regular passive income.
Invest in affiliate marketing, expand your presence from a social media platform to your website, and increase your revenue.
You can use Adublisher RSS Feed to schedule posts on Instagram from your website, creating a unified model for your affiliate program.
[Here is how you can schedule RSS Feed on your Instagram]
Affiliate links can be pinned in your bio or your stories and posts, where the visitor will click and land on the product page of the affiliate partner and make a purchase.
Instagram Ads and Badges.
In-stream ads are a feature introduced by Meta for both Facebook and Instagram. This is the easiest way to make money because you only need to upload your video and enable monetization.
You can enable monetization for old posts as well. Instagram will post ads in your videos, and you will be paid 55% of the ad revenue, depending on the number of views you accumulate on your video.
(image source WeAreSocial)
To enable monetization to clear the following requirements.
- Must be compliant with Met’s Partner Monetization Policies.
- Must have more than 10,000 followers.
- Must have 30,000 views in the last two months on combined videos.
- Videos must be at least 3 minutes long.
Once you check out the “must haves” list, you can enable your monetization from “Settings” in your Instagram Business Account.
(image source StatusBrew)
Going live on Instagram is no longer just engaging with your followers, making conversation, and doing Q&As; followers can send gifts in the form of badges and show their appreciation.
(image source Instagram)
Instagram introduced the badges program after its success with Twitch and TickTock. People can buy badges and send them in a live stream as messages, and influencers get paid the full amount. Badges can be bought as,
- One heart for $0.99
- Two hearts for $1.99
- Three hearts for $4.99
Instagram Shop and shopping tags.
Instagram Shop offers surprisingly many selling options for a platform with no monetization three years ago. Businesses and entrepreneurs can create their shop with Instagram Shop feature and upload their catalogs and products just like a CMS.
If you have an e-commerce store on Shopify, BigCommerce, WordPress, or some other CMS platform, you can integrate your Insta shop with your website and go omnichannel.
Checkout with Instagram was a feature Meta introduced to select and buy products directly from your profile without any referral.
(image source Vamp)
A unique feature introduced by Instagram was shopping tags. Influencers and businesses will create a post and add product tags. If the viewer likes the post, they tap the product and then get directed to the shop by tapping the product to make a purchase.
In addition to sponsored posts, partnership ads, and shopping tags, you can add a swipe-up option in your stories and view shop in your reels. These tags are designed to make the shopping process easy and fast.
Initially, the swipe-up option required a certain number of followers, but now anyone can use this feature in an affiliate post or as a CTA for a product.
Schedule Posts with Adublisher.
Most social media marketing teams have multiple accounts for a single business as Instagram allows a total of 5 accounts for a person. It can be a real hustle to plan and post on several profiles at a time.
Adublisher has a solution for you, you can now draft, publish, and schedule posts with Adublisher on all of your Instagram feeds from a single control panel. The cherry on top is, you can schedule RSS Feed from your website to post manually or directly on your business account.
Here is a step-by-step guide for you to schedule posts with Adublisher on Instagram
Monetize your skills.
In compliance with the Content Management Policy of Meta, you can offer many products and services to your followers.
If you are good at writing, you can write ebooks and tutorials and offer them on Instagram. A yoga instructor can offer yoga sessions; chefs can sell your recipes, educational courses, pets, that’s right, you can sell your grumpy cat with Instagram.
A paid subscription is a great option to sell your services online. Your followers can buy the subscription like a Netflix account and access exclusive content.
To unlock paid subscription option, an influencer,
- Must have 10,000 followers
- Must be in the USA
Influencers in Canada and the UK can use the feature as an Invite-Only.
If you are a blogger and love to share your thoughts through your blogs and articles, Instagram can help you gain more readers. Share your new blogs and make videos about your activities and share them on your Instagram profile to increase engagement.
If you have a keen eye for statistics, you can post about your new research and give a few tips and tricks from your reports in posts with a link for the full report or research paper.
Sell your old.
Here is another option for you to make some extra bucks by selling your old stuff on Instagram. Post good pictures of your clothes, car, pets, cycle, etcetera with a detailed description and contact info.
Use popular hashtags to make your post visible to people outside your followers maximizing your chances of making a sale.
If you have a lot of followers, chances are you will find your excessive or old things more easily.
Conclusion.
Instagram is a global brand with many opportunities for people of all backgrounds, niches, and knowledge. You can earn more than dollars from the platform if you are passionate, confident, and talented.
Find the best fit of options for your skills, plan your moves, and execute them properly.
Best of luck!
