Instagram. It’s been around for ten years now, and ten years later, it’s still one of the most popular social media platforms, if not the most popular one. With over a billion active monthly users, it’s definitely something to be reckoned with. But instead of simply being a social media platform, Instagram actually offers a lot of opportunities for content creators and business owners who want to make extra cash.
In this article, we’ll discuss the various ways you can make money from Instagram. Whether you have a business account or a personal account, you can take advantage of the platform to generate some extra cash for your business.
1. Follow the Right Accounts
To be able to monetize Instagram, you must follow a few simple steps. The first step is to simply follow the right accounts. You can find tons of Instagram experts who will give you advice on how to grow your account and how to monetize it. Just keep in mind that they’re not all created equal. Some may offer very good advice, but some may be very pushy, wanting to sell you expensive-looking products or offering very low-quality content that looks more like spam than genuine marketing.
To avoid giving your account credibility, only follow accounts that are completely trustworthy. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself in a lot of trouble down the line. When choosing your following accounts, make sure that they’re all relevant to your niche or audience. If you’re a fashion Instagrammer, for example, you should follow influencers in your niche who have a decent amount of followers. This way, when people see your Instagram feed, they’ll see items that they are interested in, and you’ll naturally translate this to cash.
2. Create great content
Instagram doesn’t allow users to monetize their content. This is why you’ll see so many accounts with lots of Instagram followers but very little to show for it. When choosing your Instagram account’s content, always focus on creating value for your audience. People are more likely to click on adverts, buy products, or invite others to a webinar if they feel that the content is worth their time or investment. As a general rule of thumb, the more informative or entertaining your content is, the more likely people will feel the need to share it or engage with it. Use your Instagram account to create great content, and over time, you’ll be able to monetize it.
3. Use the Right Adverts
Instagram doesn’t offer any free adverts, which is one of the main reasons why people don’t make much money from Instagram. However, you can purchase small quantities of ads through a tool called Growthoid. The good thing about Growthoid is that you don’t need to have a large following to get started. You can actually get started generating revenue immediately through Sponsored Posts. These are ads that appear at the top of your Instagram feed, next to your profile picture. They’re usually sponsored by a brand or business seeking to advertise their products or services. There’s also the option to have your own ads appear at the top of your feed. If you have a large enough audience, this can be a good source of revenue, as long as you target the right audience and set up the adverts correctly. Just make sure that you don’t overuse Sponsored Posts or your own ads to the point that it becomes noticeable and starts to damage your account’s credibility. Otherwise, people might think that you’re just trying to rip them off or that your account is somehow affiliated with the company or brand paying for the ad.
4. Use the Right Pricing
Instagram’s pricing plans are fairly simple; you can choose between Gold, which costs $499 per month, or Pro, which costs $20 per month. The choice is up to you. As a general rule of thumb, go with Gold if you’re looking for short-term monetary gain, and Pro if you’re looking for long-term growth. When choosing your pricing tier, keep in mind that you’ll have to purchase extra features to generate the same amount of revenue as you would with the free version. You can’t just switch on a dime from free to pro. So, if you want to truly maximize your monetization potential, invest in Gold initially, and then consider upgrading later on when you feel like you have enough revenue.
Instagram’s pricing plans are quite transparent. You simply choose the amount of money you’re willing to spend, and they’ll automatically bill you every month. This means you’ll never have to worry about your Instagram account’s billing again.
5. Monetize Through Affiliate Marketing
This is one of the most popular ways of monetizing an Instagram account, and for good reason. It’s extremely easy to do, and it offers excellent potential for earning quick cash. When someone buys a product or service through an affiliate link on your Instagram account, you’ll earn a small commission. You don’t need to have a large following to get started, and you don’t need to have any experience doing this to get started. Simply take the following steps to get started with affiliate marketing on Instagram:
- Find a product or service that you think people will value
- Post a picture of the product or service with your affiliate link in the caption.
- Make sure that your link is appropriately placed in the body of the content. Ideally, you want your link to be at the beginning of the description so that it gets the most attention.
- Make sure that your link doesn’t look like a traditional ad. People hate ads, especially on social media, and if your link looks like an ad, they’ll think that you’re just trying to push products. This is why it’s best to use a unique handcrafted link that doesn’t look like an ad.
- When choosing your affiliate products, be sure to look for ones that are reputable and that you feel comfortable promoting.
Once you’ve done those four things, it’s time to start generating some revenue. While it can take time to find products that are profitable, affiliate marketing on Instagram is a great way to make money, and it doesn’t require a lot of effort. Not to mention the fact that you’re starting from a place of authority, as you have a large audience already, so it’s easier for you to promote products that you’ve already engaged with (and hopefully liked) on the platform. This kind of strategy can help you generate hundreds of dollars a month in fairly quick time, as long as you have a sizable audience.
6. Use Your Instagram to grow your Audience
Instagram is a place where people come to discover awesome things. If you want to generate the most money, you need to make your Instagram account work for you. To do this, you need to do the following:
- Post regularly
- Use good quality content
- Interact with your audience
- Use keywords in your content
- Build a community around your account
- Use hashtags
- Follow other accounts with similar audiences to yours
To begin to understand how powerful this can be, we need to go back to the beginning. When you first open an Instagram account, you’ll see a small square at the top, with a profile picture and some text that says, “Welcome to Instagram!” At the time, you may not have known what it was or how it functioned, but as you’ve probably guessed, this is the “IG” square. This is where you post to have your content seen by your audience.
After you’ve posted regularly and built up a small audience, it’s time to take advantage of Instagram’s features. To do this, you need to upgrade to Pro. From here, you can access more features and gain more functionality. You can choose between the different types of profile pictures, add videos, change your cover photo, and create a podcast.
These are just a few of Instagram’s main features; there are a whole lot more. If you think that this is something that will help you generate income, then you can use these resources to help you get started: