How to make money with Instagram

Since you read my guide on how Instagram works, you have understood that the famous photo social network owned by Facebook is just for you. You use it daily and, little by little, you are also accumulating your first followers. Very well, congratulations! I’m glad your profile is growing. What can I help you with this time? How do you say? Would you like to know how to make money with Instagram? Well, it’s not as easy as it might seem, but maybe I can give you some “tips” in this regard too.

If you are asking yourself this question, you may have heard of influencers who earn a lot through social networks (for example fashion bloggers who make money from posting their photos showing clothing from certain brands or travel bloggers who travel for free throughout world whenever possible) and would like to know how to do something similar.

Well yes, it’s all true. But as they say, “one in a thousand makes it”. Also know that only having a certain popularity will you be able to monetize your business in a meaningful way. However don’t worry. It doesn’t hurt to try and, in case your profile is not very popular, you will also find some indications – I hope useful – on how to acquire new followers. Having said that, I just have to wish you a good read and wish you a big good luck for everything!

Index

• How do you make money with Instagram
  • How to make money on Instagram with affiliations
  • How to make money on Instagram with sponsored collaborations
  • How to make money by selling on Instagram
  • How to make money with Instagram filters
• How to increase popularity on Instagram

How do you make money with Instagram

If you agree, let’s dive right into the article and see how you make money with Instagram, analyzing more closely the main sources of monetization that you can use on this famous photographic social network.

How to make money on Instagram with affiliations

The first thing you can do is make money on Instagram with affiliations. What is it about? I’ll explain it to you immediately. An affiliate program, such as that of Amazon, allows you to generate sponsored links (or referral links ) to be included in posts or stories to be published on the photographic social network.

If users open the sponsored link and purchase a good or service within a certain period of time (for example 24 hours), the company that belongs to the affiliate network recognizes the creator who promoted the link ( in this case to you) a percentage of earnings. In the case of Amazon, which I mentioned earlier, this is between 1 and 12%, depending on the category of the linked product, which is calculated on the price of the product purchased.

To generate sponsored links, generally you have to go to the affiliate program registration page, register for it and use the tools available to generate referral links. If you want a practical demonstration of how to do this with the Amazon affiliate program, take a look at the guide I linked to you, so you can get an idea of ​​what to do.

In case you decide to sign up for an affiliate program and take advantage of this opportunity to monetize your Instagram profile, do not give yourself the urge to put links at random, for the sole purpose of increasing the chances of earning. Rather, recommend products/services in a reasoned way, taking into account what can be really useful to your audience and preferring those you have had the opportunity to personally test (or that, in any case, have good reviews).

In fairness to the people who follow you, moreover, I also recommend that you clearly state when you insert a sponsored link, informing the people who follow you that by using the link in question they can support you by allowing you to receive a small profit, which in any case is not will affect the purchase price of the promoted product or service.

How to make money on Instagram with sponsored collaborations

Another way is to earn on Instagram with sponsored collaborations, an activity that is often attributable to the so-called influencers, or users who have a fairly important following and who exploit their popularity on the photographic social network (and beyond) to promote products or services drawing compensation from the companies. As you may have guessed, therefore, this earning opportunity (like all the others listed in this article) can be used if you have a very popular Instagram account: otherwise companies will hardly be interested in a collaboration.

If you have a very popular account, companies will often contact you of their own free will to offer you any collaborations. In any case, if you want to propose yourself (perhaps because you are not yet so well known as to attract them for sponsored collaborations), contact the brands of your interest by e-mail(on the websites of companies you should find all the contact details to succeed) and express in your message the desire to want to collaborate by posting content on Instagram, taking care to link your account and to anticipate how many followers you have and theirs characteristics (age, gender, geographical position, etc.). Also, don’t forget to provide all your contact details. If the company is interested in the collaboration, it will respond by proposing an agreement that you can then accept or reject.

Also know that there are social advertising network services, such as AdMingle, which allow you to more easily contact companies and brands with which to start sponsored collaborations: even those who do not have a particularly popular Instagram account can try, but the compensation in this case is unlikely to be of any magnitude.

One important thing that I invite you to do when you Sponsored collaborations is to report it to your followers, perhaps through the use of hashtags ad hoc, such as #adv, #advertise, #spor #sponsored.

For more information on how to collaborate on Instagram, I refer you to reading the in-depth study I have dedicated to the topic.

How to make money by selling on Instagram

Another possibility of earning is that given by the sale on Instagram. It is a form of direct income, which can lead to excellent results. Also in this case, what has already been said before applies: if you have an account with a rather important following, you can reach a larger audience and, therefore, the chances of success are much higher than those who, instead, have of an account with a few hundred followers.

In this regard, you will be pleased to know that the Shopping function is available on Instagram which, as the name suggests, allows those who have a company profile to publish photos of certain products and tag them with the list prices, also adding the direct link to online stores in which to complete the purchase.

For more information on how to sell on Instagram using the function just mentioned, you already know what to do: take a look at the tutorial I dedicated to the topic.

How to make money with Instagram filters

One last chance for monetization that I want to bring to your attention is to make money with Instagram filters. When you have a rather large following, in fact, you can try to sell the presets that apply to your content to your followers, who may actually be interested in buying them.

As for the filters to be applied in the stories, these can be created through the Spark AR Studio program, developed by Facebook (the company that heads Instagram) for Windows and macOS. This 3D and AR digital graphics and motion graphics program is a bit complex to use, but it’s free. I showed you how to use it in my guide on how to create filters for Instagram stories.

As for the creation of filters to be applied to Instagram posts, you can use Lightroom, the famous Adobe software for Windows and macOS, which I told you about in this other guide. Once the created preset is purchased by a user, they will receive a download link by email. By opening the file in question and copying it into Lightroom, you can apply it to your shots.

How to increase popularity on Instagram

As you will have noticed from reading the article, without a good following on Instagram it is difficult to achieve significant gains. For this reason you should try to increase popularity on Instagram if you need it. Below you will find some useful advice for this purpose.

• Regularly post quality and varied content – create content that will truly interest your users, whether it is beautiful to look at or otherwise fun. You have to “hit” whoever looks at your profile, so as to attract attention and your appeal. To do this, don’t just post, but also create stories, reels, videos for IGTV, and, from time to time, even do some live shows.
• Use the correct hashtags– this serves to index content making it more easily found by users who search by hashtag (which, as you may already know, are words or phrases preceded by the symbol #). To find the best hashtags, you can use services such as Top Hashtag and All Hashtag or use some free apps such as Top Tags ( Android / iOS ), taking care to select the most relevant ones for the published content (as well as the most popular ones) .
• Interact with the community– like the content that seems most interesting to you, comment on the posts trying to say something interesting and intelligent, avoid arguing and express your opinion always trying to be kind and polite. This will give your profile more visibility and some users may decide to follow it.
• Connect your Facebook account– this way you can reach a wider audience and, therefore, the chances of other people following you will be higher. More info here.
• Be constant– do not stop at the first setbacks: if the results are slow in coming (at least according to your point of view), keep working hard and you will see that your perseverance will be rewarded with some concrete results over the months and years.

For more information on how to become famous on Instagram,  how to grow on Instagram and how to increase your visibility on Instagram , I refer you to reading the guides I have dedicated to the topic, because I think they can be useful for you.