No matter whether you’re a brand or content creator, Instagram has a lot more to offer other than followers.
With over 1.3 billion active users worldwide, it has transformed from a photo-sharing app into a business platform.
If you’re smart and good at research, there’s a massive opportunity for you to earn some cash while doing what you love.
It doesn’t matter if you’ve 100k or 10k followers; we’ve got several proven ways to earn an income on Instagram.
Before we tell you more about it, let’s look at some of the tactics you can use today to join hands with the millions who are earning from Instagram.
7 Proven Tips to Make Money Through Instagram
#1. Getting Paid for Sponsored Posts
If you’re an influencer, you can start making money through Instagram instantly. You can promote all kinds of products and brands and make a fortune out of them.
You must be wondering, how?
To begin with, you can partner with small or big brands in your niche. Brands look for growing influencers to do sponsored posts to promote their product.
Here’s how Aakriti Rana, a famous lifestyle influencer, created a sponsored post for Tanishq.
Aakriti has close to 1 million followers on Instagram. You can imagine the boost in brand visibility of Tanishq and how much money she can make.
Having said that, you don’t need a million followers to start.
You can start collaborating with brands as a growing influencer.
Brands collaborate with creators having growing followers and high engagement. Thus, to get to this point, you need to have at least 5k followers on your channel.
You can reach out to them directly and crack a deal.
Don’t overwhelm your audience with sponsored posts. This creates a trust deficit among your audience as they think you’re only here for the money.
#2. Make Money via Affiliate Links
Similar to sponsored posts, you can join a brand’s affiliate program and earn solid money.
If people buy the products or services you’re promoting, you will get your cut on every purchase.
That’s how affiliate programs work.
Ankur Warikoo is an entrepreneur and online creator having more than 2 million followers on Instagram.
You can see the amazon affiliate link to his book in the bio. Every time someone buys his book, he gets his commission through the affiliate program.
However, it has its pros and cons.
Instagram doesn’t allow posting any links except near your bio. The only way to move ahead is through promo codes.
So, create alluring posts providing information about the link in your bio. Also, make sure to connect a landing page to the affiliate link to make the overall process hassle-free.
#3. Offer Tutorials
If you’re an expert in your niche, you can offer paid masterclasses to your followers and charge them for your services.
It’s prevalent among fitness and influencers in the beauty industry.
For example, Mrunal Panchal, who has nearly 4.5 million followers on Instagram, she’s one of the top beauty influencers in India.
Given the size of followers on her account, she can directly monetize her content and make a fortune out of that.
Whether you’re a travel vlogger or a coding geek doesn’t matter. You can monetize your skills and earn big here if you’ve got the expertise.
You can also provide free tutorials and ask them to tip you if they have the means.
#4. Sell Captions and Virtual Products
All businesses demand eye-catching captions while promoting their products and services. However, only some are capable of pulling that.
If you can write concise and catchy captions on Instagram, you can sell them to businesses and make good money out of them.
To get their attention, you can put some captions on your account. This will increase your chances of getting hired as a caption writer.
Moving on, you can also sell beautiful photos and other virtual products like
- Animations
- Videos
- Virtual paintings
The price of a high-quality shot can be anywhere between Rs 50,000 to 1 lakh.
This gives an excellent opportunity to those who can be creative in taking pictures. If you’re one of those, there’s a high chance you can get paid for that.
#5. Live Badges
Live badges are like tips your audience gives every time you broadcast live on Instagram.
It’s how your followers support you and your content.
To turn live badges on, go to the professional dashboard on your profile and enable Instagram monetization.
Once approved, you can click on setup badges, and you’re good to go.
When you go live with badges, viewers can buy them to support you and give extra recognition.
Every time a user buys a badge, you’ll see a heart next to their usernames. This way, you can know your total earnings.
These badges can cost from 0.99$ to 4.99$. So, if you’ve got a large number of followers on your channel, think about how much you can earn.
#6. Influencer Partnership
With the growing demand for influencer marketing, businesses rely on it to promote their goods and services. From fashion and fitness to education and lifestyle, influencer marketing is the next big thing.
Collaborating with mega or nano influencers who like your products can do wonders for your business.
Influencers can highlight your product to their audience, meaning more leads and, eventually, more sales.
Kritika Khurana has massive followers of 1.7 million on Instagram.
As one of the well-known fashion influencers on Instagram in India, big brands like Zara and upcoming brands like Pure Sense collaborated with her.
Having said that, it’s suggested that you choose someone from your niche who understands the pulse of the audience.
#7. Virtual Assistant to an Influencer
Big influencers out there need help with many things:
- Publishing content with proper captions regularly
- Running ads
- Posting Insta stories at an optimal time
- Resolving queries
If you could work behind the scenes and make their life easy, you can make good money out of it.
For that, you need to have exceptional Instagram marketing skills and a clear understanding of the platform.
Coming to how much you can make, the prices can depend on many factors:
- Type of work you do
- How many things can you manage?
- How big is the influencer?
You can charge hourly for your services.
Wrapping Up
From getting brand deals to selling products, mega Instagram influencers make close to Rs 4 lakh per post. There’s no upper limit to it.
You can make a large sum of money depending on your outreach and influence.
Now the question comes, which is the best one to pursue?
This depends on the number of followers on your Instagram channel and the kind of engagement you bring.
To sum up, all things come down to building a loyal audience. If you can create one, countless potential opportunities are waiting for you.
