Note that engaged followers do not mean followers. To get 1,000 engaged followers, you might need to accumulate a total following of 100,000 or more, based on average engagement rates across social media.
Essentially, there are four ways to make money on Instagram:
- Sponsored posts
- Affiliate income
- Social commerce
With all three of these tactics, your earnings potential is directly proportionate to the size of your following and the degree to which they engage with your content.
Sponsored Posts
If you already have an established following that includes people who regularly favorite your posts and comment on them, you can seek out companies and brands looking to sponsor posts.
These businesses offer cash for posting about their products. Most of the time this will involve them sending you a product to include in a photo that you upload to Instagram and write a recommendation that tagging the company or brand’s Instagram profile.
The more engaged followers you have, the greater the likelihood that sponsors will approach you with offers. If your Instagram is large enough for you to be considered an influencer, you can set your own prices.
A GroupHigh survey of 5,000 influencers found that 42% of them charged $200 to $400 per post, and 69% of those surveyed said that being transparent about the sponsorship had no effect upon how followers perceived the influencer in question’s recommendation
If you have a more modest following, you might have to seek out the sponsors yourself. A very convenient way to do this is to check out influencer marketplaces online like:
Affiliate Links
A variation on sponsored posts lets you earn commissions by signing up for affiliate programs and linking to them throughout your profile. Many people put a single affiliate link in their bio while others include URLs in the captions of photos of relevant photos. Sometimes the commissions are free products instead of cash.
Social Commerce
If you want to earn more than a commission from products that sell through Instagram, start selling directly. The most popular type of direct sales in the app are by professional photographers. Selling on Instagram can produce stronger results when complemented by additional online channels that cross-link to one another. Post photos with well-worded captions including ample hashtags and links in the bio lead to other social network profiles and ideally a website as well.
How Much Can You Earn on Instagram?
While you might not be able to turn your Instagram profile into a full-time job, you can make your presence on the social network a source of additional funds or even a way to score free products. The better your photography skills are and the more you work on generating engagement, the more money you stand to make on the social network.
Jackie Cohen
Jackie Cohen is an award winning financial journalist turned turned financial advisor obsessed with climate change risk, data and business. Jackie holds a B.A. Degree from Macalester College and an M.A. in English from Claremont Graduate University.
These are great tips! I’ve actually been working on building my following and have been able to gain about 300 followers in the past three months or so on Instagram. It seems like a slow growth but if I’m eventually going to make a bit of cash from it, it is totally worth it!
Thanks for the tips! I have a pretty decent Insta following, and this makes me want to look into some money-generating opportunities.