How to make money on Instagram in 2020 | 9 ways to make money

More and more businesses are using Instagram as a way to promote their products and services, and rightly so – it’s a great platform for marketing your business. But that’s far from the only way you can use Instagram to make money.

If you’re looking for business ideas that don’t take a lot of money to get started, or you’re thinking about how to diversify your income streams, you’ll have almost certainly been considering what Instagram has to offer. Becoming an Instagram Influencer with all the opportunities to make sponsored posts that are out there is just one such option – let’s take a look at what else you can do with Instagram to make money!

Instagram

First launched in 2010, Instagram is a social media website that allows users to share photos and videos, with the ability to add captions of up to 2,200 characters. Like almost all social media channels, it’s free to sign up even for businesses, and billions of people – from teenagers to famous celebrities and even former President of the United States Barack Obama are now using it to share insights into their lives.

Since Instagram is so popular – with over a billion active users and third in popularity in the social media wars after to Facebook and YouTube, it’s hardly surprising that it has become a hotbed of activity for marketing activity and securing income too. It was only a matter of time before users started finding ways to monetise their content, and today, there are plenty of ways to make money on Instagram.

What do you need to get started making money on Instagram?

Before you can get started making money on Instagram, there’s a few things you’ll need to get sorted, apart from an understanding of how to post. Here are the basics that you’ll need to get sorted before you can start building your income, whichever approach you want to take advantage of.

An Instagram for Business account

This should go without saying really, but you’re not going to be able to make much money on Instagram if you don’t have an account! It’s pretty straightforward to set up a basic account – just download the app or head to Instagram.com to log in with Facebook, or click the link to sign up. There aren’t any requirements for setting up an Instagram for Business account – you don’t even need any followers – and it’s easy to switch a regular account over, once you’ve set that up.

If you’re going to be using Instagram for business purposes, then you’ll almost certainly benefit from converting your profile to a business account. It means you can add your contact details to your profile, such as your phone number, email address and your location (if that’s appropriate – it’s not a mandatory field). Since potential customers check social media to see if your business is one that they want to deal with, having those details available can help increase trust. Increased trust can help to encourage new customers to buy from you, or do business with you, so it is well worth making the switch.

To switch your Instagram account to a business account, follow these steps!

That’s it! Super easy and there’s no wait for your account to be approved. You’ll get other benefits such as the Instagram Insights that can help you to understand who your Instagram followers are, and how they are engaging with your business.

Make sure you have a great bio

Starting with the absolute basics: you’ll need to make your profile the best it possibly can be, with a great bio. The Instagram bio is one of the places that potential followers (who are also likely to be your potential customers!) go to find out whether an account is legitimate, and whether it is worth them following. It’s a prime spot to sell yourself to customers, and so you’ll need to make the most of it.

Instagram bios only have 150 characters, which isn’t a lot of space for you to sell yourself and your account – so make the most of each of those characters. Be sure to describe your business in a way that makes sense, and if there are keywords that you know customers will be searching for that apply to your brand, use them. That means that if your products are ethically sourced, or gluten free, or another type of specialist item, be sure to highlight this in your bio. If your business offers specialist services that can be hard to find – like classic car repairs, or you can teach a little-known language – that has to go on your bio!

Make sure you’ve added your contact details, and you’ll want to add a call to action. Invite your customers to find out more on your website, to tag you using your preferred hashtag, or to find you on other social media channels.

Consider using different fonts, symbols or emojis on your bio to help it look more visually appealing. We talked about this on our post here – so if you want to know more, head there! It’s pretty simple to do, and can really help your bio stand out. Of course, once you’ve got your wording complete, be sure to proofread it carefully – and get someone else to check it for any mistakes too.

While you’re writing your bio, be sure to add an appropriate photo, or the main logo for your business. Your customers will use this to assess the validity of your account, so make sure it’s a high quality image when you upload it. Nothing makes your account look more like a fake than a poor quality logo!

Start posting

Decide on a regular posting schedule. What time and day of the week that you post does matter, but as we mentioned on our article about the best time to post on social media, there isn’t a perfect time for every business to post. You’ll need to refer to your target customer research, and establish when your followers are most likely to be online by using the information in your Instagram Insights – then experiment to see when you get the most engagement.

You’re going to need quality images and videos that make sense to your business, and that use a consistent style. You might choose to add your company logo on each post, to enhance trust and to stop anyone reusing your image without your permission.

Does your visual make your message clear enough? Consider telling more about it in the caption. You may need to hire a writer or use services like Trust My Paper to have engaging and well-written content.

On each post, make sure you’re using hashtags, and tagging any other relevant accounts (if you’re doing affiliate marketing for another company, for example). This will help increase the visibility of your posts, help anyone searching for that particular hashtag and contribute to your posts being featured on the Explore tab.

Once you’ve set up your account and you’re posting quality content regularly, you’re on your way to making money on Instagram. You’ll need to be consistent with your posting though, so be sure to start out only posting as often as you’re going to be able to maintain. Of course, if you’re using a social media management tool, then you can schedule your posts ahead of time, which can help you manage your time much more effectively.

Once your account is all set up and you’re posting regularly, you can start implementing more in-depth strategies to grow your following.

Grow your following

If your business hasn’t got an account yet but you’re worried about the lack of followers, don’t worry. Once you’ve set up your Instagram for Business account, and you’re gradually building an authentic feed full of quality content, your followers will start to grow.

Of course, sometime growing your followers doesn’t happen quite as easily as you would like, so when you’re starting to build your following on Instagram, there’s a few strategies we can suggest that will help. We wrote a huge post on how to get more Instagram followers a while ago – so head over there for more useful strategies to grow your followers.

Understand the algorithm

There might not be that many people who truly DO understand the Instagram algorithm, but Instagram have recently issued (in January 2020) some guidance about the key factors that influence how well posts show up on feeds. Bear in mind though, the algorithm is constantly being updated, and so depending on when you’re reading this post, it’s a wise idea to check the most recent information by searching online.

Currently the six key factors that are said to influence the algorithm are interest, relationship, timeliness, frequency, following and usage.

You’ll need plenty of comments, likes, shares, reposts and views to help your posts feature highly on your follower’s feeds. Any type of comment length counts as engagement, and (contrary to popular belief) it doesn’t matter what time the engagement happens – even if a comment is left several days later, it counts. The algorithm tries to show people content from family or friends, or who you are most interested in – which means that engagement is really important.

There’s a few things you can do to help boost your posts on Instagram:

As we said, the algorithm is constantly changing, so it’s wise to double check the current guidance, even if you’re reading this post just a month after we publish it!

Ways to make money with Instagram

We’re going to take a look at several ways that you can make money on Instagram – from using Instagram to increase your business, to actively selling your own products on Instagram, to affiliate marketing, sponsored posts and more.

Use Instagram to promote your day job

If you’re offering a service, you are an artist selling your work in any format or you’re a writer selling your book, then you can use Instagram to make money. It might not be making money from Instagram directly, but as your following grows and more people become fans of your work, you’ll be able to start making sponsored posts and so on – essentially becoming an influencer as well as doing what you do best. And doing what you do best is exactly what brands want you to do for them too – you’d be working on their behalf, as well as your own.

Literally any and every business can benefit from a strong Instagram strategy, but particularly businesses that provide services. Hairdressers, landscape gardeners, cleaning services – they can all use Instagram to boost business and increase trust in potential new clients by showing before and after shots, and providing details of what they did. Linking to their website, and providing their contact details on each photo on their feed helps to build that trust further.

There are certain services that can use action buttons on their Instagram accounts to expand their business. Hair and beauty businesses can add a booking button to their profile, and connect with scheduling apps that salons use. Restaurant businesses that use online reservation services can add a reserve button to their Instagram profile, and businesses that have events currently being promoted through Eventbrite are able to add a Get Tickets button to their profile. To see the current list of Instagram Action Button Partners, click here.

Obviously, if you’re using Instagram this way, you’re not directly making money from your Instagram posts, but rather you’re boosting your income by using Instagram to promote your normal activities. But since costs can be incredibly low, Instagram is a good way to reach your customers.

Become an Instagram expert, or provide social media marketing services

If you’re a social media expert, and have used Instagram for your work then you might offer your expertise to small businesses – perhaps you might even offer your support to Avasam sellers and suppliers! If you’re able to manage social media for other people and their businesses then you can offer your services on freelance websites such as Peopleperhour, Fiverr, Upwork and Freelancer. Don’t forget, you might receive offers from businesses internationally, so be prepared to be incredibly flexible.

When you’ve tackled a number of jobs and your portfolio of projects is looking good, you’ll have more control over the fees you can command. Once you’re further down the line and you’ve grown your profits, you’ll want to create your website to increase trust and to help you to pitch to companies.

It’s unlikely that you’ll find companies that want to work with you if Instagram is the only social media platform that you’re able to help them with – so make sure you’ve got strong skills for other platforms, especially the newer platforms like TikTok. If you can support social media posting in other countries such as QQ (for China and Eastern Asia) then you’re likely to be able to command higher fees.

Using Instagram to find freelance clients

If you’re lucky enough to be able to do your work freelance, then Instagram can definitely help you increase your work further. Whether you’re able to provide technical services, do design work, writing, translation or business services by the hour, you can promote your services on Instagram.

You’ll need to be authentic, and to illustrate your expertise in your field. That means in addition to having a great feed, your business will benefit from you adding to your Instagram Story and going live. The more information you can show your potential clients ahead of them contacting you, the more certain they will be that they want to work with you, and the less time you’ll have wasted. To see examples of how other freelancers are using Instagram to promote their work, search for the hashtag #freelancer.

Sell digital products

For photographers and artists with incredible images to buy, Instagram is an obvious way to exhibit your work to the public. If you’re selling your work, either as bespoke prints that you’re creating yourself or using a Print on Demand service, you’ll almost certainly want to use Instagram to promote your work.

But images aren’t the only digital product that you might use Instagram to promote. If you’ve written a book, and you’re in the process of marketing it, you might use Instagram to raise awareness and connect with your readers. Your images for Instagram don’t have to be photos – you might use an Instagram template, or your own design work to share excerpts from your book.

There are plenty of other digital products that you might decide to sell and use Instagram to promote. Sewing patterns instructions for building furniture and recipes all present possibilities for you to sell in downloadable, self-print formats. If you’ve designed a course to teach people how to do something, or to help themselves with something, Instagram is a great place to promote your products and help you increase your sales.

Musicians and videographers can use the power of Instagram to promote their work too. Where work is available to stream or download on a platform such as Spotify, Amazon Music or YouTube – or of course, on their website – then be sure to link on each post. You might add small clips of you performing your work, behind the scenes footage or add information about upcoming performances to help you reach more of your audience.

If you’re selling digital products, you’ll need to remember to add the link where people can buy your work to images in your feed, or to your bio. If you add the link to your bio, remember to add ‘link in bio’ to your captions, so that any new followers know where to find it.

Promote products from your online store on your Instagram feed

Whether you’re DropShipping or you keep your own stock, Instagram is a must-do for most online sellers. Since the focus of the Instagram feed is mainly visual, it’s a great way to show your products off to their best. Once you’ve found the right DropShipping platform (or you’ve found your suppliers if you’re keeping your own stock) and established which marketplaces you’re going to be selling on, it’s all about the promotion! Instagram offers you a world of opportunity to promote your products.

Shopping in Instagram

An Instagram shop allows you to add your inventory from your store to your Instagram profile. Once you’ve got a Shop set up, you’ll be able to promote your items to your followers on your posts, in your Stories and on the Shop tab on your profile.

You’ll also be able to tag your products on your posts in the same way that you tag another Instagram account. When you tag a product, a small shopping bag icon will appear on the bottom left hand corner of the post. When a follower taps the photo, they’ll see your current prices of the products in the photo, and they’ll also be able to click through to see the product page for that item.

Each Instagram Shop page has all the information a potential customer will want to know about a product before they decide whether to buy the item. The product name and description, images, the price of the product and a link to your website will all be on the Instagram Shop page – as well as any related products that might be appropriate to add.

Reasons to add an Instagram Shop

If you’re already selling successfully online, why would you bother with an Instagram Shop? Well, chances are, if you’re selling online, you’re probably promoting your products on Instagram already. If you’ve built a decent number of followers, adding an Instagram Shop simply makes it much easier for your customers to buy from you without needing to leave their feed. They’ll be able to see the products you’re promoting, and go directly to your product page with just one tap – no need to click the link in your bio. Since (as we discuss in the affiliate marketing section) there are precious few opportunities to add clickable links to your Instagram posts, adding Instagram Shop makes it so much easier for customers to get to your products.

With an Instagram Shop, you’ll be able to add product promotions to your posts and Stories in a much more natural fashion, without having to keep telling your followers ‘link in bio’ or adding other calls to action. Not only that, when you tag an item in one of your posts, that post gets added to Instagram’s Shopping Explore tab, meaning that there are literally millions of users who might stumble on your product. And when Instagram users are browsing the Explore tab, they’re much more likely to buy – which is, of course, exactly what you want them to do.

All in all, Instagram Shops are an easy, and yet incredibly powerful addition to your marketing strategy, and you’ll almost certainly boost your sales by using it.

Setting up Instagram Shopping

Setting up your Instagram account to include Instagram Shopping is relatively easy, but there’s a few things that you’ll need to know before you get started.

If you fulfil the criteria, you can submit your account for review by going to your Instagram profile’s settings, then Business and Instagram Shopping. Being approved to have Shopping added to your profile usually takes just a few days, after which you’ll be free to start tagging, and selling your products via Instagram.

Can I sell Avasam products on Instagram?

Absolutely! If you’re selling products from Avasam on your Shopify store, you’ll be able to sell them on Instagram too. Since Avasam has an integration that connects you to Shopify, all you’ll need to do is set up Instagram Shopping and then you’re ready to go. If you haven’t signed up for your free Avasam account yet, what are you waiting for? It’s free to sign up, there are no upfront costs and it’s really easy to get started. Sign up here to set your account up.

Affiliate marketing

You’ve probably heard of affiliate marketing on websites, blogs and so on, and you can also use your Instagram account for promoting affiliate products. Affiliate marketing essentially means that you’ll promote a product for a company, and then when someone clicks through and makes a purchase from your link, you receive a commission (or other recompense as agreed). It’s a model of earning that is used most frequently by bloggers – they mention affiliate products in their articles which then earns them commission if their readers click through and buy the item.

As you might expect, affiliate marketing quickly expanded to social media – especially Facebook and Instagram. It’s a great way for influencers to promote products without needing to handle the sales themselves – like DropShipping, but it’s more about creating great adverts, with less focus on selling! Of course, the profits on each sale might be smaller with affiliate marketing. That means that affiliate marketers need to ensure they’re reaching a lot of potential customers in order to get more click throughs and to make a decent living.

With that thought in mind, you’ll need to create a useful, and authentic feed that is relevant for your followers if you want to make money on Instagram by affiliate marketing. Customers know that business accounts are making money by advertising products on Instagram, but your affiliate posts will need to be discreet. You’ll be aiming to create content that is entertaining, or otherwise useful for your followers. Although there isn’t a limit on the number of affiliate marketing programmes you can sign up for, if you’re producing content that is blatantly marketing, rather than including posts that have other value, customers will simply unfollow you.

To get started with affiliate marketing, you’ll need to establish the type of business you want to promote products for. Promoting products you’re interested in means you’re going to be much more enthusiastic, and you’ll have built your followers accordingly, which means they are more likely to be engaged, and click through and buy. Clearly, if your audience are mainly male fitness fanatics, they’re less likely to be interested in hair and makeup products that are particularly feminine, so you’ll be wasting your time. Authenticity, and illustrating real-life usefulness is the key to your success when you’re affiliate marketing on Instagram.

To get in touch with businesses that want you to market their products even more easily, there are affiliate marketplaces that may be useful. It’s a fast, easy way to get started, and they can be quite useful. These aren’t the only marketplaces, but here are a few options to get you started:

You might find options by searching for niche affiliate programmes, or you might decide to use a marketplace to find your campaigns. You might, in some circumstances, reach out to businesses yourself to pitch an affiliate arrangement. You might work with a combination of these options. As we’ve already mentioned, there are no limits on the number of affiliate schemes you can run, but you’ll need to use caution to avoid exposing your followers to too many adverts.

How to promote affiliate products on Instagram

When it comes to sharing any kind of links on Instagram, you’ll quickly discover the major downside of Instagram is that are not that many opportunities to post organic links. Here are a few ways you can share your affiliate marketing links:

In your bio: If you’ve got a particularly high performing product, share the link on your bio. Make it eye-catching, and add a call to action to encourage people to click the link. It’s a good idea to change the link in your bio regularly, and use different emojis to draw attention to it.

Use text on images: Although it isn’t quite as quick for customers as being able to click through, you can add affiliate links to images to encourage customers to purchase the products. If you’ve got a really long link though, that won’t look great, so use a URL shortener to make it look better.

Use coupon codes: If your affiliate programme knows you’re marketing on Instagram then they may provide you with a coupon code that you can add to your images. Again, you’ll need to be creative with your design so that your images look great.

Captions: Each image you post on your feed gives you an opportunity to write up to 2,200 characters. That means each post on your feed is another opportunity to add an affiliate link or coupon, with a call to action to encourage your followers to clock through and make a purchase.

Pay to promote a post: Obviously, paying to promote a post on Instagram is going to cut into your potential profits. But by doing so, you can add a link to your post – which means your followers will be able to click straight through to the affiliate product page. That means more chance of more followers completing a purchase, and more chance of a bigger profit for you.

Boost your affiliate posts on Instagram

There are plenty of ways that you can ensure your affiliate posts really stand out, thereby increasing your income as your followers click through and make purchases. Here’s a few of the best strategies that will help encourage your followers to engage:

Make sure your images are attractive. Simply using an image from the product’s listing won’t cut it, because your followers will lose interest – they will know what you’ve done, and it’s boring to look at standard catalogue shots! So find ways to make the product attractive – either by showcasing what the product can do, what it looks like when it is being worn, or all the different functions it has. You’re aiming to inspire your followers, or to evoke just the right amount of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out!) so that they will want to click through and make the purchase.

Use different post formats. You can post single images, a carousel of images, or post videos – the more interesting you can make your posts, the more your followers will be inclined to continue to follow you. If your Instagram posts are particularly engaging, they’ll be more likely to comment on and like your posts, which can add up to better opportunities to make money on Instagram.

Use Instagram live video and Story videos. Keeping your connection with your followers is important for your success. They need to like you – so be sure to hop on Instagram Live, or on your Story regularly to keep your followers engaged.

Forget the sales talk. As we’ve already mentioned, if every single post is a blatant sales pitch, your followers are going to get fed up and unfollow you – really, does anybody truly enjoy advertising? So, although advertising is what you’re going to be doing, you’ll need to keep it discreet. Focus on creating great content, about products you actually believe in, and you’re more likely to be successful.

Use hashtags. We’ve talked about using Instagram hashtags before on the blog – and for good reason. Hashtags help potential customers find you, so don’t neglect to use them on each post.

Be an influencer or brand ambassador

You might only need 1000 followers to be taken seriously as influencer, but there are plenty of steps you’ll need to carry out before you become super-successful. There are three main types of Instagram influencer:

Micro-influencers – these are accounts with less than 10,000 followers. Generally, accounts with this many followers will be able to attract around $88 per post.

Middle-tier influencers – these accounts have between 10,000 and 100,000 followers, and they can expect to earn an average $200 per post.

Top-tier influencers – this is the group almost all influencers will aspire to get to – the accounts with between 100,000 and a million followers. Each post a top-tier influencer makes for a company can make over $670 – but there are huge variations in this tier.

Accounts with over a million followers are likely to receive significantly more for each posts – we’re talking thousands for each post, but generally these are negotiated individually.

There are influencer sponsored post money calculators available that can help you determine the amounts it is possible you might earn – if you think there’s a chance for you to be able to earn already, head to one of those and put your handle in to find out more.

Choose a niche

Businesses want to work with influencers that have followers that are likely to be in their target customer XXX. By choosing a specific niche – like fashion, fitness, travel or even a specific type of video game – businesses will be more inclined to work with you. By creating the right sort of content for your niche, you’ll be able to gain more organic followers – people that are genuinely interested in what you’re posting, and who become an engaged community that will leave comments and like your posts. Those organic followers are really important – it only takes five minutes to check the sort of engagement your posts have got, and it’s obvious if you’ve paid for followers. Those paid-for followers aren’t worth businesses paying for, so don’t be tempted to use that as a tactic. With the right sort of content, and the followers that go with it, more businesses will want to work with you, which in turn will give you more opportunities to create the sort of content that your followers really want to see.

Choose an influencer marketplace

Some influencers who are particularly successful will be approached by businesses, and they’ll be able to create their own deals in terms of recompense. Some influencers approach businesses, and some work with influencer marketplaces.

These marketplaces are simply systems that allows for brands and influencers to connect (a bit like how Avasam connects sellers and suppliers!) Once you’re registered, and you’ve added your information and statistics such as your niche, follower numbers, post engagement and so on, brands will be able to find you.

Sponsored posts

With the right audience, sponsored posts on Instagram can net influencers over $1 million each. However, that is the exception rather than the norm – and Kylie Jenner and the Kardashian girls each have over 100 million followers. Kylie Jenner currently holds the third most liked photo on Instagram – the first photo of her daughter, which has had over 18.5 million likes. For that kind of reach and engagement, we can understand why companies are happy to pay megabucks – it’s the kind of exposure most marketing professionals dream of.

Most Instagram users don’t have anywhere near that many followers, but it is possible to make money from sponsored posts. If you’ve got over a 100,000 followers, you can start building income from sponsored posts pretty rapidly – somewhere in the region of £500 to £700 per sponsored post. If your following is over half a million, you can be looking at £1500 – £2500 per post. Sounds like a great reason to start building your following, doesn’t it?

Sponsored posts on your Instagram feed

If you decide to use the influencer marketplace, working with businesses and creating sponsored content is pretty straightforward. However, only featuring sponsored content on your feed is going to decrease your following pretty quickly – just like with affiliate posts people aren’t likely to stay engaged if your feed is a constant stream of sponsored posts. Not only that, some brands may stipulate that you can only work with them when you’re running a campaign with them.

To be authentic, you’ll want to work with brands, and promote products that are relevant to your audience. If you’re trying to push something for the sake of earning a paycheque, followers will figure out that you’re not enthusiastic about your campaign and it won’t be as successful.

While your followers might understand and accept that you’re earning money from your sponsored posts, you still need to be transparent it when you’re posting paid-for content. Use hashtags to show that you’re working with a brand – a simple #sponsored or #ad is all you need.

How much money can you make on Instagram?

When you’re starting to make money on Instagram, it can be a slow process. But with a bit of time, consistency and some effort, it is possible to grow your Instagram income from being a side hustle to a full-time gig. You’ll need to establish yourself as an opinion leader, or an expert in your field to ensure that companies will want to engage with you.

Generally, the rate that you’ll be looking at for influencer marketing is based on your engagement rate. You’ll likely be looking at around $10 per 1,000 followers, but that can be vastly different depending on what individual companies are prepared to pay.