Instagram reported 1 Billion active users per month according to a report by Statistica published in November 2021. With such a huge crowd, Instagram becomes a great social media platform for brands, celebrities, influencers, and the general public.
Anyone, from any region can showcase his ideas, lifestyle, products, and services making Instagram an open opportunity to make a great living. While it is promising, there are many factors to consider to start earning.
Below we have mentioned the earning streams and factors that determine your income on Instagram.
How to Earn Money on Instagram?
Below are 4 ways you can make money on instagram:
1. Find sponsorships and endorse products
You must have seen influencers talking about products and things to purchase for specific purposes. When they are paid to market certain products those are called sponsorships. Brands are always looking for people that are trusted and whose opinion is considered valuable by an audience.
By reaching out to Instagrammers, they get to promote their products and brands to people. While there are many brands out there, you should be picky about product endorsements to make sure you don’t lose credibility.
2. Become an entrepreneur and sell from your shop
Whether you have a shop on Instagram or outside of the platform, you can market your brand and earn. Instagram provides great opportunities for people to set up their store, in beautiful and appealing ways without much hassle.
You can sell products to people or services directly from the platform. Set prices, add payment methods and you are done!
If you just want to spread the word, you can do that too. Use hashtags, add call-to-actions and use professional photos to drive sales and traffic.
3. Teach and become an influencer
An influencer is quite a common name these days. From fashion to fitness and from art, to science, there are influencers for every field to teach and guide you.
Influencers are popular people who are known for their expertise and influence in an area. By teaching certain skills they increase their fan base and earn. After you have a reasonable fan following, you can create courses, sell them and make money.
4. Earn through your content
Now, this seems a bit tricky, but it works well. If you display ads like IGTV ads, on your posts, you can get 55% of the revenue according to the chief operating officer (COO) of Instagram, Justin Osofsky.
You can also use live badges that your viewers pay for during live streams to show their support. The badges come in three options: one costs $0.99, two costs $1.99, and 3 costs $4.99.
Factors that Affect Your Income on Instagram?
Below are the 3 factors that you need to consider if you want to make money with your Instagram account:
1. Niche of influence
When you are just starting out, you need to have a clear mindset of what area you will work in. While certain niches are more popular, doing what is close to your heart and what you are talented at can be a great idea.
Popular niches include fashion, lifestyle, traveling, music, etc. So if you want to get more sponsors, picking a niche that is relevant to them is important. Brands related to fashion won’t sponsor you if you make content on science, therefore taking your time to select the right niche is very important.
2. Followers and audience size
Now coming to your followers, you must have a wide pool of followers, so you reach more people, get more engagement, and reach higher brand awareness. Brands usually pay influencers so they can endorse their products.
By choosing influencers, brands get a wide audience related to their niche. Therefore they get a chance of reaching more people and more people get to know, trust and buy their products.
Based on the number of followers we have the following categories of influencers:
- Nano influencers: these influencers have a small fan base with 10,000 or fewer followers
- Micro: 10,000 to 100,000
- Macro: 100,000 to 100,0000
- Mega: 100,0000 or more
Celebrities usually are at the top of the influencer categories as they have the most followers and engagement for their posts.
While having more followers is a great thing it’s just a part of the equation so other factors should not be underestimated.
3. Engagement
While a high number of followers is something to be proud of, not keeping them engaged can be damaging to your account. Your followers should resonate with your posts. They should share, like, and comment.
If they don’t, that means your content isn’t interesting to them and so they won’t buy your endorsed products or products in your store, or a course that you are selling. That would affect your sponsorships and your brand revenue. Thus keeping engagement high is key to earning well on Instagram.
So How Many Followers Do You Need to Make Money on Instagram? The bottom Line!
According to TrendHero, to earn through sponsored posts you should have at least 5000 followers. Many brands pay $25-$50 per post so you can earn a lot if you have a large fan base that believes in you.
According to Neil Patel, even if you have 1000 followers on Instagram, there are still ways to make money, and the potential is still there.
It comes down to how well you engage them. If your followers are engaged and respond well to your posts, you can earn through multiple streams mentioned above. And by growing over time, you will see positive results that lead to significant earnings.
Aim at gaining a few thousand followers as that is when you will start to see small outcomes to your efforts.
According to influence.co Instagrammers with over 1Million followers can make more than $1000 a month. Therefore with hard work and dedication, you can get more rewards making Instagram a great source to earn, learn and continuously grow!
