A few days back my brother(Fazal) and I were eating nachos, and I was scheduling content for one of my Instagram (Brand account). Fazal asked me a casual question he said and I quote “can someone make money with Instagram?” obviously he knows that we manage one account for one of our Shopify stores. But he wanted if we can make without a store or a website.
I explained to him with examples. But as I have been asked this question multiple time on multiple occasions hence, I thought to write a blog post describing how we can make money on Instagram.
Instagram is a disruptive e-commerce force, unlike some other social media networks. While it was first intended for photo sharing, it’s now a business platform, which can be used by anyone, including drop shipping, e-commerce and business owners(like Me).
Can You Make Money on Instagram?
Yes, you can make money on Instagram.
You can sell services and products, do shoutout, Promote affiliate product, etc.
How Powerful is Instagram?
The numbers behind Instagram are staggering, and the platform is catching up with Facebook’s growth. While Facebook has 2.07 billion monthly active users, Instagram’s growth has reached 800 million users over eight years in 2017 since its launch in 2010.
For Motivation purposes, the following figures are worthy of consideration for people who want to make money with Instagram:
1) 800 million users are active every month. That’s almost three times the US population.
2) 500 million users are active every day. That’s almost double the US population.
3) In 2017, 70.7 percent of US businesses use Instagram. With 30 million businesses (both large and small) in the USA, this number translates to 21 million US businesses using Instagram.
https://sproutsocial.com/insights/instagram-stats/
4) 80 percent of Instagram users follow at least one business account.
5) There are 2 million Instagram advertisers every month.
6) Time spent on Instagram increases by 80 percent every year. : https://business.instagram.com/blog/welcoming-two-million-advertisers/
7) In 2016, 48 percent of US brands used Instagram to promote their businesses. In 2017, that number reached 71 percent. In 2018, it’s expected to reach 82 percent.
8) 300 million Instagram accounts use Instagram Stories every day.
9) Instagram users by age:
18 to 29 years old: 59 percent
30 to 49 years old: 33 percent
50 to 64 years old: 18 percent
64+ years old: 8 percent
https://www.instasurge.org/instagram-statistics/
10) Instagram users by gender:
Female: 38 percent
Male: 26 percent
Other: 36 percent
https://www.instasurge.org/instagram-statistics/
Numbers above are impressive are you interested to know ways to make money with Instagram now?
I bet you do.
Let’s talk about methods you can use to make money with Instagram.
1) Work With Brands on Sponsored Posts
An influencer is anyone who’s built themselves an online reputation by doing and sharing awesome things online. To their audiences, influencers are tastemakers, trendsetters and trusted experts whose opinions about certain subjects are respected.
You can become influencer by focusing on one or a specific type of niche and sharing images on that niche. When you reached a good number of followers, Some brands can contact you upfront, or you can also outreach them using (tools or sites).
2) Become an Affiliate
An affiliate is a person who the commission on each sale or lead. Affiliate marketing uses a trackable link or specific coupon code to track that click converted to sales.
Since Instagram doesn’t yet allow links anywhere outside of your bio, you can only focus on one product at a time if you choose to rely on affiliate links, making promo codes a better option for Instagram since you can incorporate them into your posts.
3) Open Your Online Store (Dropshipping)
By now it might sound like the only way for an Instagrammer to make money is to sell out and work with other brands.
But that’s not the whole truth, creators of all kinds are also in an excellent position to “sell out” with their products: physical goods, services, or digital items that can be an extension of their brand, building a business with an audience at its center.
4) Sell Your Photos Online or On Things
Someone can become famous writing 160 words joke on Twitter or sharing snaps on Snapchat. But Instagram is photo and clips sharing platform(especially photos). If you are a good photographer or have a good camera, You can click some good pictures and sell them on multiple image selling platforms.
5) Do Shoutout
Some starter or brands want to get their followers boosted up with niche related followers and shoutout is an easy peasy method for that. One with a massive following on Instagram post an image or video and in description give someone else’s Instagram username with credit (or not) to follow. This way another guy also get pumped with following as he put in front of likeminded followers.
