Ideas for making money with instagram
Instagram is the social network dedicated to photography. Launched in 2010, it quickly convinced several hundred million users - and was quickly bought by the Facebook giant.
But Instagram, it is mostly influencers who see it as a way to have a direct link with their community. And if this link allows them to promote their content (blog posts, youtube videos, ...), it's also a great way for them to make money.
And even if some startups, who have tried to facilitate monetization on Instagram, have failed. I think for example InstaPix, which was supposed to allow the influencers to propose to their fans to receive some of their photos to them.
While you already have an account, or you are looking to get started to take advantage of the power of this social network, here are 4 ways to earn money with Instagram.
1. Making Money On Instagram With Affiliation
Affiliation is the easiest way to monetize an audience.
The principle is extremely simple: a brand will pay you to promote one of its products, or its offer of services. And rather than giving you a fixed sum against a post, this company will pay you according to the results caused by your post.
You have often seen this in blogs in which products are highlighted. Whenever you click on an affiliate link, and you order a product, the blogger will receive a portion of the amount you will have spent.
You could thus earn money as soon as someone will order a product or service from your affiliate link.
For example, it's interesting for fashion and beauty influencers, who can invite their community to buy the products they wear on their photos!
But everything is not so easy ... Instagram wants to prevent users from leaving the platform - which is why the platform prevents influencers from inserting a clickable link into a post. So, to promote an offer, you will have to copy a link in your "bio" Instagram - and tell your subscribers that they can access it by going on it.
My advice: use a service like bitly.com. It will allow you to shorten the address of the link, but also to have a lot of data (evolution of the clicks, provenance of the visits, ...). But you can also make use of a service like LikeToKnow.it. It will be enough for the people registered on this service to like one of your promotional photos, to instantly receive an e-mail containing links related to the products appearing in this shot.
Be aware that Internet users are often seduced by these new sales methods - judged to be less aggressive. Indeed, instagrammers who promote products strive to bring value - with a nice photo, which highlights relevant articles. As a result, people interested in purchasing these products will be able to find them easily, thanks to the instagram they follow.
But you can also promote services! If your content is oriented "travel", you will be able to propose to your followers to reserve a hotel room or a lodging appearing in one of your photos. You will only have to insert your affiliate link to earn money.
But how to find products / services to promote? There are many platforms that relate advertisers, anxious to advertise their offers, and publishers, looking to monetize their audience. Here are some examples :
The Amazon partner program: with this program, you will be able to offer all the products referenced on Amazon, in just a few clicks - and pocket a commission, between 1 and 12% of the price of the products sold.
Zanox is the leading performance marketing network in Europe. You can find products on popular platforms such as Zalando or Etsy.
ShareASale: This system allows you to easily find hundreds of companies, which will provide you with a commission on each sale (a fixed amount or a percentage).
And to monetize your content through affiliation, you can also decide to turn to sites like Stylinity. This one is specialized in the fashion sector. It allows you to create pages in which your photos appear, embellished with affiliated links to the items you are wearing.
2. Sponsored posts, a good way to monetize an Instagram account
To make money, some can forge partnerships with brands - and thus publish sponsored content.
Whether it's a photo or a video, the post concerned will promote a product or a brand. And this post can contain links, hashtags or mentions (with the symbol @). The objective? Make subscribers interact with the post, in order to allow a brand to make itself known.
And if your campaigns are performing well, and allow advertisers to increase their revenue, you may be asked regularly.
How much can you earn? Everything will of course depend on the popularity of your Instagram account. If you start, you can hope to win only a few tens of euros at most. But if you are at the head of a very tracked account, it will be possible to generate several thousand euros.
Here is an overview of the figures commonly found for French instagrammers:
Between 20 and 50 cents per like
About 1 euro per comment or regram (the action that consists in resting on an image its wire Instagram).
You probably will not get the income generated by big stars: Kim Kardashian collects between $ 250,000 and $ 500,000 every time she publishes a photo to showcase a brand!
My advice: pay attention to the negotiation! In general, it is recommended to ask the brand to make a proposal - you can then try to ask for a little more, or to add some conditions (free products or services) to this agreement.
Huawei, for a fashion blogger? Which report ? Indeed, this blogger promotes a phone brand. This is not very consistent with its content but:
It is quite exceptional
All subscribers may be interested in winning a smartphone
So, even if it is possible to promote everything, strive to prioritize brands consistent with your content - history not to destabilize your subscribers.
But how can we build partnerships with brands? If you have very few subscribers on Instagram, you are not likely to interest the brands.
In general, you will need at least 1000 subscribers to be able to establish initial partnerships. If you have not yet reached this figure, I suggest this article that gives you tips to quickly reach the 1000 subscribers.
Then, if you want to type in the eye of these brands, you will have to get noticed. Do not hesitate to follow the account of different brands, which evolve in the same universe as yours. Be active: comment and love posts published by these brands.
You can also use an agency specialized in social networks, such as Influence4Brands, which will take care of putting you in contact with brands wishing to make themselves known.
Your audience is not large enough to be of interest to major brands? There are now services that allow you to be paid by brands when you post a promotional message on Instagram.
For example, the ValueYourNetwork application will allow you to earn money every time a sponsored post is liked, shared, or clicked.
3. Sell your own products / services
Whether you are an influencer (beauty), bodybuilding or nutrition, Instagram gives you a certain visibility, with users interested in your topic.
Why not take advantage of it to sell your products / services yourself, without having to promote offers from companies?
But that's not all, as it is also possible to sell products through Instagram.
You create objects (jewelry, clothes, ...) and you would like to rely on the great potential of Instagram? If you want to sell your own products to your subscribers by putting them on Instagram, there are several options available to you.
Amazon Handmade: Sell on the largest marketplace in the world. Amazon will charge a 12% commission on the volume of sales generated.
Etsy is a site specializing in handmade creations, and displays more competitive rates than Amazon Handmade.
Shopify, allows you to quickly create your own online shop (from 29 dollars a month)
4. Sell your Instagram photos
Before the advent of social networks, the only way to make money with a photo was to sell it. Professional photographers and paparazzi could thus monetize their stereotypes, offering them to agencies or newspapers.
It is perhaps the most "logical" method to make money with photos.
So yes, Instagram allows your photos to enjoy unprecedented visibility, especially if the community that follows you is important.
But your photos can have a life apart from Instagram. And whether you're a professional photographer, or just an enlightened amateur, you'll be able to make money with your shots.
Especially since posting them regularly will enable you to improve your skills - control of light, depth of field, possible retouching, etc. You will thus as the weeks come up with more and more photos qualitative.
Simply insert a watermark in your photos, and indicate in the associated text the link to which it will be possible to buy it. Some agencies may be interested in your proposal, in order to use one of your photos to embellish a page or article. They will be able to download it in very good quality - for a fee.
Do not hesitate to respond to the requests of your subscribers, who will sometimes want to get personalized photos - it's a good way to charge them at a high price.
Several sites where you can sell your photos:
Fotolia: This site will pay you 33% of the proceeds from the sale of your photos.
ShutterStock, will allow you to earn between 0.25 and 1.88 dollars for each sale of one of your shots.
Foap offers an intuitive application to sell your photos directly from your smartphone.
The main advantage of this method is that it can be used even if you have a low audience - you will be able to take advantage of the visibility offered by the platforms presented above.
My advice: make sure to keep on your smartphone or your camera, the original version, uncompressed, of your pictures.
On Instagram, no money without subscribers!
Monetizing an Instagram account is not very difficult. As you've seen, it's fairly simple to find partnerships. So you can quickly get started, and insert links to offers - or choose to sell your products, services or snapshots.
What can be more complicated is getting subscribers. Every day, competition is tougher, with an increasing number of photos posted on Instagram. You need to be able to distinguish yourself, and to generate commitment with your subscribers in order to have a good visibility.
Here are a few tips :
Choose the theme of your content. All the professional bloggers we see on Instagram are specialized in a theme: beauty, fitness, bodybuilding, geek, ... So be sure to choose a theme that can match you!
Be active: by posting new photos several times a day, you will be able to better retain your subscribers, who will be on the lookout for your new pictures.
Comments are your allies: when a subscriber comments on one of your photos, do not hesitate to take note. It is not a question of following all the recommendations that could be made to you, but rather to take the pulse of your community, and to integrate as a whole the returns concerning your pictures.
Look after your descriptions: less important than your photos, they are still interesting to encourage your community to react. Do not hesitate to tag them using consistent hashtags, intended to offer them better visibility.
Ask your subscribers to react: by a comment, a like, ... So many positive signals that will allow your pictures to be more visible.
Get closer to other instagrammers evolving in your theme. You can very well highlight the content of one of them, which can then promote your profile. Win-win!
But Instagram, it is mostly influencers who see it as a way to have a direct link with their community. And if this link allows them to promote their content (blog posts, youtube videos, ...), it's also a great way for them to make money.
And even if some startups, who have tried to facilitate monetization on Instagram, have failed. I think for example InstaPix, which was supposed to allow the influencers to propose to their fans to receive some of their photos to them.
While you already have an account, or you are looking to get started to take advantage of the power of this social network, here are 4 ways to earn money with Instagram.
1. Making Money On Instagram With Affiliation
Affiliation is the easiest way to monetize an audience.
The principle is extremely simple: a brand will pay you to promote one of its products, or its offer of services. And rather than giving you a fixed sum against a post, this company will pay you according to the results caused by your post.
You have often seen this in blogs in which products are highlighted. Whenever you click on an affiliate link, and you order a product, the blogger will receive a portion of the amount you will have spent.
You could thus earn money as soon as someone will order a product or service from your affiliate link.
For example, it's interesting for fashion and beauty influencers, who can invite their community to buy the products they wear on their photos!
But everything is not so easy ... Instagram wants to prevent users from leaving the platform - which is why the platform prevents influencers from inserting a clickable link into a post. So, to promote an offer, you will have to copy a link in your "bio" Instagram - and tell your subscribers that they can access it by going on it.
My advice: use a service like bitly.com. It will allow you to shorten the address of the link, but also to have a lot of data (evolution of the clicks, provenance of the visits, ...). But you can also make use of a service like LikeToKnow.it. It will be enough for the people registered on this service to like one of your promotional photos, to instantly receive an e-mail containing links related to the products appearing in this shot.
Be aware that Internet users are often seduced by these new sales methods - judged to be less aggressive. Indeed, instagrammers who promote products strive to bring value - with a nice photo, which highlights relevant articles. As a result, people interested in purchasing these products will be able to find them easily, thanks to the instagram they follow.
But you can also promote services! If your content is oriented "travel", you will be able to propose to your followers to reserve a hotel room or a lodging appearing in one of your photos. You will only have to insert your affiliate link to earn money.
But how to find products / services to promote? There are many platforms that relate advertisers, anxious to advertise their offers, and publishers, looking to monetize their audience. Here are some examples :
The Amazon partner program: with this program, you will be able to offer all the products referenced on Amazon, in just a few clicks - and pocket a commission, between 1 and 12% of the price of the products sold.
Zanox is the leading performance marketing network in Europe. You can find products on popular platforms such as Zalando or Etsy.
ShareASale: This system allows you to easily find hundreds of companies, which will provide you with a commission on each sale (a fixed amount or a percentage).
And to monetize your content through affiliation, you can also decide to turn to sites like Stylinity. This one is specialized in the fashion sector. It allows you to create pages in which your photos appear, embellished with affiliated links to the items you are wearing.
2. Sponsored posts, a good way to monetize an Instagram account
To make money, some can forge partnerships with brands - and thus publish sponsored content.
Whether it's a photo or a video, the post concerned will promote a product or a brand. And this post can contain links, hashtags or mentions (with the symbol @). The objective? Make subscribers interact with the post, in order to allow a brand to make itself known.
And if your campaigns are performing well, and allow advertisers to increase their revenue, you may be asked regularly.
How much can you earn? Everything will of course depend on the popularity of your Instagram account. If you start, you can hope to win only a few tens of euros at most. But if you are at the head of a very tracked account, it will be possible to generate several thousand euros.
Here is an overview of the figures commonly found for French instagrammers:
Between 20 and 50 cents per like
About 1 euro per comment or regram (the action that consists in resting on an image its wire Instagram).
You probably will not get the income generated by big stars: Kim Kardashian collects between $ 250,000 and $ 500,000 every time she publishes a photo to showcase a brand!
My advice: pay attention to the negotiation! In general, it is recommended to ask the brand to make a proposal - you can then try to ask for a little more, or to add some conditions (free products or services) to this agreement.
Huawei, for a fashion blogger? Which report ? Indeed, this blogger promotes a phone brand. This is not very consistent with its content but:
It is quite exceptional
All subscribers may be interested in winning a smartphone
So, even if it is possible to promote everything, strive to prioritize brands consistent with your content - history not to destabilize your subscribers.
But how can we build partnerships with brands? If you have very few subscribers on Instagram, you are not likely to interest the brands.
In general, you will need at least 1000 subscribers to be able to establish initial partnerships. If you have not yet reached this figure, I suggest this article that gives you tips to quickly reach the 1000 subscribers.
Then, if you want to type in the eye of these brands, you will have to get noticed. Do not hesitate to follow the account of different brands, which evolve in the same universe as yours. Be active: comment and love posts published by these brands.
You can also use an agency specialized in social networks, such as Influence4Brands, which will take care of putting you in contact with brands wishing to make themselves known.
Your audience is not large enough to be of interest to major brands? There are now services that allow you to be paid by brands when you post a promotional message on Instagram.
For example, the ValueYourNetwork application will allow you to earn money every time a sponsored post is liked, shared, or clicked.
3. Sell your own products / services
Whether you are an influencer (beauty), bodybuilding or nutrition, Instagram gives you a certain visibility, with users interested in your topic.
Why not take advantage of it to sell your products / services yourself, without having to promote offers from companies?
But that's not all, as it is also possible to sell products through Instagram.
You create objects (jewelry, clothes, ...) and you would like to rely on the great potential of Instagram? If you want to sell your own products to your subscribers by putting them on Instagram, there are several options available to you.
Amazon Handmade: Sell on the largest marketplace in the world. Amazon will charge a 12% commission on the volume of sales generated.
Etsy is a site specializing in handmade creations, and displays more competitive rates than Amazon Handmade.
Shopify, allows you to quickly create your own online shop (from 29 dollars a month)
4. Sell your Instagram photos
Before the advent of social networks, the only way to make money with a photo was to sell it. Professional photographers and paparazzi could thus monetize their stereotypes, offering them to agencies or newspapers.
It is perhaps the most "logical" method to make money with photos.
So yes, Instagram allows your photos to enjoy unprecedented visibility, especially if the community that follows you is important.
But your photos can have a life apart from Instagram. And whether you're a professional photographer, or just an enlightened amateur, you'll be able to make money with your shots.
Especially since posting them regularly will enable you to improve your skills - control of light, depth of field, possible retouching, etc. You will thus as the weeks come up with more and more photos qualitative.
Simply insert a watermark in your photos, and indicate in the associated text the link to which it will be possible to buy it. Some agencies may be interested in your proposal, in order to use one of your photos to embellish a page or article. They will be able to download it in very good quality - for a fee.
Do not hesitate to respond to the requests of your subscribers, who will sometimes want to get personalized photos - it's a good way to charge them at a high price.
Several sites where you can sell your photos:
Fotolia: This site will pay you 33% of the proceeds from the sale of your photos.
ShutterStock, will allow you to earn between 0.25 and 1.88 dollars for each sale of one of your shots.
Foap offers an intuitive application to sell your photos directly from your smartphone.
The main advantage of this method is that it can be used even if you have a low audience - you will be able to take advantage of the visibility offered by the platforms presented above.
My advice: make sure to keep on your smartphone or your camera, the original version, uncompressed, of your pictures.
On Instagram, no money without subscribers!
Monetizing an Instagram account is not very difficult. As you've seen, it's fairly simple to find partnerships. So you can quickly get started, and insert links to offers - or choose to sell your products, services or snapshots.
What can be more complicated is getting subscribers. Every day, competition is tougher, with an increasing number of photos posted on Instagram. You need to be able to distinguish yourself, and to generate commitment with your subscribers in order to have a good visibility.
Here are a few tips :
Choose the theme of your content. All the professional bloggers we see on Instagram are specialized in a theme: beauty, fitness, bodybuilding, geek, ... So be sure to choose a theme that can match you!
Be active: by posting new photos several times a day, you will be able to better retain your subscribers, who will be on the lookout for your new pictures.
Comments are your allies: when a subscriber comments on one of your photos, do not hesitate to take note. It is not a question of following all the recommendations that could be made to you, but rather to take the pulse of your community, and to integrate as a whole the returns concerning your pictures.
Look after your descriptions: less important than your photos, they are still interesting to encourage your community to react. Do not hesitate to tag them using consistent hashtags, intended to offer them better visibility.
Ask your subscribers to react: by a comment, a like, ... So many positive signals that will allow your pictures to be more visible.
Get closer to other instagrammers evolving in your theme. You can very well highlight the content of one of them, which can then promote your profile. Win-win!