While top Instagrammers make money per post, even those with small-but-engaged followings of 1,000 have the potential to start making money.
Depending on your unique brand of Instagram content, your audience, and your level of commitment, you can make money on Instagram in the following ways:
1. Work With Brands on Sponsored Posts
An influencer is essentially someone who has built up an online presence by doing cool things online and sharing them. The influencers are tastemakers, trendsetters, and trusted experts for their audiences whose opinions on certain topics are respected.
Many brands just can’t compete with that. So, they partner with influencers on sponsored posts that help get the word out about their products.
But it’s not just the size and reach of your Instagram account that brands want—it’s your audience’s trust and engagement with your content.
2. Become an Affiliate
Unlike an influencer, an affiliate is more invested in making sales for the partner brand. It is not just generating awareness but in exchange for a commission.
Typically this is done with a trackable link or unique promotional code to ensure that clicks actually translate into sales.
Because Instagram does not yet allow links anywhere outside of your profile, you can only focus on one product at a time if you want to rely on affiliate links, making promo codes a better choice for Instagram because you can actually integrate them into your posts.
3. Open Your Own Online Store
Around now it may seem like an Instagrammer would only make money by selling out and partnering with other brands.
Yet all sorts of designers are in a strong place. To “sell out” with their own products, you need to consider these things.
Physical goods, services, or digital objects that can be an extension of their name. Then, building up a market with an audience at its heart.
By selling your own stuff, you don’t need to worry about integrating messages from other brands into your posting strategy. Better yet, you can get your own brand out there on the products you sell.
4. Sell Your Photos Online or on Things
photos are assets that can be licensed, printed, and sold in a variety of ways.
If photography is what got you into the Instagram game in the first place, you can list your photos in marketplaces like 500px or Twenty20 where brands and publishers might license them.
However, you can also sell your photos as prints and on other physical products using similar methods described in the last section. Services like Printful and Teelaunch let you put your photos on posters, phone cases, pillows, and more, taking care of fulfilling orders and customer service, so all you really need to worry about is making sales.
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