Making money on Instagram is a very doable and lucrative business. The need for content creators is at the highest its ever been. Brands have noticed that influence is everything when it comes to people interacting with brands. The use of macro and micro influencers improves the reach of the brand as well as gets a certain reach amongst the niche.
Firstly, before you start looking at monetising your presence - you need to actually have a presence, and have a 'brand' that you can actually market to your audience. If you're not there and don't know where to start, let us give you a little bit of a helping hand. If you're new to social media and need help getting started, read our blog on How to Become a New Age Influencer in 6 Simple Steps to get you going in the right direction. If you're already a bit of a social media native and need a little bit more expert advice on how to boost your engagement and get the most out your Instagram profile then read our blog on How to Cut through the Instagram Algorithm & Grow your Following on Instagram to start maximising your engagement TODAY!
1. Build your Tribe
Now that that's all out the way, the first step in the attempt to make money off your Instagram account, is to choose a niché that you would like to fall under. Consider your target audience; WHO they are, HOW they engage online as well as WHAT interests and values they share. Choosing a niche will assist you in have a certain direction you are going in with the content you are releasing - this creates a uniform feel to your feed and sets a motive to the kind of content you will be showcasing and promoting. It's more than just an audience; this is your Online TRIBE.
2. Brand Collaborations
A great way to monetize your Instagram following is to work on agreements with brands to pay you to do sponsored posts for them. This a great way to make cash off of your presence as one would just need to gather and shoot some product-related content and post it with an informative caption. This, however, is easier said than done and in order to be succesful here, you need to be just that little bit more proactive. Brands won't always come to you - the work doesn't simply just "land in your lap". Sometimes, you need to make the first move and contact them - and the best way to do this with a Brand Collaboration Proposal. Not sure what that is or where to get started? Read our blog on how to create The Perfect Brand Collaboration Proposal for more information.
Being affiliated with brands often invloves making commission selling their products - or, depending on your influencer agreement, may involve other forms of remuneration such as a flat fee, or perhaps even merchandise for you to keep. This affiliation would involve you being somewhat of a brand representative or ambassador for whichever brand you have created a relationship with (usually, this is product related or e-commerce brands). One would need to gather content of the product being used by themselves or just really good high-quality image of the product, accompanied with the price and possibly the account holder’s personalized Discount code for his/her followers to use when purchasing the item. Consider reaching out to one of the many online merchants that offer affiliate programs that you can participate in. Or you can also explore popular marketplaces such as ClickBank, RewardStyle and Amazon’s Affiliate Program.
If your following is big enough, chances are that bigger brands will be more interested in working with you. However, if not, you can also look for brands to work with that are on a similar level in terms of personality and values, so your audience won’t feel like you’re “selling out”. The biggest goal is to resonate with your audience - sometimes smaller, local brands are more well received than other more corporate brands by your audience. As mentioned at the start, consider YOUR BRAND and that of your NICHÉ. So if you are looking to start reaching out, there are two ways to go about this: One, you can directly get in touch with brands and try to work out a deal; or two, you can sign up on one or more of the various Influencer Marketplaces on the internet such as indaHash, Fohr, Webfluential, Grapevine, and Crowdtap, etc.
3. Online Marketplace
Opening your own Online store on Instagram is also another great way to go. To begin, you’ll need to switch to an Instagram business account, have a Facebook page, and an approved Facebook shop. By doing this it would take it a step further when it comes to Shopping on Instagram integration to enable product tags and product stickers that make the experience from Instagram Stories and posts to your own products more fluid. This is great for selling products and services such as ebooks, courses, branded mugs, and t-shirts, etc. This is where you can also look at utilising Paid Online Ads to boost the traffic to your store, enticing more sales. Read our Blog 5 Reasons to Embrace the Power of Facebook Ads to find out more on how you can use these Paid Online Ads to get the best results for your online store!
So there you have it - if you fancy yourself as an influencer on Instagram, time to start putting that to the test! Money is there to be made, and with so many people forced to work from home due to the global pandemic brands, now more than ever, are looking for more innovative ways to start collaborating and getting their products out there. Businesses and brands are being forced to adapt and change in order to survive, however, you may have the perfect solution that they are looking for - you just have to be a little bit proactive and go show them yourself!