How to Make Money Off Instagram: Options and Tips

Instagram famous 

You have probably heard stories of bloggers and YouTubers who have amassed an audience around the material they produce. 

Instagrammers, in particular, have become extremely influential in certain areas of interest. There are now many ways to make money from Instagram, although you’ll need to take certain factors into consideration.   

Naturally, the more engaged followers you have, the much better you’re likely to do when you try to monetize your Instagram presence.  

Read on to check out our ideas for how to make money off Instagram. 

While leading Instagrammers make thousands per post on the photo-sharing platform, even those with a smaller-but-engaged following of 1,000 have the potential to begin making money right away.

Advertise products and services

An influencer is essentially anyone who has built their online reputation by doing and sharing amazing things online. 

To their audiences, influencers are tastemakers, trendsetters, and even specialists whose viewpoints about specific topics are appreciated. 

Numerous brand names just can’t compete with that kind of personal touch, and so they partner with influencers for sponsored posts that help get the word out about their products and/or services.

However, starting to advertise other brands for pay can create a difficult inner conflict. 

Keep in mind that your audience trusts you and engages with your content. It can be difficult to balance your profits as an influencer and your integrity as a creator. 

If you’re not relying on your Instagram earnings to survive, you constantly have the liberty to be selective about the brand names you deal with, just as brands will be selective about the Instagrammers they work with.

Usually, these influencer deals include the creation of content: an Instagram post, video, or story, and each will sometimes include consent for the brand to use this material on their site or in an ad. 

Most of these offers are negotiable and can involve a single post or an entire campaign in exchange for a fee, totally free products, a service, a present, the guarantee of direct exposure, or some mix of these perks.

In a study of 5,000 influencers, around 42% stated they charged $200 to $400 per post. This gives an idea of what some brand names want to pay, and how to work out how much to charge based upon your specific profile and situation. 

Lastly, it is necessary as an influencer to understand your own audience.

This will help you be prepared when it comes time to figure out which brands you would be best suited for. 

Ask yourself what the demographics of your fan base are. How old is your audience, on average? Where do most of them live? What are their interests?

To find out, you could start visiting their profiles to get a better sense of who they are. But if you have thousands of followers, this will take way too long. 

You can also try asking your audience about themselves directly via stories and messages. 

How to find sponsors

So once you know what type of brands you’d like to work with, how do you actually go about making those deals?

Well, there are a few options you can try. 

You can reach out to them directly to try to work out a deal, but you can likewise list yourself on one of the many influencer markets out there to increase your chances of being found.

Link your Instagram, blog, YouTube channel, and other social media platforms to create an influencer “card” that shows your various profiles and total reach.

Sites like Grapevine work as sponsorship marketplaces. Usually, each site has its own minimum requirements before you can join. For example, you might need at least 5,000 followers before you can be accepted. 

Using one of these sites could also be a way for you to explore other Insta stars who have already done sponsorship deals. You might try reaching out to them for advice or simply look at their profiles to see how they tend to integrate sponsored content. 

There’s also the question of whether or not you want to disclose to your audience that you are indeed endorsing certain products. 

This is an especially hot-button topic in the area of social media advertising. A large number of Instagram influencers have revealed that they do not disclose their sponsorship deals. 

Sure, many of your sponsorships may be quite obvious to your audience, but this isn’t always the case. 

There are no hard and fast rules for this just yet, so you’ll need to make a decision based on your personal ethical code. 

Ask yourself whether your audience would still love and respect you even if you decided not to tell them that you were advertising to them. 

Use the platform creatively, feat. Eduardo Albuquerque 

We think that one of the best things you can do to attract more followers and start earning some real money on Instagram is to find ways to use the platform creatively. 

Posting selfies and stories remain popular posting options for many, but some creators are pushing boundaries and making us reconsider how Instagram can be used.

Multimedia artist Eduardo Albuquerque has been involved with music, books, television, advertising, painting, and collage for many years, so it’s no big surprise that he has also been pioneering what we might call Instagram art. 

We’re using that phrase to refer to art that takes advantage of Instagram as its own medium. 

“I see Instagram as a medium in itself. I wish artists would use it more like that, not just as a promotional tool but as a canvas for their artistic expression.” 

This approach led to Albuquerque’s #60in30 project, which is a wide-ranging recap of the various work he’s done throughout his artistic career. 

For Albuquerque, this project has been a way to introduce more people to the wide variety of projects he pursues. 

“The problem with being a multimedia artist is that fans from some of your work don’t necessarily know about your work in another medium. So, when I realized this year marked my career’s 30th anniversary, I was inspired to celebrate by cluing in fans from my work as an actor into my work as a director, fans of my writing into my work as a musician, and so on and so forth.” 

The project has also included Albuquerque doing collaborative Instagram Lives with other artists, including Bruno Medina and Fabio Andrade. 

We think that #60in30 can serve as a source of inspiration for other creators looking to make it big on social media. 

When you start to question how you’re using any social media platform, you’re bound to come up with some new and exciting ideas that followers are going to notice.

Create an online shop of your own  

But while advertising for other brands is by far the most popular way to make money off Instagram, you could also decide to set up your own shop, selling products or services related to your specialty.  

Creating and offering a physical or digital product or providing a paid service can also start bringing in significant amounts of money. 

Maybe you want to start selling licenses and/or prints of your photographs or videos. 

Physical items, services, or digital products can be an extension of your brand and you can easily construct a business with your audience at the very center. 

Setting up your own online shop is especially well-suited for those who make handcrafted items or have started their own businesses. 

Maybe you create your own small furniture items or work as a professional photographer for those who need headshots or wedding photos. 

Maybe you’re an illustrator and want to place some of your original creations up for sale. 

The biggest advantage to creating your own online shop to make money from Instagram is that you get to make all of the decisions. There isn’t another brand or company telling you what to do.
If you had ethical issues with the idea of partnering with a number of different brands, then selling your own wares may be the best option for you.