Making money on Instagram is possible, whether you have 1,000 or 100,000 followers. If you stay until the end you will learn 4 ways to monetize your Instagram account without investment and a final bonus. You will also know how much to charge companies as an influencer and how to find brands that want to work with you.
The business of promotion in Instagram is huge. It is estimated that the total investment made by companies in Instagram Influencers is 1.0 billion to 1.5 billion dollars a year and increasing daily.
Like bloggers, YouTubers, and anyone who has accumulated an audience around the content they produce, Instagrammers have discovered reach and influence, two things in high demand by companies.
Together, reach and influence offer Instagram creators the opportunity to explore multiple potential revenue streams, whether they want to build a personal brand or simply make some extra cash and free stuff.
If you are starting out on Instagram I recommend that you check out an advanced article on how to grow on Instagram this 2020 – https://andigarcia.com/como-crecer-en-instagram/
How many Instagram followers do you need to make money?
Si te estás preguntando cuántos seguidores necesitas para empezar a ganar dinero en Instagram, la respuesta corta es “no tantos como crees”.
The long answer depends on factors ranging from:
- What niche you are in and how easily you can tie it directly to a product category (fashion, food, beauty, and fitness are popular niches, based on top Instagram hashtags)
- How engaged your followers are (100K fake followers won't be worth much)
- What revenue channels do you explore?
Naturally, the more followers you have the better. Take a look at our tips on how to get more followers on Instagram.
While top Instagramers make thousands of dollars per post, those with few but loyal followers have the potential to start making money.
How to make money with Instagram
Depending on your account's content, audience, and connection with your viewers, you can make money with Instagram in the following ways:
- Working with brands through sponsored posts
- Affiliate Marketing
- Open your own online store
- Create your website
- BONUS – Sell your Instagram account
The beauty of it all is that pursuing one source of income doesn't necessarily rule out another.
So let's start with the most common approach to Instagram monetization: partnering with brands as an Influencer.
1. Working with brands for paid posts.
An influencer is basically anyone who has built an online reputation by making and sharing amazing things online. To their audiences, influencers are tastemakers, trendsetters, and trusted experts whose opinions on certain topics are respected.
Many brands cannot compete with that, so they partner with influencers on sponsored posts that help spread the word about their products.
But it's not just the size and reach of your Instagram account that brands want, but your audience's trust and engagement with your content.
It can be difficult to balance income as an influencer and integrity as a creator, but if you don't depend on your Instagram marketing income to stay afloat, you always have the freedom to be selective about the brands you work with, just as brands will be selective about the Instagramers they work with.
How much to charge as an Instagram Influencer
Generally, these influencer agreements involve creating content - show ads, a post, a video, or a story - sometimes including permission for the brand to use this content on their own site or in an ad.
Most of these deals are negotiable and may involve a single post or an entire campaign in exchange for a fee, a free product, a service, a gift, the promise of exposure, or some combination of these.
When negotiating, keep in mind that you are not only offering content, but also access to your audience - a potentially large reach on one of the most popular social platforms in the world.
In a survey of 5,000 influencers, about 42% said they charged between $200 and $400 per post just to give you an idea of what some brands are willing to pay and how to negotiate based on the cards you hold.
“As an Influencer I will give you an estimate of what is charged per story on Instagram. The price for a single story is between €1 and €10 for every 1000 views.” Andi GarcĂa
If you have an account with 100,000 followers and your niche is very specific, for example gold necklaces, companies will be willing to pay larger amounts since your account is very specific as is the audience, the probability that a brand that sells necklaces gets a sale with your story is much higher than with a humor account, in this case the owner of the necklace account can easily charge €200 if an average of 40,000 people see their story
On the other hand we have paid posts, “promos in posts”. A post on the profile is very different from a story, the influencer exposes themselves more and if the terms of the promotion involve leaving it posted indefinitely, the influencer will have to think carefully about this promotion. Generally, influencers who do profile promos upload discreet posts with the product on, the price here will depend a lot on the profile, the content they have and the audience.
Finally, as an influencer it is also important to know your own audience, you have to study well how your audience would react to a promotion and for that you have to know your audience.
How to find brands to work with
Si eres lo suficientemente grande, es probable que las marcas te encuentren. Pero también puedes buscar marcas con las que trabajar que estén en un nivel similar en términos de personalidad y valores, asà tu audiencia no sentirá que te estás “vendiendo”.
You can contact them directly via direct messages to try to reach a deal, or you can also list yourself in one of the many influencer marketplaces that exist to increase the chances of being discovered, some of these “marketplaces” are:
- Shoutcart is my personal recommendation for finding sponsoring companies, a very comfortable and easy-to-use interface, they have thousands of agencies, companies and individuals looking for influencers daily to work with.
- SocialPubli is one of the main marketplaces that exist for Spanish-speaking influencers.
- Heepsy. If you have 5,000 or more followers, you can list yourself in the Heepsy marketplace for a chance to work with like-minded brands.
- Fourstarzz, The Fourstarzz Media platform is built for the needs of small and medium-sized businesses. They have a strong focus on nano and micro influencers.
Rules vary when it comes to sponsored content, but to be safe and respect your audience's trust, consider adding a #sponsored hashtag to indicate to your followers that it is a paid post.
You can find examples of sponsored posts and how Instagramers integrate brands into their story or caption by searching #sponsored on Instagram, like this one from
Instagram también tiene una etiqueta “Promoción pagada con” que identifica de manera prominente los posts patrocinados, algunas marcas pueden requerir que se use para revelar su relación con ellos.
2. Affiliate Marketing
Unlike an Influencer, an affiliate does the promotion on their own through a company that offers commissions in exchange for conversions.
This is normally done with a trackable link or a unique promo code to ensure that clicks actually translate into sales and thus the seller ensures their profitability with you.
Consider reaching out to one of the many online merchants that offer affiliate programs via direct messages or email. Some of the most popular programs are:
- Awin(Recommended): Awin is a global affiliate network. With 230,000 contributing publishers and 16,500 advertisers, Awin has over 1,000 employees in 15 offices worldwide. Very good customer service, they have clients like meetic, yoigo 1&1, BBVA, El Corte Ingles.. (Awin will ask you for a €5 deposit upon registration, you can withdraw it once you are accepted or rejected in the program)
- Amitad(Recommended): This platform is really simple to use, it is advanced and has extensions that make it easy for you to get the affiliate link for every purchase you make, they work with amazon, alibaba, ebay etc.. If you are going to do Dropshipping I recommend that you install Admitad in Oberlo or Dropified, I have managed to save €500 with their affiliate program processing Ali Express orders.
- Hotmart. An affiliate platform open to everyone, it has a very easy-to-use interface for both affiliates and sellers.
- RewardStyle. A fashion and lifestyle influencer network which by invitation only offers 20% commissions.
- Amazon Associates. A popular Amazon option that pays a commission of up to 30% depending on the product.
Although it sounds like a numbers game, affiliate marketing is also an art.
In my case, the vast majority of promotions I do are through affiliation. Many companies contact us offering a discount coupon for everyone who buys in their online store using our coupon and thus we take the commission.
I have met Influencers who have billed more than 5000 euros promoting apps, sweat coin, revolut, n24 are some of the companies that benefited from their affiliate programs to make themselves known. In the case of revolut they gave 10€ to each person who registered through the influencer's link, 10 registrations-100€.
Tip: Affiliate links can be long and ugly, so I recommend a URL shortener like bit.ly, especially if you are going to put them in your Instagram bio.
3. Open your own online store with Shopify
This is one of the best examples of an Influencer who has leveraged their audience to create a Shopify Dropshipping. Supreme Patty is billing close to €5000 daily with his Online Store, at least that's what he said in an interview in 2019.
At this point it might seem like the only way for an Instagramer to make money is to sell and work with other brands.
Los creadores de todo tipo están en una buena posiciĂłn para “vender” sus propios productos: bienes fĂsicos, servicios o artĂculos digitales que pueden ser una extensiĂłn de su marca, construyendo un negocio con una audiencia en su centro.
Fans will be able to show their love and support your work by buying from you, a purchase they feel good about.
With Shopify, the most used platform to create online stores, you can create your personal brand very simply. Shopify has applications that allow you to import products from other suppliers and process orders automatically, the store design is really simple thanks to the free default templates that Shopify has.
To create your online store and start selling without having to look for a manufacturer that has your product, manage logistics, shipping, customs, etc., the best option is to do dropshipping or look for a print-on-demand service.
- Dropshipping is a retail order shipping and delivery method in which the store does not need to have the products it sells in stock, instead, when the store sells a product, it buys it from a third party and has it shipped directly to the customer.
In this blog I detail how to do dropshipping with shopify step by step. “My personal recommendation as an Influencer who has created their own Dropshipping Online Store is that you look for a niche or a product that you think your audience would be interested in, validate the demand by uploading stories with polls to see what your followers think, you 'warm up' your followers and thus when you launch the store you will know what they like and what the reception is going to be like.
- Print on demand service, this model allows you to print and ship your own t-shirts, pillows, coffee mugs, caps, pictures, etc. in an automated way, make the design on the supplier's platform and publish the designs on your Online Store, if you want to make sure that the product and the design is really what you expected, you can place a test order.
“My recommendation is that you do not make a print-on-demand store if you do not have a really strong connection with your audience, your public has to have a very good connection to want to have a product with your logo or name, make sure you have a significant amount of followers with a strong connection to your account.” Andi GarcĂa
4. Create a website with WordPress
Creating a website can be a very good option if your content is not very generic.
In today's digital world, almost everyone is connected in some way to the internet to satisfy their entertainment, education, research, and consumption needs. An Instagramer, as a content creator, has at their fingertips the ability to scale that content through an even more massive channel like the web, the internet.
Creating a website is really simple, with platforms like Wordperss y Hostinger you can create your professional website in 30 minutes for only €2 a month.
If your content is of quality and your audience interacts with your web, Google will boost the reach of your brand by positioning your web/blogs/images on Google. You will generate organic traffic with which you can benefit and monetize your web, click here to learn how to monetize your website.
In summary, these are the main ways to start monetizing your website.
- You can sell services like consultancies, content editor, etc., using the tools that Instagram gives you.
- Sell digital productslike courses, ebooks, filters, or design templates.
- Blogging, create blogs like this one but related to your content and once you have traffic monetize it with Google Adsense ads or affiliate products.
5. BONUS – Sell your Instagram account
Last but not least, selling your Instagram account can earn you a good sum of money.
IMPORTANT: If your account is personal and is big enough for someone to pay for it, my personal recommendation is that you keep it, growing a personal account is much more complicated than a niche account. Give yourself some time, work on one of the monetization methods and learn about how to grow on Instagram, an Instagram account with a good number of followers is a very powerful tool to make money both on Instagram and on any other Social Network.
A large number of companies and individuals want to buy Instagram accounts, usually the people who buy accounts are specialists in this market, they buy accounts and then resell them at higher prices, others simply keep it and take advantage of the audience that the previous owner has already created and apply the aforementioned techniques to monetize the account.
It is very important that you inform yourself well before selling your Instagram account, "as an influencer who has sold more than 10 Instagram accounts I will give you some tips" Andi GarcĂa.
- Validate the 4 ways to make money with Instagram mentioned above, if your account is active it is very easy to monetize the profile and make money with Instagram, do not get discouraged and try one of the strategies.
- If your account has 6 figures and you want to sell your account DO NOT SELL IT FOR LESS THAN €1000 (as long as the followers are real and the account is active). To give you an idea, every 1000 followers are worth €2-20, this will depend on the audience, the content of the account and the activity (engagement) that these accounts have.
- If the decision to sell the account is a lack of time I recommend you talk to a trusted person to give them access to the account and have them manage the account by uploading content.
- Inactive Account, if the posts you upload no longer get activity and you have been losing followers for a while despite uploading content, selling the account is a good option, however an inactive account can always become active again, instagram places temporary bans "shadow ban" on accounts that do not post regularly, this will affect the reach of your posts. I recommend that you upload 3-7 daily posts for a week.
- The market for “Instagram flipping” is complex, it is very easy to be scammed. If the buyer tells you that they want to log into the account to make sure it has activity or something like that, directly reject the offer, as absurd as it may seem there are scammers who manage to steal accounts using this strategy. Sell your account using the sales platform escrow or through a secure payment method like Paypal.
Finally, I will leave you the best known platform for buying/selling Instagram, Youtube and Tik Tok accounts – FAMESWAP.COM
How to make money with Instagram conclusion.
After this analysis of how to make money with Instagram in 2020 we have seen 5 truly effective ways to monetize your account.
The next step is yours, analyze your current situation and decide which of these 5 ways best fit your profile and audience. If you still don't have a consolidated profile, I recommend that you work on your Instagram account first, once you have validated the niche, interactions and connection with your followers you can start working on monetizing your profile.
If you have an account and content but due to lack of time you are not working on it, I recommend you take a look at this blog where I talk about the best software to automate your social networks.
I truly believe that Instagram is full of opportunities to make money.
Succeeding in monetizing your Instagram account is a matter of motivation and effort, having all these tools at your fingertips, being able to make money on Instagram will depend on the use you make of these resources.
How to make money on Instagram 2020?
1. Work with brands with sponsored posts
2. Affiliate Marketing
3. Open your own online store
4. Create your website
5. Sell your Instagram account
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How many Instagram followers do you need to make money?
If you are wondering how many followers you need to start making money on Instagram, the short answer is "not as many as you think." With 1000 followers you can already make money with Instagram, starting from 10,000 you can charge for promotions.
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How much do you earn on Instagram?
The price for a single story is between €1 and €10 per 1000 views. The price per post will depend on your followers, from 100-2 million Euros paid for a promotion to Kylie Jenner.
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Where to sell an Instagram account?
The most popular platform to sell Instagram accounts isFameswap.
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Where to buy an Instagram account?
Fameswap is the leading company in buying/selling Instagram accounts, another option to buy Instagram accounts is by contacting the account directly through direct message or email if it is public.
Shortcuts to monetize sooner
Buy or sell already monetized accounts on Fameswap, sell shoutouts on Shoutcart or set up your store with Shopify. If you are still growing: my growth guide.
Some links are affiliate links: I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
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