Instagram is a platform built to help you grow your following and get more exposure. Whether someone is willing to pay you for this is entirely up to them. However, there are ways that you can leverage your audience and make money from it.
The best way to start earning money on Instagram is by becoming an influencer (or partnering with one). This is how many successful Instagram users make the majority of their income.
Influencers have built a reputation by doing and sharing things online (e.g., blogging, making YouTube videos, posting on social media accounts like Instagram, etc.). Influencer marketing is when brands partner with these people to get their products or services in front of their audience.
This creates a win-win situation for both parties: The brand gets access to a new audience while the influencer gets paid for their efforts.
The question here is, does Instagram pay you for the number of followers you have?
The short answer is No. Instagram does not directly pay you for your followers. However, brands do pay for followers. To get produced by a brand, you need to have a plan or strategy that you want the brand to pay for. The payment is based on how well you can deliver results for this strategy, coupled with the number of followers you have who are interested in you.
For example:
I want to promote my lipstick brand so that people will be more likely to buy my products. I also want to improve my following to reach more people. I’m willing to spend $X a month on influencers who can guarantee me X amount of engagement and X number of new followers (these numbers vary depending on the size of your account.”
The person hired from the above post will be paid by my brand directly – not from Instagram. This is like when you hire an employee, and you don’t pay them through Google or Facebook or whatever source you used to find them – you pay them directly.
But we would suggest that the best way to make money from Instagram is to let it be a side project that you do for fun instead of treating it as a full-time business. It will take too much time, effort, and money for you to be able to make a living off your Instagram account alone. Plus, using Instagram as a hobby is much more enjoyable than trying to run an Instagram business anyway!
If you want to make money online in general, we suggest that you start an online store instead. It’s much easier than getting paid by Instagram and will give you complete freedom over how and where your brand makes money!
How Many Followers Do I Need On Instagram To Start Making Money?
It’s a question I get asked all the time: “How many followers do you need on Instagram to start making money?”
And I always give the same answer: “1,000. As long as they’re the right 1,000.”
You might be wondering what that means. Well, are your 1,000 followers targeted? If they’re not targeted, then you won’t make any money.
It doesn’t matter how many followers you have if they’re not interested in you or your brand. If they’re not engaged with you and your content, then there’s no way you’ll ever be able to make money from them.
But if they ARE targeted and interested in your brand – even better if they’re raving fans – it doesn’t matter if you only have 1,000 of them. You can make serious cash from them!
Your follower count is one of the first metrics that users and brands look at when determining account influence, primarily because it is prominently displayed for everyone to see and understand.
Companies wishing to collaborate with influencers want to be confident that their marketing spends are being effectively utilized. Brands genuinely care about how well their audience is engaged, regardless of the number of followers they have, because greater product awareness and possible sales mean more revenue for you. As well as your follower numbers and interaction rate, brands consider the quality of your posts and how well they fit into your specialty.
What are the potential earnings on Instagram?
This is the first thing that comes to mind for anyone considering monetizing their Instagram account, and there is no definitive answer. Several factors influence the amount of money a user can earn by posting on Instagram, including the accounting niche, the method of monetization, the quality of posts, the number of followers, and the engagement rate, to mention a few.
Instagram sponsored posts are one of the most common methods for influencers to earn money (if not the most popular way) to make money on the platform. Because influencers are responsible for determining their rates for collaborating with businesses, the revenue potential varies even more in this case.
For example, an account that is just getting started with influencer marketing and sponsored posts may charge $25-$50 per post. In contrast, funds that are already established as influencers with 30-80k followers may charge hundreds of dollars per post.
Once influencers gain more than 100,000, they often charge at least $1,000 for a single post, such as Sam Ushiro, who has 304 thousand followers and charges $1,500 for each post she makes. Not to mention that celebrities with large followings, such as Kim Kardashian West, who has 107 million followers, may earn more than $500,000 for a single sponsored Instagram post.
It is entirely possible to make a full-time living only by posting on Instagram when you combine influencers’ vast range in fees with the different number of brands they work with and the number of sponsored posts they receive.
The rate of engagement is excellent.
While the number of followers you have to generate money on Instagram can range anywhere from $100 to $30,000, one thing that remains consistent is the high engagement rates seen by users. It’s pointless to share material on Instagram if your followers aren’t seeing it or responding to it.
Consider the following scenario: you have $100 and would like to make additional money. The money could have been put into the hands of someone who had hundreds of thousands of potential purchasers at their disposal; however, it was discovered that only around a hundred people were genuinely paying attention to what they had to say.
Your best hope would be to put that $100 into the hands of someone who only has a couple of thousand potential buyers but who is continuously paying attention to what they have to say about their products.
The number of followers on Instagram is not the most critical factor in making money, and it is achieving a high level of engagement. Your engagement rate is calculated by dividing the total number of likes and comments on a specific number of posts by the number of posts divided by the number of followers and multiplying the result by 100. (If you don’t feel like doing the arithmetic yourself, many online tools are available to assist you!)
According to Later, an Instagram marketing and scheduling software, engagement rates between 2-3 percent are typical, and rates between 4-6 percent are deemed high. An engagement rate that exceeds double digits is referred to as “viral” engagement.
When your engagement rate is high, it communicates to brands that your followers are paying attention to what you are saying and, even better, actively listening! They will put their money into your business because it will result in more sales due to your followers purchasing their products.
It is pretty essential to find your area of specialization.
Did you know that 7 out of 10 people rely on social media to make purchasing decisions and that nearly half of them rely on the opinions of influencers to make those decisions? Whether you are aware of it or not, there are individuals seeking recommendations to follow, and yours is one of those recommendations! You can make money simply by promoting brands and products you already enjoy if you are enthusiastic and knowledgeable about a particular niche.
In addition to health and wellness, fitness and travel niches are also profitable on Instagram. Some of the best Instagram niches include Business, Wealth/Finance,
Living, and Lifestyle. In these niches, users collaborate with various brands, produce diverse content, and have experienced great success in monetizing their Instagram accounts.
Take the case of Huda Kattan, for example. She began her career as a beauty influencer on Instagram, where she now has more than 2 million followers, and she has also recently launched her famous makeup line. Kayla Itsines is also a successful Instagram influencer who began as a personal trainer but has since amassed over 7 million followers and a devoted following for her series of bikini body guides, which she created.
You may not need many followers to begin landing sponsored posts depending on the niche. For example, “hamburgers” instead of “food” or “acne skin care” instead of “beauty” may not require a large number of followers to begin landing sponsored posts.
Because micro-influencers in these specific niches have a more engaged and targeted following, more and more brands are partnering with them to promote their products and raise awareness of their brands.
Although Instagram will not pay you for the number of followers you have, you can still make cool cash from the platform by working as an influencer for various brands, as seen in this article. On the social media platform, there are other ways to make money on Instagram, some of these ways have been discussed in depth under the topic of ten ways to make money on Instagram.
Do well to check it out.
