How to Make Money on Instagram

Launched on 6^th October 2010, Instagram has become the most popular and used Social Media site over time. As most of you may know, Instagram aka our beloved IG or Insta is a photo and video-sharing social networking site. It was created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. Being a multi-featured website with aspects like IG Stories, Hashtags, Messaging, etc. IG has surely garnered a large sum of audience.

Sensing the quantity of audience available on this social media site, content creators from all over the world have made their way to this platform and are doing incredibly well in delivering content to the people. We all have witnessed the outbreak of social media careers and businesses in the last couple of years! One of the most generic options that strike individuals while entertaining the thought of such a career is Instagram. Apart from using IG to maintain contact with long-distance friends and relatives, Instagram has also stepped up as a huge money-making market in this era.

What makes it a convenient path of earning a living is the vast variety of content that you can upload on this site. Insta has not only helped new creators to come in front but has also helped existing businesses to prosper and gain more customers using Instagram marketing plan. So, if you are also an aspiring social media creator or just a curious creature, here I am writing 3 ways you can make big bucks through INSTAGRAM.

1. Sponsored Posts

I am sure that many of you may have heard of the term “Sponsored Posts” at some point. But what exactly are these sponsored posts and how do you get them? Well, if you are also having such questions then don’t worry because I am going to be explaining the whole mechanism of sponsored posts to you.

Sponsored Posts are organic content posts that brands and companies pay the creators to promote certain products and have them post it on their respective social media accounts. These creators are celebrities, bloggers, or influencers with huge fan following and thousands of followers. The sole purpose of brands behind sponsored posts is to attract the followers of famous figures towards their products or services. Sponsored Posts are the most popular way of earning money through Instagram.

Instagram Blogs that are quite favored nowadays are basically specialized accounts of creators for sponsored posts. To land a sponsored post you need to have substantial popularity and a consistent fan following, you can see the people who unfollowed you on Instagram.

How this system works is that a company or a brand dealing in the field of a creator’s niche of content may contact the creator if they want to partner with him/her for a sponsored post. If he/she accepts the offer, the actual journey of delivering the work starts. The brand/company gives a brief about the work they want from the creator and gives him/her a deadline. Their requirements and expectations may vary according to the respective product or campaign. The creator makes the required content based on that brief and delivers that to the brand. After approval, that particular post goes up on the creator’s account. After successfully putting up the number of social media posts given in the contract, the creator gets his/her paycheck from the company. The originality, quality, convenience, relatability, and success percentile of your content determines your future projects and earning.

Now, comes the amount of the paycheck. This aspect depends on a number of factors varying from amount of followers to the creator’s market value. In figures, one Instagram post can earn you between $10 to $10K or even more! Unbelievable! Isn’t it? Well, this is the social media era.

Witnessing the growth of sponsored posts, Instagram has launched the paid partnership feature that allows the creators to disclose that they are publishing sponsored content via an Instagram tag.

2. Paid Shout-Outs

Trust me when I say that there are many follower “hungry” people out there! Well, everyone has their own fetish. The point of me telling you this is that you can use this fetish of people to make money on Instagram. What I am talking about is Paid Shout outs!

A basic shout-out is generally a promotion of someone’s account by posting a screenshot of his/her account page on your personal Insta page. The ideology behind this idea is quite similar to sponsored posts, where the customer wants to garner the attention of your followers towards his/her account. The customer category for paid shout-outs varies from brands, companies, talk pages, influencers, or even just generic people who want more followers.

Paid Shout-out maybe a simple screenshot to be posted on your story or it may be a separate post explaining the mentioned profile on your account.

When it comes to the money, Paid Shout-outs don’t pay much as they have not been proved successive but you can still make good money through this way if you have a good number of followers behind your own page. A single Paid Shout-out can pay you conveniently between $5 to $100 or even more if you are a big name in the industry.

So, if you are looking for a way to make some money without doing much hard work then this might be the way to go for!

3. Start an Instagram Store

I personally love online shopping nowadays, and I think all of us do! Right?

I mean who doesn’t love to shop while sitting in a blanket and chilling in their own home! We all love that, right? With growing demand and customers, the choices and places to shop from online have definitely increased too. Apart from the online shopping sites and apps, one type of store that is grabbing eyeballs are Instagram Stores. Why people are loving these kinds of stores is for the fact that they are just one account with a variety of products and these stores are categorized and sell only one type of product. Also, since their marketing, promoting and production cost is comparatively less than that of products on big websites, the prices are also very reasonable and economical.

If you are looking to start an online business that does not need a very large funding then this is the option to go for! This might sound like a complicated area and it certainly is but it will definitely yield profit in the future.

Starting an Instagram Store is not very different from establishing any other online shopping website. You do need all aspects of a normal business like products, shipping, delivery, etc.

Most of the Instagram Stores work and communicate with their customers through IG Dms which is much more convenient than conversing through E-Mails. Another reason why customers really like to shop from these shops is because these brands and customers are closely communicative and hence it earns their trust. So the conclusion that I reach after contemplating the pros and cons of an Instagram Store is that these types of stores are the need of the coming era.

The versatility of these stores is that you can sell any type of products, be it stationary or gadgets, or anything for that matter. What amazes me is that you do not need to only sell readymade products because people are attracted to hand made things also! If you are a painter, crafter, etc. then you can easily sell your creative art through an Instagram Store.

Final Words

So these were some of the ways that I curated for you to make a living through Instagram. Although I included only a few paths there are innumerous ways to make big bucks through this social media site like making IGTV videos, Insta blogging, selling followers, etc. But these were the ways that I thought were the most accessible and executable in today’s time. You might also like to check MIMY social entertainment app.

This proves the theory that says, “There is nowhere you can’t make a career”. As you see that you do not necessarily need to be a genius or an Ivy League college graduate to make a successful career, you just need to be talented and determined and you can achieve all the big things that you are meant for! Even platforms meant for fun can drive your life in the direction you never thought about! What’s important is to stay true to yourself and your audience because they are the people who decide your success rate in any social media career. Gone are the days when all these online spaces were considered a sheer wastage of time. We the youth have to understand that changes are meant for good and as they say "Nothing can destroy you other than you”, so go ahead and showcase your talent to the eyes of the world and make yourself a social media artist in all the means of the word!