How to Make Money from Instagram in 2024: 10+ Proven technique

Whether you’re a brand or a content creator, there’s a lot of money to be made on social media. Learn how to make money from Instagram in 2024.

Can you make money on Instagram?

Yes, you can make money on Instagram. According to CBIsights, Instagram is one of the main platforms where influencers and creators can monetize their content and attract more followers.

The platform also seeks to help creators earn their influence on the platform. In 2021, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta (Facebook and Instagram’s parent company), said: To help more creators live on our platforms, we’re introducing paid online events, fan subscriptions, and badges, and will continue their upcoming programs. Free independent news products for creators until 2023.

The company also wants to help teachers better understand their payments from the platform and has established an Instagram Payments feature, which allows people to see what taxes, refunds and purchase fees are within the app.

How many followers do you need to Earn Money From Instagram?

In many cases, making money on Instagram depends on the number of followers you have. For example, you need at least 1,000 followers to start making money with Facebook’s Brand Collabs Manager. That said, if you want to open a store on Instagram, the number of followers you have is less important to your earning potential.

make money from instagram — Image Credit: (Business Insider)

Another factor in making money on Instagram is your social media attention. To calculate your attention rate, take the number of likes and comments on each post and divide it by the number of followers you have. Ideally, you want to achieve a 3% engagement rate to appeal to brands for sponsorship. Companies prefer that you have a very active audience rather than a large following that is either stale or inactive, so make building an engaged community a priority. Connecting with your audience and posting high-quality content is what will increase your Instagram followers over time.

Should you use different methods to make money on Instagram, depending on how many followers you have? Not required. The key ways to generate income on a social media outlet, such as sponsored posts and shoutouts, are just the same, disregarding the number of followers. However, brands may be more willing to collaborate with you and pay more the more followers you have. But the same can happen if you can show that you have a small but engaged and niche audience for a particular brand.

Yes, influencers with multiple followers can command more money per sponsor. Rumours on Instagram posts have Christian Ronaldo earning anywhere from $1.6 million per post. However, these Instagram earners tend to be high-profile celebrities with millions of followers, both online and offline. Average earnings from posts are very low.

How much money can you make on Instagram?

The numbers are tricky because creators and brands are very private about how much money they’re making. Plus, Instagram revenue is hard to quantify if you sing a song on a reel, the song goes viral, and you get a record deal with that internet fame, and then tens of thousands of people tune in to your concert. Buy tickets. Count as making money on Instagram? What if you post cooking videos, then give a link to your recipe blog and ads on your blog that earn you money?

It sounds strange, but this is the way the most successful creators travel. How much money you can earn on Instagram depends on your credentials, audience size, attention, strategy, hustle and luck.

Here’s how much money some creators and celebrities have reportedly made:

$901: According to Business Insider, an Instagram influencer with 1,000 to 10,000 followers can earn on average per post.
$100 to $1,500: How much can a creator be paid for a swipe-up ad on their Instagram Stories, according to Brian Henley, CEO of Blush Studio (a talent agency for influencers)?
$983,100: Kylie Jenner reportedly earns per ad or sponsored content post
In 2021, HypeAuditor surveyed nearly 2,000 influencers (mostly based in the US) about how much money they earn. Here’s what they found:
The average influencer earns $2,970 per month. “Normal” numbers aren’t the best to go by because there’s a huge difference between the highs and the lows, as referenced in the next stat!
Micro-influencers (accounts with 1,000 to 10,000 followers) make an average of $1,420 each month, and mega-influencers (accounts with over a million followers) make around $15,356 per month.

How to Earn Money from Instagram

Collaborate with brands on sponsored content.
Get paid by Instagram as a creator.
Open your e-commerce store.
Become an affiliate.
Design merch for your brand.
Drive traffic to your website.
Enable Instagram shopping features.
Offer Instagram marketing services.
Sell your photos or art online.
Offer exclusive content.
Earn live badges from fans.
Dropship products
Offer paid subscriptions.

Collaborate with brands on sponsored content.

An Instagram influencer is an initiator or celebrity who influences a loyal base of fans and followers. To their audience, influencers are tastemakers, trendsetters, and trusted experts in their fields of skills.

Brands often can’t copy the verity of a real person sharing real moments. Rather, they gain this influence by partnering with initiators who are verified on Instagram and have an audience that overlaps with their target customers. Brands pay influencers for sponsored topics where these initiators promote products within Instagram stories, posts and reels. Dapper, the creator of The Daily, often partners with Disney, which is a great support for his mommy audience.

Brands using Instagram marketing are claiming to have access to an engaged audience of trusted influencers. As an Instagram initiator, though, it’s important to evaluate every opportunity to make sure it doesn’t hurt your brand or products.

If you depend on Instagram advertising for income, be selective about the brands you work with so you don’t alienate your audience. Likewise, brands will want to be picky about the Instagram initiator they work with to ensure there is a match with their worth and audience.

The most famous Instagram account, The Dogist, promotes the pet food brand The Farmer’s Dog, a relatable product to the account’s dog-loving audience.

Typically, you’ll be paid for each post, with your follower count and attention rate setting the price. Nano-influencers, who have 500 to 10,000 followers, get paid between $10 – $100 per post. Micro-influencers, who have 10,000 to 50,000 followers, earn around $100 – $500 each post.

To find brands to collaborate with, you can join various Influencer Marketplaces, tag brands you like, or email them straight with an Influencer Media Kit. Consider of a media kit as a digital display of your work and insights into your audience demographics, follower count, engagement rate and personal value proposition. You can generate a media kit using a portfolio website template or create a PDF with Etsy.

Get paid by Instagram as an Initiator.

Facebook posted that by the end of 2022, they plan to invest more than $1 billion in programs that allow initiators to earn money for the content they create. One of these programs is Creator Fund, which will enable you to monetize your content through IGTV ads, Instagram Live badges and bonuses.

Instagram Live Badges

Being a creator on Instagram isn’t just about the content you post; it’s also about the relationship you have with your followers. You should create an Instagram business account for added credibility, build a strong bond with your supporters and give them the content they want to increase your earnings.

Instagram had this in mind when it generated its Live Badges highlight, allowing fans to show their support for their favourite creators. Live Badges work like a digital “tip” that people can give creators during a live stream. It comes in a heart shape and can be purchased as packages that retail between $0.99 – $4.99.

To add this highlight to your account, go to your “Profile”, click on “Professional Dashboard”, tap on “Grow Your Business”, and select “Badges”. Once live, click the “Badges” icon on the left. Go to your screen and turn them on.

Bonuses

As the name suggests, bonuses reward you financially after you reach certain milestones as a creator on Instagram. If you meet a lot of lives, sign up for IGTV ads, or create the required number of Instagram Reels, you’ve reached certain bonus program milestones to collect your reward. But before you jump in, you should know that the bonus program is currently invite-only, so stay tuned for updates on eligibility.

Open your e-commerce shop.

Initiators of all kinds are in a good position to sell their products, not just products from other brands. Physical things, services, or digital items can be an extension of the creator’s brand, offering value to the audience and allowing them to buy a piece of their favourite online personalities.

The lines between initiator and entrepreneur are blurring, with more and more people owning their freedom and wanting to make money from their art. Pet influencer Loki the Wolfdog parlays Instagram success into his brand Loki Naturals.

Some of the options for selling products and services online include:

Sell services like photography or consulting by sending Instagram users to your professional website.
Offer digital products such as online courses, audio, ebooks, or design presets.
Sell your original products and ship them yourself or through a fulfilment warehouse.
Use drop shipping to sell products without managing inventory and shipping.

Tips:

Creating custom products from scratch can be a long method, from product progress and design to branding, shipping and manufacturing. For a low-lift way to sell products to fans, go to the next idea.

Become an affiliate.

Unlike becoming an influencer and getting paid for every post, as an affiliate, you get paid on commission. The median affiliate commission rate to expect is anywhere between 5% – 30%. Your sales will often be tracked with a unique promo code or UTM link. On Instagram, affiliate programs are often called “Brand Ambassadors.” You can either apply to become one on the company’s website or be contacted by the brand.

The number of followers you have is only one of the definitive factors for brands looking to hire affiliates; they want to see that you’re the right person to connect with their audience.

In advance, you should know that you can only attach product links on the app in your Instagram bio or story (if you have more than 10,000 followers). Since both of these spaces are limited, consider starting a blog with a blog builder and writing SEO-friendly blog posts about products with trackable links. This is a popular method of affiliate marketing.

Design merch for your brand.

The ability to sell products is a natural fit for [content creators] because their abundance of content allows them to spend those moments filling their products,” says Chris Vaccarino, creator of Fanjoy. Fanjoy is a business that helps creators easily create and sell merchandise to fans.

This approach means you don’t need to create separate brands and products from scratch. You need to come up with relevant designs and print them on mugs, t-shirts and art prints using a printing partner.

Here are a few ways to make and sell your stuff:

Use a print-on-demand service to print your products and send them directly to fans.
White-label existing products with your branding. These should be products that are relevant to your brand or content.
Make your items by hand, like silk-screening t-shirts, with your design.

Get traffic to your website.

80% of people interviewed said Instagram helps them discover and buy new products or services. Obviously, the more people see your brand on Instagram, the better the chance they will buy from your website. To help you earn more money online, you can use Instagram to get traffic to your website indirectly indirectly. With the help of all your Instagram visitors, you can increase sales, grow your email marketing list and grow your loyal community of customers.

Enable Instagram shopping features.

As social selling continues to grow, more social media users turn to their favourite platforms to discover and purchase products. This is great news for e-commerce brands and initiators who can now reach Instagram followers and fans where they hang out earlier. Instagram Shopping involves a number of native features that allow social selling.

It all starts with an Instagram Shop, a storefront that’s front and centre for your Instagram account. After clicking the featured button on your profile page, Instagram funnels users to a seamless experience for shoppers to browse and purchase your products.

Apparel brand Miracle Eye has a discrete website but also uses an Instagram shop to give fans one-tap access to its collections.

You can customize your store by creating collections or changing products into themes or gifting occasions. Think of new arrivals, gifts for mom, holiday decorations, summer fun, and more.

Your Instagram shop is a miniature version of your online store with product images, pricing, and details similar to your website. Here, Instagram users have the accessory to buy directly from the platform.

Offer Instagram marketing services.

Do you specialize in Instagram marketing, caption writing or content creation? If so, you might be perfect for taking on an Instagram freelancing gig. By consulting other companies to improve their Instagram marketing methods, you can make a nice profit, charging between $20 – $50 an hour for service fees and even $100 for writing captions.

Book more freelance clients and talk about your favours in your Instagram bio. You can also announce your services on platforms like Fiverr and Upwork. Also, consider adding an online listing to your website so people can book services straight from your site.

Sell your photos or art online.

While video and other features have grown in popularity, Instagram is a photo-sharing app. This makes it a great place for artists and photographers alike to monetize their Instagram accounts by selling prints and originals.

Here are a few ways to do this:

Use a photo marketplace like 500px and link your pages in your bio.
Sell your photos or art as originals or prints through your online store and link to your Instagram bio.
Sell these items straight on Instagram using Instagram Shopping features.
License your work to stock image sites and drive business to your work using Instagram.
Use a print-on-demand service like Printful and Telench to print photos or art onto items like totes, mugs and t-shirts. Promote them in your Instagram content.

Artist Adam Spychla uses his Instagram account to direct followers to his online store, where he sells prints of his work.

Offer exclusive content.

Humans are curious creatures who have a strong desire to keep learning. This is why online course platforms like Coursera, Masterclass and Udacity have acquired a large customer base. If you’re thinking of creating an online course, Instagram is a fantastic outlet to market it and make money with every registration.

An average individual course can start at around $100, while longer, more intensive courses can cost thousands of dollars. But you don’t have to limit yourself to earning only through it. Simple downloadable guides, ebooks, white papers or templates can be other profitable ways to make money on Instagram.

Earn live badges from fans.

Instagram Live Badges are like points you receive from your fans for creating value and creating content you like. If you’re familiar with the tip-based highlights on Twitch and TikTok, you’re all set to start getting money on Instagram just by being you!

During a live stream on Instagram, observers can purchase “badges” that pay the creator directly and unlock features for the viewer. Instagram users can buy badges in boosts of 99¢, $1.99, and $4.99 to support an initial worker’s work.

Dropship products

When starting a business, one factor that usually provides logistical and economic hurdles is the list. However, you can run a store without ever carrying any list, thanks to the dropshipping business ideal.

By starting a dropshipping business, you can select from millions of different suppliers of products such as t-shirts, books, mugs and pillows. You are freed from the hassle of fulfilment and shipping and set your prices to maximize profits. Once you’re ready to elevate your dropshipping business, make a dedicated Instagram page to showcase your products, advertise your site, and increase sales.

Request paid subscriptions.

Once your lovers are hooked on your content, offer them the opportunity to engage with exclusive content just for paying subscribers. Instagram’s subscription program is open to US creators over the age of 18 who have more than 10,000 subscribers.

You can also use third-party mechanisms like Patreon to monetize Instagram from subscriptions. Substack is another subscription opportunity if you want to start a fan-only newsletter with your Instagram page. Or, you can even gate your online shop to offer unique content to signed-in paid subscribers. These options give you the chance to build your email list and own your audience exterior of the platform.

Creator Aliza Kelly promotes both her subscription subscription and her paid society subscription, The Constellation Club, on her popular Instagram page.

Tips to be successful on Instagram

Choose a niche:

Choose a niche to be obsessed with and become an expert at. Gaining followers and brand partnerships will be much easier when you have a clear and specific target audience from the start. For example, the impact on food can be seen very broadly. A good example might be focusing only on vegan or gluten-free foods. Believing in a topic will set you apart from the competition and make you highly suitable for brands in that industry.

Engage with others regularly:

Build a strong community by frequently liking, commenting, messaging and sharing people’s content. Simply taking a pretty shot and hitting “publish” won’t do the trick. Instead, let people know you can see you as a genuine person who is equally interested in other people’s content. Storytelling is a critical part of securing attention across all social media platforms, and Instagram is no anomaly. Improve your storytelling skills in all your content, and it will make a distinction.

Add Tags:

Use geotags, hashtags, and tag brands in your posts and in your branded content. This will help you get discovered by new followers and may even lead to brand-new deals.

Use a multi-channel approach:

Be active on other channels like YouTube and TikTok. Start a blog and newsletter and cross-enable your accounts. This will help you draw relevant people from all angles and expose them to more places to keep your content. Expand your reach to other money-generating platforms, such as Patreon. As a musician, you can use Instagram to enable your music and even include links for fans to download it for a fee. With Patreon, you can increase its monetization potential by offering behind-the-scenes footage or priority access to new or unreleased music.

Be proactive and flexible:

In ten situations that may challenge you, take action with strong messaging about new collaborations. Apply for several ambassador programs and collaborate with many others (even for free when you first start). As you begin your Instagram monetization endeavour, remember Robin Sharma’s words, “Don’t just try to fail.”

Who are the top earners on Instagram?

These ten influencers are regularly conveyed as the highest earners on Instagram. Specifically, all the celebrities who leverage their current reach and status to monetize their accounts are:

Cristiano Ronaldo. Estimated Value of Sponsored Post: $3.2M
Leo Messi. Estimated Value of Sponsored Post: $2.6M
Selena Gomez. Estimated Value of Sponsored Post: $2.6M
Kylie Jenner. Estimated Value of Sponsored Post: $2.4M
Dwayne Johnson. Estimated Value of Sponsored Post: $2.3M
Ariana Grande. Estimated Value of Sponsored Post: $2.3M
Kim Kardashian. Estimated Value of Sponsored Post: $2.2M
Beyonce Knowles. Estimated Value of Sponsored Post: $1.9M
Khloe Kardashian. Estimated Value of Sponsored Post: $1.8M
Justin Bieber. Estimated Value of Sponsored Post: $1.2M

How to Promote Your Business on Instagram to Make Money

Like any business, you need to make sure your Instagram marketing is on point to maximize your chances of generating traffic and making money for your account. Consider paid advertising, a popular way to reach potential customers on social media channels and an important component of all digital marketing methods.

Instagram is a great place to build a society of your target audience and one you can promote regularly and directly. It may take a lot of time and work to gain, but a loyal Instagram following is vital to monetizing your account.

Consider how you can create content that goes viral and is conveyed by thousands of people to increase your advance and extend your society. From funny memes to viral videos and different kinds of content – think big with your reach.

How to Make Money from YouTube in 2024: 7+ Proven Techniques

How to Make Money from Instagram in 2024: 10+ Proven Techniques