8 Legit Ways To Make Money From Instagram

If you’ve thought of how best to make money from Instagram legitimately as a full-time career or a side gig, then consider this post an all-inclusive Instagram earning tricks you need to see today that will drive you from having zero knowledge on how to make money from Instagram to earning up to $1,500 weekly.

Though right now, this might still feel impossible:

• you don’t know how people earn up to $1,500 weekly on Instagram
• growing your account to attract brands that would advertise on your page has become impossible
• you don’t know how to turn your followers into real customers who would buy your affiliate products or your products

You might be on the verge of canceling Instagram as a place to earn money online, but this shouldn’t be so as the Instagram earning tricks you need will be discussed in-depth in the paragraphs below.

Having an Instagram account is a start to this journey, but having the right strategies and knowing the path you want to take is more important.

From growing your audience, and picking your most preferred niche, etc, this post will cover all that you need to know and how to start your new career path.

While I can’t wait to detail these strategies for you, here are common questions asked about making money from Instagram.

Do Instagram users get paid?

Instagram does not pay their users for having a high number of followers, or for using the platform for a while, this is unlike where you get paid by Facebook by allowing ads on your video contents, or when you get paid directly from Google using AdSense.

However, Instagram users earn money using third-party programs like:

Affiliate marketing – you earn a commission when your Instagram followers (or anybody) makes a purchase using your link. Here, you need to register for affiliate programs and promote your affiliated products using the right content that will engage your followers and drive them to make purchases using your link.

Mini Importation – Importing products from other countries and selling these physical products to your followers who follow you for the sake of seeing your newly imported products, and placing their orders.

Drop-Shipping – very similar to mini importation, but here, you don’t own the products, rather you advertise these products and when your followers place orders, you ship the products and direct it to their doorstep or pick-up points.

Instagram Influencers – promoting sponsored products on your page for your followers to see.

All these strategies will be detailed below, with a step-by-step guide on how to pick a path and build it into earning up to $1,500 weekly from Instagram.

Can I make money on Instagram with 1000 followers?

This is one of the most asked questions relating to how to make money from Instagram. But just like earlier said, you only earn money from Instagram when you use third party programs, meaning that you don’t need to have a certain number of followers to earn on Instagram.

Though some brands will need to see a very high volume of followers before paying you to advertise their products or brand on your page.

For instance, Lim Kardashian earns up to $500,000 when she make sponsored posts for brands because of her influence and millions of followers. (currently at 191 million followers).

While you won’t start getting paid on Instagram when you hit 1,000 followers, YouTube is one platform that will allow you to monetize your YouTube page when you reach 1,000 followers and 4,000 watch hours.

NB: good thing is that in our 90% practical course, we will show you how to generate more than 1,000 subscribers, create engaging contents that people will be glued to so that you can reach 4,000 watch hours on YouTube.

Click here to opt-in for our course.

How to make money on Instagram

Instagram is ideal for products or services that appeal to Generation Z and Generation Alpha. Fashion-related products, popular culture, tech, and sports. That is why influencers like Christiano Ronaldo and Kim Kardashian are the top paid Instagram influencers.

Right now you might be asking, “but I’m not a celebrity, how do I grow to earn from Instagram”. read on and we will discuss this below.

1. Become an Instagram influencer

Instagram influencers earn so well from brands who want to advertise their products to those influencers’ followers. This is because people buy or patronize a business partly due to influence from others.

One of the criteria for becoming an Instagram influencer who earns money from Instagram is to have a very high number of followers and have a very high rate of engagement.

How do you grow your follower base, this is the first approach to choosing followers that are not only going to follow your page but would actively follow, engage your posts due to how connected they are to what you offer, so in this regards, this is what to do…

Choose a niche

This is the reason why you need to choose a niche before you kick off – influencers who are niche-specific get more deals from brands that are in the industry they operate on.

For instance, an Instagram influencer who is specifically into skincare products will get deals from skincare brands more than a random Instagram influencer who has thousands of followers without a specific niche.

For instance, Dimma Umeh who is a beauty and fashion Instagram, YouTube influencer gets deals from beauty brands to show their sponsored posts on her IG page, while random influencers with up to 100,000 followers will not get these deals.

Brands know better, they know that more than 80% of Dimma Umeh’s followers are following her because they want to learn more about quality beauty brands and effective beauty products.

Source: Dimma Umeh’s Instagram page

How to pick a niche for Instagram influencer business

Now that you understand the importance of picking a niche before you delve into the Instagram influencer business, this is a list of what to consider before you pick a niche.

• pick a niche that has a higher opportunity – for instance, there are niches with a lot of brands such as the food industry, travel and tours, body fitness and wellness, the beauty industry, etc. Remember that the aim is to be in an industry where you have good chances of securing deals from brands, so you have to actively plan how you choose your niche.
• choose what you have passion for – another way to choose a niche is to go for what you have passion for. People are naturally drawn towards a hubby and they turn it into a means of earning. For instance, most influencers who have a passion for workout and wellness and they turn it into a career path.

• Check out the completion  – knowing your competitors before you take up an influencer business is as important as choosing a niche. This is because you don’t want to be in a niche where there are too many competitors or similar influencers who also battle for just a few deals.

Once you finally choose the industry you want to operate in, the next thing to do in building a career online where you make money from Instagram is to grow your audience.

Grow your audience to make money from Instagram

100% of the time, your deals would come because of your influence on the target audience of the brand, and how much of these target audiences are following your page. So it’s very necessary that you understand that the bigger audience, the better chances of you landing deals.

But “how do you grow your audience base” you might be asking.

These are the strategies to grow your audience.

• share contents that give value to the audience you want to attract –

The easiest way to attract a large follower base is to share contents that give them value.

Alex, from @supercarblondie on Instagram does a very good job to grow the interest of her followers and increase her follower base by showing awesome reviews of cars, and right now, she has a follower base of more than 7 million people, an average of 2,000 comments on her posts and 2 million views.

Right now, she gets paid by car dealership companies, car brands, etc, to review new cool cars.

Another strategy that can boost your visibility once yous tart dropping the right and valuable posts for your followers and future followers is to boost your visibility, this men’s…

• Using the right hashtags
• posting at the right time
• paying for sponsored posts

These will be discussed in detail below.

• Boost your posts’ visibility

Good posts will not make it to the right eyes if you don’t strategically boost your visibility on Instagram.

You can make use of hashtag generating tools to target and see hashtags that popular brands and influencers in your industry make use of. Some tools also show you how often these hashtags are being used.

On a social media network like Instagram, people follow hashtags, and when they see your “valuable posts” quite often, they tend to follow your account.

Source: Instagramer.com

Another way to boost your visibility on Instagram so that you can build your influencer business to make money from Instagram is to post at the right time.

This is very effective because valuable posts that should have been seen by your prospective followers might miss its reach because your prospective followers are not online to see your post.

How do I know when to post?

Check your Instagram insight tool on your mobile device to find out when your existing followers actively engage with your posts.

Here, you can find the best day of the week, the best time of the day, etc.

Also, social media management tools like HootSuite tells you the better time of the day and the best day of the week to post on your page, this is based on data collected from your recent activities.

Another strategy for boosting your post visibility on Instagram is to run “sponsored posts” on Instagram.

This means that you actively promote your post to reach the right audience who might pick interest in your posts.

This is one of the most effective strategies for getting followers for your brand as an influencer.

8 Actionable Ways To Increase Instagram Followers Fast!

2. Partner with brands and make sponsored posts

One of the many Instagram earning tricks that you can use to earn money from Instagram is to partner with brands and make sponsored posts on your page.

This is very similar to influencer marketing but as influencer marketers take gigs from different brands, here you’re partnered with a certain brand to make sponsored posts about their brand on your page.

Here, you’re tied with these brands you partner with, and while you might enjoy some perks, you might also have to sign some agreement not to use products or services from their competitors.

Bigger celebrities sign up for this type of avenue in making money from Instagram using their influence and follower base.

If you’re influential and have authority in your industry, you can go ahead with such a deal.

3. Become an affiliate marketer

Affiliate marketing on Instagram is one of the many Instagram earning tricks that most people leverage to earn money from Instagram.

This is simple:

• pick a niche
• grow your follower base
• use content marketing to create value to your followers
• when you have their attention and know what they need, sell the affiliated products to them

Here is a detailed guide on how to start an affiliate business.

Affiliate Marketing Explained: An A-Z Step-By-Step Guide For Beginners

How To Make Money Online With Affiliate Marketing

Breaking down the basic areas to sort out to grow your avenue in making money from Instagram, here are the guides.

Choose your niche

In choosing a niche, there are a lot of strategies and work you need to put in to find the industry/niche with the most profit, let’s look at these strategies one after the other.

Go over to Similarweb, which is a site to see the top most used sites by industry or by country.

Move over to where you will have to change from “worldwide” to “the country you want to sell your affiliate products to“.

Then click on the “Go” button to see the top ranking websites in your country. This result means that these sites are also the most frequently used sites in your country.

With the sites, you will know what the major population likes to spend their time on. This will include services and products.

Then find any of the sites that have affiliate programs and register on.

Now, you don’t just jump and start advertising any product here, you have to find out the most purchased products, or the “best sellers” products that are flying off their store.

Now that you have picked a niche and products you want to sell, it’s now time to create “valuable posts” that your followers and your prospective followers will love to find on your page.

This is what builds you as one with authority.

Here is how to use content marketing to create valuable posts.

Make posts about the product

To make valuable posts, you already know that there are thousands of people who want to buy these products, you can create valuable content on your page by using these tricks:

• compare products from different brands for the sake of people who want to make a choice from a pool of many
• review new products
• get random testimonials from users who have already bought these products and make a collection of posts that your followers will find valuable
• etc

When you make use of any of these strategies, you can drop your Amazon affiliate links so your followers can buy click and go directly to Amazon from your page.

Josh Burn does this on YouTube, something very similar to what I just explained above.

Note: in growing your follower base, you can take the steps mentioned above for growing followers by running sponsored ads, using hashtags, etc.

4. Become an entrepreneur to earn money from Instagram

One of the Instagram earning tricks is to become an entrepreneur and sell your products to your followers on Instagram.

This is very similar to affiliate marketing, but here, you sell items (bought items or items produced by you) not affiliate products.

This is a similar strategy used by products bought from other stores.

It is a very common practice by so many business owners who sell on Instagram, and the good thing is, you can make use of these strategies mentioned above to grow your follower base.

If you don’t plan to sell other suppliers’ items, then sell your products.

Steps to building your online eCommerce structure.

When building your products or selling other people’s products, you have to make your prospective customers the center of your business – this means that you have to understand how they buy and the qualities they will love.

Understand that you’re not the only vendor on Instagram selling the same item, so make it easy and hassle-free for your customers to shop from you and have the best of experiences.

Here are the steps you need to take while building your eCommerce structure.

1. Set up your Instagram account to be shoppable

With Instagram, vendors can make their page a virtual shop, and this has been made easy by Instagram since they started making their platform a top-tier shopping place.

Features like product tags, the explore button, Instagram checkout, and more, are all you need to make sure you include on your page.

Also, it’s important that you convert your page to a business page so that you can use the Insight feature and other features made for business pages alone.

2. Set up your business website

Though business websites don’t necessarily mean a part of Instagram, for the sake of advanced features that come from having a website, you should have a website for your business.

At some point in your business, you will start running ad campaigns for your store, you will need to integrate the Google analytics tool and other tools on your website to easily ready how your traffic and sales are performing over time.

5. Offer Paid Subscription

One way to make money on Instagram in 2024 is to offer paid subscriptions or exclusive content to your followers.

Instagram’s Subscriptions feature allows creators and businesses to make their channel exclusive to paid subscribers and offer behind-the-scenes clips or updates about their business.

By offering exclusive content, creators can build their email list, own their audience, and maximize their earning potential.

6. Collaborate with Creator

Collaborating with other creators and brands to create sponsored content is a popular way to monetize on Instagram.

This involves partnering with brands to promote their products or services through sponsored posts, branded commercials, and co-creating products.

Influencers can benefit from increased brand awareness, access to new audiences, and potential compensation or free products.

To initiate these collaborations, creators should focus on producing high-quality, engaging content, and actively pitch brands for sponsored content opportunities.

Additionally, they can leverage influencer partnerships to expand their reach and attract potential sponsors.

7.  Coaching or Consulting Services

To offer coaching or consulting services to your followers on Instagram, you can follow these steps:

1. Set up a clear and engaging Instagram profile that highlights your expertise and niche.

2. Offer free coaching sessions or consultations to attract potential clients and showcase your skills.

3. Use Instagram to share valuable content related to your coaching or consulting services to engage your audience.

4. Leverage Instagram’s features such as live streams, stories, and IGTV to connect with your followers and provide insights and tips related to your coaching or consulting services.

5. Utilize third-party tools like Patreon or Substack to earn money from subscriptions and offer exclusive content to your paid subscribers.

By implementing these strategies, you can effectively offer coaching or consulting services on Instagram and attract potential clients.

8. Enable Badges From Fans

Instagram Live Badges is a feature that allows fans to show their support for their favorite creators during live sessions. This feature enables viewers to purchase badges, providing a monetary opportunity for the host.

To enable badges from fans on Instagram, follow these steps:

1. Ensure you meet the eligibility requirements: You must have a Creator or Business account, be over 18 years old, have at least 10,000 followers, and comply with Instagram’s Partner Monetization Policies and Community Guidelines.

2. Go to “Profile,” then “Professional Dashboard”.

3. Select “Grow Your Business,” then tap “Badges”.

4. After badges are turned on, head to your Live tab.5. Click on the “Badges” icon located on the left side of your “Going Live” screen.

6. Confirm that you’ve enabled Instagram Live Badges.

With this feature enabled, you’ll have the opportunity to let your top fans show their support for your content. Instagram Live Badges can be a great way to get creative, connect with your followers, and profit from your online presence

Tips for earning money from Instagram

Now, having gone through this list of Instagram earning tricks, you must understand that there are additional tips that can save you loads of time and resources, and also help you scale your business more than your competitors would.

Don’t buy followers

While trying to grow your follower base to reach the level of your competitor influencers or other vendors, you might want to seek the easy route, but this is a dead-end as Instagram strongly frowns at this.

According to a report from TechCrunch, Instagram has been purging fake accounts, but recently, they made it a headline statement that accounts with fake followers might risk the Instagram ban.

“We’ve built machine learning tools to help identify accounts that use [third-party apps for boosting followers] and remove the inauthentic activity.”

Know your worth

As an influencer, you need to know the rates for so many services in your industry like Instagram live, Instagram posts, 5% engagement rate, etc. While negotiating your pay, you can use this post from Hootsuite to understand the range you should charge.

Promote your business outside Instagram

Every business needs promotion, thus the need to promote your business on other platforms and rake in more traffic.

One of the platforms where you can promote your business is on Nairaland. Click here to find the 5 most effective ways to promote your business on Nairaland

As an influencer, Instagram isn’t your limit, you can also create YouTube channels and also build a strong presence on YouTube while also cross-linking your Instagram account with your YouTube account.

Use digital marketing tools for your business

Every entrepreneur will tell you that time is as important as the goal you want to achieve. This means that as a business owner, or a brand, you must integrate digital marketing and its tools in your business.

Tools like;

• email marketing tools
• analytics tools
• scheduling tools
• graphic design tools
• keyword research tools
• etc, are all important in your new business.

NB: these tools are what we teach in our 90% practical training, alongside real live digital marketing strategies for you to make money online, grow your business or become a freelancer.

Click here to find out more about our training.

FAQs

How many followers do you need to make money from Instagram?

The number of followers needed to make money on Instagram varies depending on the influencer’s niche, engagement rate, and monetization strategy. While some influencers with as few as 1,000 followers can make money, others with millions of followers may not be able to monetize their accounts effectively. Generally, influencers with 10,000 to 100,000 followers can earn $100 to $500 per post, while those with over one million followers can earn $10,000 to $1 million+ per post.

How much does Instagram pay for 1,000 views?

Instagram does not pay creators for views. However, creators can monetize their accounts through sponsored posts, affiliate marketing, selling products, and other strategies. The amount of money earned per post or product sold varies depending on the influencer’s niche, audience size, engagement rate, and monetization strategy.

Do you get paid per view on Instagram?

No, Instagram does not pay creators per view. However, creators can monetize their accounts through various strategies, including sponsored posts, affiliate marketing, selling products, and more. The amount of money earned per post or product sold varies depending on the influencer’s niche, audience size, engagement rate, and monetization strategy.

Conclusion

Planning on how to make money from Instagram, these detailed guides will put you at the right spot to choose the means by which you want to earn from Instagram.

In growing your follower base, all the means mentioned above still require the same strategies. For instance, you can do the following to grow your follower base on Instagram:

• Use the hashtag to boost your post visibility so prospective followers will find your valuable posts and follow your page
• promote your posts
• run targeted ads campaign to boost your page to the prospective followers
• use sponsored posts to boost your visibility
• etc

More Reads

How To Market Yourself Online [Infographic]
25 Proven Ways to Make Money Online 
Ways to drive a returning customer online
Lead Generation and Customer Acquisition Strategies

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