Instagram has become one of the world’s most popular mobile applications, with millions of users scrolling through its endless content to find out what their favourite celebs have been up to or to catch up on their friends’ latest antics. Now owned by Facebook’s parent company Meta, Instagram boasts almost 1.5bn users worldwide each month, according to market and consumer data company Statista.
Since it was launched in 2010, Instagram has become the perfect way to show off your recent endeavors to friends and family, whether that means sharing photos of last night’s party, or posting cute snaps of your furry friends. But it can also be a great way of earning some extra cash.
For those of us who enjoy spending time on social media, why not turn that time into a money-making activity. According to Influencer Marketing Hub’s 2020 report, Instagram is the top app for influencers to make money by posting content.
Here, we share several ways of using Instagram to earn money.
Partner with a brand
A great way of making some money on Instagram is through Instagram’s creator marketplace and becoming an influencer. With this, you will be compensated with either gifts or money in exchange for creating and posting content related to a brand or business.
To become an influencer you will need at least 1,000 followers on Instagram and you will typically get paid per post, with the rate you are compensated depending on your number of followers and engagement rate. Nano influencers – those with 1,000 to 10,000 followers – earn between £10 to £100 per post, while mid-tier influencers – those with 50,000 to 500,000 followers – earn around £500 to £5,000 per post.
If you can attract enough engagement to reach mega-influencer status by having more than 1m followers, you could be pulling in around £10,000 per post. The full pricing scale and influencer tiers are published by the Influencer Marketing Hub .
A way of finding brands you want to partner with is by joining influencer marketplaces like CreatorIQ or GRIN. With these sites you can find brands you feel would be a good fit and contact them to organise a partnership.
You also send specific brands your influencer media kit – in other words, an influencer CV – detailing your previous work and insights into your audience, follower count and engagement rate. Sites like Wix have portfolio templates you can use to create your influencer kit.
Open an Instagram shop
Selling items on Instagram is a great way of reaching a broad market of customers. If you already have a business, Instagram is a great way to grow it by promoting items from your shop.
Instagram’s shopping slogan is “Post. Tag. Sell.” and they make it easy to promote items in the content you create. After creating your Instagram shop, you can tag your items in Reels, Stories and by hosting a live shopping event on the app.
After successfully setting up your shop, you can upload images, descriptions and prices of your items which users can discover all while using the app. To enable this feature, Instagram has published a handy step-by-step guide .
Instagram Live Badges
Last year, Meta announced plans to invest more than $1bn in programmes that allow users to earn money for the content they create by the end of 2022. One such programme is their Creator Fund, which allows content creators to monetise their content through Instagram Live Badges.
With this feature, users making live videos can earn money while you are creating content by being sent what is essentially a tip from your viewers. This allows users to show their support to their favourite creators during their Instagram livestream by sending badges in increments of up to $4.99.
Not everyone is eligible to add this feature to their account – to do so, you must be aged 18 or over and have at least 10,000 followers. The feature was initially rolled out in the US and access to badges for eligible creators in the UK is currently invitation-only.
To find out if you are eligible head to Instagram’s settings and tap ‘Creator’ followed by ‘Badges’ to check your invitation status.
Sell your art
For the artistically inclined amongst you, you may be able to cash in your creative talents by selling your photos, drawings or paintings to other businesses. If you are a designer or a photographer, some businesses – like those in the travel industry – may want to buy your content for their own online marketing.
Many users also use Instagram to promote their artistic side by sharing snaps of commissioned drawings or paintings, helping you to reach a huge global audience. If you already have a portfolio of work, Instagram can be a great way to share it and attract more potential clients.
Instagram copywriting
If art is not your thing, but you are a dab hand at writing and feel you can catch an audience’s attention with a snappy turn of phrase, you could earn some money by helping businesses with their Instagram marketing by writing captions for their content. Using websites like Fivver and Upwork are a great way to advertise your services to potential clients who are looking for a freelancer to enhance their online content.
Doing so could earn you anywhere from £20 to upwards of £100, just for writing captions!
READ NEXT:
