How to be an instagram influencer and make money
How to Become an Instagram Influencer and Make Money
Instagram influencers can earn anywhere between $1000 and $8000 a month, with some of the larger macro Instagram influencers earning six-figure salaries.
It’s no surprise then that plenty of people would like to take a shot at becoming “Instafamous.”
With 17.6% of the world’s current population using Instagram, you can easily gain a large following, if you follow the right steps.
In this article, I’ll teach you how to become an Instagram influencer with this simple guide.
How to Become an Instagram InfluencerHere’s what you need to do to become an Instagram influencer.
1. Choose a Niche You’re Passionate About
To become an Instagram influencer, the first thing you need to do is find a niche that suits your personality. This needs to be something you’re passionate about. Something in which you have a good deal of knowledge and interest.
Just because someone else is doing something and is successful, doesn’t mean you should too.
So, what should you do?
To become an Instagram influencer in any field, you will need to post creative, engaging content regularly. So, selecting the right niche is very important because you will have to spend a considerable amount of time researching it and posting content on that topic.
Maybe you’re great at DIY crafts? Or maybe you love food, and have a great deal of interest in different types of cuisines? Maybe you’re into fashion and the latest styles and trends?
Your Instagram posts should reflect whatever truly interests you and not just random stuff.Your niche might even be a combination of different things, as long as you stick to it.
Example:
Skye McAlpine is an Instagram influencer who blogs about food and travel. Currently, she has over 220 thousand Instagram followers.
Skye posts about all things food and travel, whether it be a new holiday destination or sharing her latest food creations, there’s never a boring moment on her Instagram page.
As an influencer, she uses her platforms to promote her online shop, which sells tableware, cutlery, and decorations.
2. Create a Noteworthy Bio
Once you have decided on your niche, you need to create an attractive Instagram profile.
The very first thing that you need to focus on is creating an Instagram bio that immediately catches people’s attention. It should talk about your story in a way that engages people.
Here are some tips to create an excellent bio if you want to become an influencer:
- Remember your target audience when adding skills.
- Use relevant keywords related to your niche.
- Make sure your contact information is there and easy to read.
- Don’t forget it’s your bio, so don’t be shy to let your personality shine.
Remember, your bio is one of the first things that a brand or a potential follower will see on your account.
So if you want to know how to become an Instagram influencer, you first need to learn how to create an attention-grabbing Instagram bio.
Example:
Influencer and travel blogger Helene Sula has a compelling and attractive Instagram bio.
In the name field, this social media influencer has cleverly included “lifestyle blogger,” which will help her profile to rank higher when people search for lifestyle bloggers.
Her reels and stories are mostly about cultural shocks and what it’s like living in foreign countries.
3. Share Your Stories
If you think you can become an Instagram influencer just by sharing photos, you clearly have it all wrong. The captions that go along with those photos are just as important as the photos themselves.
If you want to become an Instagram influencer your stories need to connect with your social media followers on an emotional level. Give them a reason to trust you, follow you, and engage with you.
However, in your quest towards engaging followers don’t forget to be genuine. Coming off across fake will only turn people off of you.
Instead, share personal stories that are interesting and authentic.
Example:
Check out this inspiring story from a travel blogger named Curbfreecorylee. This social media influencer talks about how he continues traveling with a pre-existing medical condition.
Not only does he inspire people to live their best life, but he offers excellent travel tips for planning your perfect trip.
4. Make Your Instafeed Appealing
This is one of the prerequisites if you want to learn how to become an Instagram influencer. Not only should each of your photos be visually appealing, but your entire feed should look appealing when viewed as a whole.
This means that all of your photos in the feed should look good, individually and collectively.
So, what can you do?
Many Instagram influencers follow a particular style of editing, so that the color and composition of their photos is uniform. You can use photo editing tools like VSCO or Lightroom to edit your photos or you can just use the built-in filters on Instagram.
Also, make sure that your photos are taken in high-resolution and with plenty of light to make them look really good.
Example:
Check out Zoë Sugg’s account on Instagram for an excellent example of uniformity.
Zoe’s photos are all color graded in a similar manner.
She has even used her expertise to create an Instagram template and story planner app called “Template | Story Planner,” which you can find on her website and the Apple Store.
5. Post Content Consistently
Posting content consistently is key if you want to become an Instagram influencer. Most Instagram influencers post daily or once every two days.
However, some of them post a few times a day or even a few times a week.
Studies have revealed that an increase in your content-posting frequency can boost engagement rates. However, when you decide what your posting schedule needs to be, make sure that you choose wisely.
It needs to be something realistic that you can actually stick to.
Setting an unrealistic goal that you cannot adhere to will not help you in any way.
If you find sticking to a schedule difficult, you can schedule your posts with tools like Buffer, Planoly, Preview, or Ripl.
These platforms allow you to create your content in advance and set the dates and times for posting. So you don’t need to do it yourself, but your content gets posted automatically.
Preview is free for use and so is Planoly for 30 photos per month on a single Instagram account.
Buffer allows you to schedule up to 10 posts for free across any 3 of your social accounts.
Ripl offers subscriptions starting at $14.99 per month, but also has a free basic plan with limited features.
What’s more?
You need to remember that posting content isn’t the only important thing. The content that you post must be grammatically correct and should be of high quality.
To ensure that your content quality is top-notch, you can utilize tools such as ProWritingAid.
This tool checks your grammar, style, and helps you find the right words for your content. As a result, you’ll be able to post high-quality content to Instagram.
6. Choose the Right Hashtags
The best tip anyone can give you on how to become an Instagram influencer is to use hashtags. Hashtags are important because they help your content be found by other Instagram users.
Instagram allows you to use a maximum of 30 hashtags on a post, but I recommend starting with three to five hashtags at first.
But what kind of hashtags should you choose?
Remember that hashtags that have high search volumes aren’t necessarily good for you. Because high search volumes imply high competition.
So the chances of your post being discovered using those hashtags are bleak.
Instead, choose hashtags that have decent search volumes and maximize your chances of appearing in the top posts.
Ideally, use a combination of hashtags varying in search volumes from above 10,000 to 1 million.
But definitely, not more than a million.
But how can you find reliable hashtags?
To find the right hashtags for your Instagram posts, I recommend using HashtagsForLikes.
This AI-powered tool goes through your profile and finds the best hashtags for you. Alternatively, you can enter any hashtag on the platform, and it’ll show you its performance. This can help you ascertain which hashtags will create the most impact for you.
If you’re still uncertain about using hashtags correctly, check out my complete guide to using hashtags on Instagram in 2022.
Example:
For example, this post by an influencer uses the hashtag #adventurecouple. This is the top post for this hashtag having search volumes of more than 105,000.
7. Get a Business Account
If you’re serious about learning how to become an influencer, you need to get a business account for your Instagram. There are numerous benefits of switching to a business account.
What are they?
The most important benefit is that with a business account, you get access to Instagram Analytics. You’ll be able to see not only your follower demographics but also which posts are getting better engagement. You will also be able to see the days and times which give you the best engagement.
To become an Instagram influencer, it is important to understand your audience and learn what content works best for them.
Follower demographics are very useful when it comes to pitching to brands for collaboration. Because numbers speak louder than words.
The other advantage you get with a business account is the ability to run ads. You can promote one of your posts if you want, in order to get some additional engagement.
So, getting an Instagram business account is an important step if you want to become an Instagram influencer.
8. Leverage Instagram Stories
Instagram Stories are probably the biggest thing right now on Instagram.
More and more users and influencers are joining this bandwagon.
In fact, more than 500 million Instagram users are using them every day. This makes them a perfect weapon to grow more followers and gain visibility.
Even people who aren’t your followers can discover you from your Instagram Stories. By adding hashtags or locations to Instagram Stories, you can be discovered by more people. And if you have 10,000+ followers, you can include an outbound link using a “swipe up” option on Stories.
What’s more, you ask?
You can even tag others on your Stories and give a shout-out to other accounts.
This is not only a great way of building relationships but also growing your own following. Because those accounts are likely to return the favor too. And this means you get more visibility.
Because of these benefits, a lot of influencers use Instagram Stories. And if you are serious about becoming an Instagram influencer, you should start using Stories now.
9. Engage Meaningfully
Social media is all about people and how you engage with them. Engagement is one of the most important factors that will help you become an Instagram influencer.
When someone comments on your photos, make sure that you reply to them.
Also, return the favor by liking and commenting on their posts.
Here’s a checklist that you can use to increase the engagement rate on your posts and become an Instagram influencer:
- Include a call-to-action in your caption
- Post at a time when you’re likely to get maximum engagement (use insights if you have a Business Account to find the best times)
- Host giveaways and contests
- Use polls in Instagram Stories
- Follow similar accounts and engage with their content
- Use popular and relevant hashtags or create your own hashtags
You can use the “Explore” option on Instagram to find content that you can engage with.
Also, you now have the option of following hashtags so that relevant content shows up in your feed.
10. Tag Relevant Brands and Contact Them
There are actually two stages of learning how to become an Instagram influencer. The first, of course, is to grow your followers organically and engage them.
The second, and probably more important for some, is to make money as an influencer.
So, once you have grown your followers above a thousand and have a decent engagement rate, start your brand outreach.
The easiest way is to tag relevant brands on your photos to put yourself on their radar. Sometimes brands even feature such photos on their Instagram account giving you greater visibility.
Here’s a great example of micro-influencer Johnny Hochstetler showing off some of his tech and adding Apple as a hashtag to the post.
What else can you do?
You can also send direct messages to brands you think are relevant to your niche. Especially, if you have seen them collaborate with other influencers in your field.
Work on a pitch that talks about why you are reaching out and what you can offer them. I’m not saying it’s easy but you might be pleasantly surprised at the responses.
You can even join platforms like Grin, InsightPool, HYPR, InfluencerBay, TRIBE, and TapInfluence to find and connect with relevant brands.
Some of these platforms need you to have a certain number of followers to be able to participate in campaigns. So, use this channel when you have reached a certain follower count.
11. Do Not Buy Followers
This is a rookie mistake I’ve seen many Instagram influencers make to pave an easy road to success. Paid followers are no good to you. If you want to become an Instagram influencer and make money, organic leads are the way to go.
Yes, I know it’s not easy and it certainly won’t happen overnight. But hey, there’s no easy road to success.
Paid followers can be detrimental to your growth because these followers won’t be engaged enough.
So your follower count will increase without any substantial increase in engagement.
What’s more?
It’s not that difficult for brands to identify influencers with paid followers. If someone realizes that you have a high percentage of fake followers, you could lose your credibility in the industry. This could affect all of your future collaborations or lack thereof.
Getting caught having paid followers can be detrimental to your success as an influencer. If you’re really serious about your goal to become an Instagram influencer, you need to do it the right way.
FAQsQ1. How do you become a paid Instagram Influencer?
A. The time it takes to become an influencer on Instagram depends on your ability to identify a niche and grow an audience that trusts and looks to you for recommendations.
Once you have more than 1,000 followers, you can start trying to monetize your Instagram channel.
This can be done through affiliate links with brands, sponsorships or even launching your own brand and online shop.
For more on monetizing your Instagram channel, click here.
Q2. How long does it take to become an Instagram influencer?
A. The time it takes to become an influencer on Instagram depends on your ability to identify a niche and grow an audience that trusts and looks to you for recommendations.
Q3. How much does an Instagram influencer make a year?
A. How much an influencer makes yearly depends on their followers, engagement rates, number of brands they work with per year, and other partnership specifics.
And although there's no one-size-fits-all price, most brands follow the $100 for every 10k followers or one cent per follower rule. But that's just the basic starting point.
Brands will also consider an influencer's engagement, the campaign's length, budget, and other factors.
Q4. How many Instagram followers do you need to become an influencer?
A.
Unfortunately, there's no magic number to becoming an Instagram influencer. You also need to have engaged followers and influence over their decisions.
However, there are numbers you can use to get an idea of how many followers you need to become an influencer:
1,000 to 5000 followers – Nano-influencers
5,000 to 100,000 followers – Micro-influencers
More than 100,000 followers – Macro-influencers
Global figures or household names including successful artists, musicians, actors, sportspeople, etc. are called mega-influencers and have millions of followers.
Q5. Is it too late to become an influencer?
A. No. It's not too late, but you will have to work harder to ascend to the same level of fame those already in the industry have attained.
The influencer industry is now saturated, and anyone with a voice worth following or an expert in something can be an influencer.
Therefore, to succeed, you need to offer something different, be relatable, and gain high engagement.
You also need to have something you can bring to the table for brands looking for partnerships.
Q6. How can I become an influencer overnight?
A. Becoming an influencer overnight is not possible.
You have to invest time, effort, and resources. It will also involve finding a niche, building a brand, garnering engaged followers, etc., which takes time.
Q7. Is becoming an influencer hard?
A. Yes, and it takes more than posting engaging photos.
It also:
– Takes time to establish yourself
– Has no regular hours
– Attracts criticism and bullies
– Requires a full-time commitment
– Requires skills to help with marketing, branding, PR, research, data analysis, post-processing, – web management, writing, etc.
– Demands flexibility to keep up with changing trends and audience behavior
– Calls for authenticity and uniqueness to stand out
– Offers an unstable income until you become successful
Ultimately, it takes hard work, patience, consistency, time, and a creative mind that consistently produces unique and engaging content.
Q8. Can you be an influencer with 1000 followers?
A. Yes.
With authentic engagement, influence, and an audience that trusts you, you can become an influencer even with just 1000 followers.
It’s true that you cannot become an Instagram influencer overnight. You will need to be patient and make sure that you follow the above steps, to become an Instagram influencer.
It might take a few months, but trust me, you will definitely start seeing results.
I’ve seen and helped quite a few individuals land brand partnerships within a few months of following these steps. And there’s no reason why you can’t do so as well.
Can you think of any other tips on how to become an Instagram influencer? Let me know in the comments below. And if you’re looking for some personal guidance to become an Instagram influencer, get in touch with me now!
7 Best Ways to Make Money on Instagram in 2022
This guide will explore 7 quick and easy methods for how to make money on Instagram.
You’ve probably heard stories of Instagrammers cashing in on the pictures they snap and share every day. You might’ve even looked at your own sizable following and thought, “Maybe I can do that full time too.”
Together, social media reach and influence offer the opportunity for Instagram creators to explore multiple streams of potential revenue, whether they want to build an empire or just earn some extra cash and free stuff.
Shortcuts ✂️
- How to make money on Instagram
- How much do Instagram influencers make?
- How many Instagram followers do you need to make money?
- Getting paid on Instagram and beyond
- Make money on Instagram FAQ
Free Webinar: How to Grow and Monetize Your Instagram Account
A free workshop with field-tested Instagram marketing tips. Learn how to grow your Instagram audience and monetize it with an online store.
Reserve your seat now
How to make money on Instagram
- Collaborate with brands on sponsored posts
- Become an affiliate
- Open your own ecommerce store
- Create an Instagram shop
- Sell your photos online
- Monetize your content
- Sell old stuff
The methods that may work the best for you will depend on your unique brand of Instagram content, your target audience, and your level of commitment.
The beauty here is that chasing one revenue stream doesn’t necessarily rule out another.
So let’s start with the most common approach to Instagram monetization: partnering with brands as an influencer.
1. Collaborate with brands on sponsored content
The term “Instagram influencer” gets thrown around a lot these days.
An influencer is basically anyone who’s built themselves an online reputation by doing and sharing awesome things online. To their audiences, influencers are tastemakers, trendsetters, and trusted experts whose opinions about certain subjects are respected.
Many brands just can’t compete with that, so they partner with influencers on sponsored content like posts, Reels, and Stories that help get the word out about their products.
But it’s not just the follower count and reach of your Instagram account that brands want—it’s your audience’s trust and engagement with high-quality content.
It can be hard to balance your revenue as an influencer and your integrity as a creator, but if you’re not relying on your Instagram marketing income to stay afloat, you always have the freedom to be selective about the brands you work with, just as brands will be selective about the Instagrammers they work with.
How to decide what to charge as an influencer
Typically these influencer deals involve the creation of content—Instagram ads, a post, a video, or a Story—and will sometimes include permission for the brand to use this content on their own site or in an ad.
Most of these deals are negotiable and can involve a single post or an entire campaign in exchange for a fee, a free product, a service, a gift, the promise of exposure, or some combination of these.
Keep in mind when negotiating that you’re not just offering content but access to your audience—a potentially large reach on one of the most popular social media platforms around—and usage rights.
The average influencer who has upward of 100,000 followers charges up to $500 per post, just to give you an idea of what some brands are willing to pay and how to negotiate based on the cards you’re holding.
Finally, it's important as an influencer to also know your own audience.
What is the makeup of your audience, and what is your engagement rate (total engagement divided by your number of followers)? You can dig up numbers to back this up in your Instagram analytics report, if you’ve switched to a business account. This will help you be prepared when it comes time to negotiate.
How to find brands to work with
If you’re big enough, chances are brands will find you. But you can also look for brands to work with that are on a similar level in terms of personality and values, so your audience won’t feel like you’re “selling out.”
You can reach out to them directly to try to work out a deal, but you can also list yourself on one of the many influencer marketplaces out there to increase your chances of being discovered, including:
- Fohr.
Connect your Instagram, blog, YouTube channel, and other social platforms to create an influencer “card” that shows your different profiles and total reach to brands shopping for a partnership. You can also access a list of brands and their wants, so you can take the initiative to reach out too. - Crowdtap. Do small content creation tasks to earn rewards. This is great if you’ve got a smaller audience. Available in the US only.
- indaHash. Brands post campaigns you can participate in. Post a picture with the specified hashtags on Instagram and get paid. You need at least 700 engaged followers to be eligible.
The rules vary when it comes to sponsored content, but to be on the safe side and respect your audience’s trust, consider adding a #sponsored hashtag to indicate sponsored posts.
You can find examples of sponsored posts and how Instagrammers integrate brands into their story or caption by searching #sponsored on Instagram, like this one from How He Asked, an account that shares wedding proposal stories and partners with a jewelry business:
Instagram also has a “Paid Partnership with” tag that prominently identifies sponsored posts, which some brands might require you to use to disclose your relationship with them.
2. Become an affiliate
Unlike an influencer, an affiliate is more invested in making sales for the partner brand—not just generating awareness—in exchange for a commission.
This is typically done with a trackable link or unique promo code to ensure clicks actually translate into sales. Use a mix of clickable links in your Instagram bio and Instagram Stories or through stickers. Since you can’t put links in Instagram posts, you can create promo codes so you can make money from different angles.
Consider reaching out to one of the many online merchants offering affiliate programs. Or you can explore popular marketplaces like:
- ClickBank. An affiliate platform with a tier-based commission that’s open to everyone.
- LTK. An invitation-only fashion and lifestyle influencer network that offers 20% commissions.
- Amazon Associates. A popular option that pays out a 10% commission.
Though it sounds like a numbers game, affiliate marketing is also an art, and you’ll have a better chance at success if you have a plan going into it and expand your online presence to include a website and other marketing channels.
Tip: Affiliate links can be long and ugly, so I recommend a URL shortener like Bitly, especially if the links are going in your Instagram bio.
3. Open your own ecommerce store
By now it might sound like the only way for an Instagrammer to make money is to sell out and work with other brands.
But creators of all kinds are in a good position to “sell out” with their own products: physical goods, services, or digital items that can be an extension of their brand, building a business with an audience at its center.
The ability for [content creators] to sell products is just so natural because their abundance of content allows them to have those moments of plugging their products.
Chris Vaccarino, founder of Fanjoy
You need to invest some time upfront, but in today’s world, it’s almost natural for creators to make the leap to entrepreneurship. That’s becoming easier with the growing list of Instagram tools available to build an audience.
Just look at Loki the Wolfdog, one of the biggest Instagram dog-preneurs of his time.
By selling your own stuff, you don’t need to worry about integrating messages from other brands into your posting strategy. Better yet, you can get your own brand out there on the products you sell.
Fans can show their love and support your work by buying from you—a purchase they can feel good about.
There are a few ways to sell your own merch:
- You can use a print-on-demand service to print and ship your own t-shirts, pillows, coffee mugs, wall art, and more.
- You can sell services such as photography or consulting using your bio to direct interested people to a contact email or a link to your professional website.
- You can sell digital products such as online courses, ebooks, or design templates.
- You can use your Instagram business account to launch a startup selling your own original products. You can use dropshipping fulfillment so you don’t have to deal with holding inventory or returns.
Superpowered social links
Linkpop is a tool that lets you create a customized landing page for all your brand links. It’s free, customizable, and best of all: shoppable.
4. Create an Instagram Shop
The past few years have been huge for ecommerce brands and creators who want to sell on social media. Instagram has released a ton of features under the Instagram Shopping umbrella, which allows people to easily shop your business’ videos and images on the platform.
Instagram shopping tags are so effective—and over 130 million people are tapping on shopping tags every month—because they allow people to go from product inspiration to product information in just a few taps."
Taylor Loren, in an edited excerpt from the course How to Make Money on Instagram
It all starts with an Instagram shop, a.k.a. your storefront. There, you can share your story and sell products.
Instagram provides a sleek experience for shoppers to browse and buy your collections. All you need to set up Instagram Shopping is a Business or Creator account.
You can customize your shop by creating collections or curated products presented in themes. Common themes include new arrivals, gifts, or seasonal trends.
Just like your online store, you can also create product description pages in your shop. Here you can include all relevant product information, like pricing and descriptions. You can send people to your website to complete a purchase or let them buy through the app using Instagram checkout.
It doesn’t stop there. People can also buy your products throughout Instagram via features like:
- Shoppable posts and Stories. You can use product tags to showcase items from your catalog in videos and images. People simply need to tap to learn more about an item.
- Shoppable ads. You can also add product tags to ads and extend the reach of your shoppable posts.
Setup is simple inside Ads Manager, or you can boost existing Instagram posts in your feed.
- Instagram Shop tab. Instagram’s shopping tab is a destination for people looking to discover new brands that are relevant to them. This helps you more easily reach new customers on the app.
- Live shopping. Do you love livestreaming content? Then you’ll find Instagram live shopping helpful for making money. Just go live and tag products from your catalog (or Facebook shop) to feature in your broadcast. The product will show up at the bottom of the screen, where people can tap to purchase instantly.
The best part? Setting up an Instagram shop is free. You’ll only pay a commission if someone purchases through Instagram checkout.
5. Sell your photos online
Someone might get famous on Twitter by telling 140-character jokes, but Instagram is a photo-sharing app at its core. And photos are assets that can be licensed, printed, and sold in a variety of ways.
If photography is what got you into the Instagram game in the first place, you can list your photos in marketplaces like 500px or Twenty20, where brands and publishers might license them.
However, you can also sell your photos as prints and on other physical products using a similar method described in the last section. Services like Printful and Teelaunch let you put your photos on posters, phone cases, pillows, and more, taking care of fulfilling orders and customer service, so all you really need to worry about is making sales.
Take the story of Daniel Arnold, who, according to an interview in Forbes, went from “eating toast three meals a day” to making $15,000 in 24 hours by offering to sell prints of his popular-but-controversial photos. If you've already got the demand, all you need to do is take the initiative and offer your audience the opportunity to buy your photography from you.
6. Monetize your content
Monetize your videos with ads
Another way for entrepreneurs to make money on Instagram is through in-stream video ads.
With these ads, brands can promote themselves within the videos you produce.
How much you earn depends on the amount of views your video gets, or “Monetizeable Plays,” according to Instagram. You’ll get 55% of ad revenue generated from each view, paid monthly to your bank account.
Turn on In-stream Video Ads and start earning in three steps:
- Go to Account Settings. Tap Creator, then In-Stream Video Ads.
- Tap Get Started. Read and agree to the terms and conditions.
- Toggle Allow Monetization on your existing Instagram videos, then tap Continue to finish.
To earn through In-Stream Video Ads, your content must be original and you need to own the rights to any music. Your video needs to be two minutes or more to monetize. Images, polls, looping videos, slideshows, or text montages don’t qualify.
Live badges
Live badges are a newer feature, helping creators and influencers make money on Instagram.
A popular concept taken from Twitch and TikTok, think of Instagram Live badges as tips you can receive during a live broadcast.
With this feature, viewers can purchase a badge during the livestream that shows in the comments and unlocks features, including a place on the creators’ badge list and access to a special heart.
People can buy:
- One heart for $0.99
- Two hearts for $1.99
- Three hearts for $4.99
7. Sell old stuff
If you’re not an influencer and just want to make some extra cash, Instagram is a great place to sell old stuff. Whether it’s furniture, clothing, collectors items or even Mason jars, you can make side income selling it on Instagram. Plus, you can declutter your home and help save the environment.
Take Lavender Loveseat, for example. Based in Chicago, the team finds older pieces of furniture, refinishes them, and sells them through Instagram. The brand shares fun, entertaining content on its page to attract buyers and earn sales.
Read More: From Likes to Dollars: Here's How to Sell Your Products on Instagram
How much do Instagram influencers make?
There are a number of factors that determine how much an Instagram influencer makes. They can earn anywhere from a few dollars to a million dollars per post.
The amount you make depends on a few factors:
- Number of followers
- Engagement rates
- Affiliate marketing tactics
The good news? There is room for any size account to make money on Instagram. There are generally five tiers of influencer marketing, broken down by follower count.
- Nano-influencer: 1,000–10,000 followers ($10–$100 per post)
- Micro-influencer: 10,000–50,000 followers ($100–$500 per post)
- Mid-tier influencer: 50,000–500,000 followers ($500–$5,000 per post)
- Macro-influencer: 500,000–1 million followers ($5,000–$10,000 per post)
- Mega-influencer: 1 million+ followers ($10,000–$1 million+ per post)
If you don’t have a lot of followers, don’t get discouraged.
Earning your followers’ trust and engaging with them will help your account grow. More than the number of followers, brands look for influencers to work with that have an active following.
So even if you only have 1,000 followers, you can still make some real money. To give you a little inspiration, here are some examples of the top non-celebrity influencers who have made the most of Instagram with their accounts:
- Lele Pons: 46 million followers
- Charli D'Amelio: 44.4 million followers
- Addison Rae: 40.1 million followers
- Sommer Ray: 26.8 million followers
Related Article: It’s Your Time to Shine: How to Find and Work With Instagram Influencers
How many Instagram followers do you need to make money?
If by now you’re wondering how many followers you need to start bringing in real revenue, the short answer is: not as many as you think.
The long answer depends on factors that range from:
- What niche you’re in and how easily you can directly tie it to a product category (fashion, food, beauty, and fitness are popular niches, based on top Instagram hashtags)
- How engaged your followers are (100,000 fake followers won’t amount to much)
- Which revenue channels you explore
Naturally, the more engaged followers you have, the better. Check out our tips on how to get more followers on Instagram.
While top Instagrammers make thousands of dollars per post, even those with small but engaged followings of 1,000 have the potential to start making money.
Getting paid on Instagram and beyond
What started as a hobby—making people laugh, doing silly photoshoots with your dog, or sharing pictures of food—can snowball into the chance to turn your Instagram page into a source of income fuelled by your engaged following. But why stop there?
There’s a world of possibilities for creators to make money on the web.
If you want to open up more revenue streams online, be sure to check out our tips on how to make money on YouTube. Your Instagram followers are bound to join you on other channels. You just have to open the doors for them to walk through.
Ready to create your business? Start your free 14-day trial of Shopify—no credit card required.
Make money on Instagram FAQ
Can you get paid on Instagram?
Yes. You can get paid on Instagram in the following ways:
- Create sponsored posts for brands that want to get in front of your audience
- Become an affiliate and making a commission selling other brands’ products
- Create and selling a physical or digital product or offering a paid service
- Set up an Instagram Shop
- Sell licenses for your photography or videos
- Monetize your content
How many followers do you need to make money on Instagram?
The more followers you have on Instagram, the more money you can make.
Rates are also determined by engagement, quality of content, name recognition, audience demographic, and skill set. The standard is $10 per 1,000 followers, but can vary depending on your contract and sponsor.
How much money does 10K Instagram followers bring in?
Micro-influencers, or accounts with 10,000 followers or less, can make around $88 per post on Instagram.
How to become an influencer on Instagram: a step-by-step guide
Instagram has long turned from a platform for sharing photos and impressions into a business platform and an opportunity to monetize your business or yourself as a brand. In 2021, as in 2020, influencers are still at the helm and it is through them that huge arrays of advertising will pass.
More than 80% of Instagram users follow company pages. This means that brands will continue to actively promote services and products through bloggers. Brands will spend around $15 billion on influencer marketing by 2022, according to Mediakix.
In 2019year the amount was only 8 billion dollars.
According to Business Insider, 79% of brands use Instagram for influencer campaigns, 46% use Facebook, 36% YouTube, 24% Twitter, and 12% LinkedIn.
Today, being an influencer is not only pleasant in terms of communicating with subscribers and forming your own cultural or social layer, conveying your ideas, but also trite because it is profitable. In the US market, influencers charge between $75 and up to $3,000 per post.
And if earlier large advertisers used to advertise only on the profiles of celebrities (stars, actors) with a million audience, today brands are increasingly turning to nano-bloggers, influencers in specific narrow niches for help.
How to Become a Successful Instagram Influencer
One of the fundamental principles that is always important to keep in mind if you plan to be an influencer is that you must be trusted by your followers. Gather a high-quality, albeit small, audience loyal to you and your ideas.
Try to be honest, open and unique in your profile. Communicate with your audience as equals. To create a trusting relationship with the audience, you have to work hard. Get ready to devote a lot of time, effort and energy to your Instagram, carefully select topics and posts, post content regularly. You will have to show dedication if you really want to become an influencer.
In the heyday of Instagram blogging, many people mistakenly assume that becoming an influencer is mega easy. But it is not so. Anyone can become an influencer, but it takes effort. Blogging is not just an abundance of emoticons in the text, a photo of your breakfast and coffee. To Become an Instagram Influencer:
- Use your personal photo as your profile photo. It's the first thing subscribers see. It is advisable not to change the avatar too often and be recognizable on it, so that subscribers can easily see whose content they are consuming.
- Build and maintain your personal brand.
In particular, identify yourself. Are you a travel blogger, dog lover, party animal, wine connoisseur, body positivity advocate, or seafood lover? Choose a couple of things, characteristics that make you different from others. Some personal touch. There are a lot of dog lovers, but you have to find something to stand out from a new angle. Perhaps you are a zoopsychologist or you travel with a dog by car to non-trivial places. - Be clear about who you are and what you're talking about in your profile header. And if something has changed, be sure to update the text. If you cannot form in a couple of lines what you and your profile are about, then you have not decided for yourself. Then the logical question is: what needs of subscribers will you cover? To figure out what your profile might be about, ask yourself: what do you like the most? What are you good at? What could you write about just like that, without even getting paid? What is important and interesting to the audience?
- Have frank conversations with your audience, find out what they like.
- Never resort to gray or black methods of cheating subscribers. Inactive bot accounts will ruin your statistics and results in the feed.
- Don't forget to post your face regularly. People prefer to see a real person in profiles, and not just beautiful photos or great texts. And even if you, as it seems to you, have the most ordinary life without adventures, travels, career achievements, remember that you can always find your audience and become popular if you show your personality and find your own peculiarity.
- Be clear about who your target audience is. Who are these people, what are they, what are they fond of, what ideas do they support. And starting from this portrait of a potential audience, try to give them the content that they need. If you want to be an Instagram influencer, and not just run a page like a personal photo diary, then you must first give content and topics that are interesting to your audience. This does not mean that you have to adapt and write on uninteresting topics, but keep the needs of the audience in focus.
- Be open and honest with your audience so that you have a strong connection.
- Engage subscribers in a dialogue, ask them to comment, express their opinion. Reciprocate them, don't skip reactions or comments. Go to your followers' profiles and give them feedback too.
- Create a content plan, keep stories or texts in reserve in case there is no inspiration or fresh updates. Get serious about creating and posting content on a regular basis. Get inspired by other profiles, Pinterest pictures or people's stories. If you need help, use the content posting planners. This will free up time and make the feed more organized.
- Work on the aesthetics of your profile. Use some photo editing software. Create a unified blog style. If possible, select photos for posts so that they look harmonious in the overall grid.
- When your profile becomes interesting to advertisers, don't betray yourself and your audience with inappropriate rude advertising. Collaborate only with those profiles that really resonate with you, that the audience will like and will not cause confusion.
Agree, if you are a childfree who lives with two cats and likes to drink pinot noir in the evenings, it is unlikely that advertising for children's toys will be adequately perceived by your audience. - Keep a balance of advertising and non-advertising content. Even if partner brands are great for your audience, do not forget that there may be too many ads.
- If you are not ready to reveal any details of your personal life or secrets, then feel free to set boundaries, clearly, but without aggression, clarify with subscribers what questions you definitely should not ask. An influencer has the right to personal boundaries and is not obliged to turn the soul inside out.
- Learn how to competently interact with haters, determine the edges when you just need to block. If you see a frank hater - do not enter into long discussions with him, most likely he is not here in search of answers and the truth, but to merge his negativity.
- Remember to post regularly to stories.
Stories on Instagram sell, increase awareness and reach. - Write good texts. Do not just write unsubscribes or long reads. Take a copywriting course or analyze the texts you like in terms of the writing techniques used. Read more of those posts that resonate with you to train your skills.
- Choose the right hashtags. Don't choose too high volume, use a combination of hashtags with different search volumes from 10,000 to 1 million. But definitely not more than a million.
- Go to a business profile to access analytics. Add email, contacts, so that it is easy for brands to contact you.
- Use Instagram's analytics tools. Analyze the audience, popular posts.
- Inspire your audience. For example, for challenges, revision of habits or ideas, for healthy eating or for solo travel and exploration of the world, yourself.
- Interact with the audience regularly. Add links to projects, materials that you want to share in the header. Use calls to action.
- Create a community, a safe space where there will be common interests, support and an interesting exchange of resources and ideas.
- Tag your favorite brands/places for free.
- Interact with other influencers. Arrange general broadcasts, share the audience.
- Invest in paid promotion to attract your audience.
- Decide whether influencership is your main income or additional income and interesting pastime. It is important to understand the goal and, based on it, build your profile.
- Estimate yourself: how much is advertising in your profile. To do this, you need to study the engagement statistics, analyze the audience, average prices in the market.
- Create an interesting and unusual pitch for advertisers.
- Invest in a phone with a good camera, lighting, photography equipment. On Instagram, visuals are very important.
- Live and enjoy real life. This way you will be more likely to produce interesting, relevant content for your audience.
We also recently looked at how much Instagram influencers actually earn.
How an Instagram Influencer Finds Advertisers
According to a Morning Consult survey, 54% of Gen Zers and millennials would like to become social media influencers. Members of this generation themselves trust influencers more than just celebrities when it comes to online content.
Millennials are willing to "sell" the brands they like at a relatively low price. This state of affairs makes nano-bloggers and influencers even more in-demand businesses. Brands are increasingly targeting the average user and less and less the exorbitantly expensive celebrity ads.
Rakuten Marketing conducted a 2019 survey showing brands spending 40% of their annual brand spend on micro-influencers and 28% on stars.
Most often, brands focus on the reach of your profile and niche. That is, if you have a small but active audience that shows high engagement, then the chances of attracting the advertiser's attention are very high.
In addition, the niche you occupy is very important for companies. If your niche fits perfectly with your marketing strategy, then a partnership is very likely.
But don't forget that you have to match the brand, its values and hit the tone of voice. Relatively speaking, even if your audience suits a certain brand, but, for example, all your posts are with humor and slang, then it is unlikely that a Swiss watch brand will approve of your writing style. In this case, if you write an absolutely serious selling post that is not typical of your profile, then the ad will obviously not be native. Think carefully about partnering with brands.
Research brands you like and share values with and be the first to partner with them. Most likely, companies will be keenly interested in your profile.
In times of a pandemic, influencers and their content are even more important to business than before. Studio licked advertising shootings “come” to buyers sitting at home many times less than “domesticated” advertising.
And although the cost of influencers has decreased by 3% since the beginning of last year, by May 2020 they have returned to normal.
How to Become a Demanded Influencer: 5 Important Rules
If anyone still had doubts that being an influencer is also a profession, then in the context of the pandemic, the last prejudices have completely disappeared. The number of bloggers is growing every day, but not every one of them can be called an influencer. To really become successful and in demand, you need to give yourself to the cause with all your heart.
If you want to be interesting to the public and potential advertisers, then you need to meet a large list of requirements. Sounds scary and impossible? But in any job, it takes effort to be successful, right? Here also. Not only that, in the world of influencer marketing, at least there are clear criteria that must be met in order to achieve real success. The most important condition for becoming a sought-after influencer sounds simple: you must be patient and work tirelessly.
We are dealing with Evgenia Gordienko, author of the first book in the CIS on influencer marketing: “How to work with bloggers the right way”, co-founder of the production center for bloggers, ex-Nike marketer, speaker at TEDx and Synergy Digital Forum.
Identify the niche you want to be successful in and focus all your efforts on it. Now you can't spray. You can move away from your subject later to add variety and show the range of your interests, but not before you get the basic authority in the intended area.
Develop a content plan for your actions, be consistent. For example, if you post ten posts a week on your feed, use the 5-3-2 rule. Five posts should be relevant to your topic, but not belong to you - repost from the pages of bloggers with a similar audience, express your opinion on the information presented in an environmentally friendly way. The three posts must be created by you, be of high quality, and deliver value to your audience and potential customers.
And two posts can carry information directly about you and your life. For example, get to know your audience by posting ten facts about yourself, three of which are wrong, and ask them to guess which ones. Ideally, if the first to guess will be offered some kind of prize. Do not be afraid to also share not only positive emotions, sometimes it is useful to dilute the material with an honest story about negative experiences. Avoid politics and religion if you are not a politician or a minister of the church, otherwise the above negative experience will not be avoided. Talk about your achievements, because people are drawn to success.
The more you build up your “expertise” in a certain area, the more you will attract an active live audience. Bloggers with more than five thousand subscribers become attractive to advertisers. What criteria are used to select and search for influencers, you can find out from my book “Inflence-marketing: how to work with bloggers the right way”.
This information will give you an understanding of how to become more attractive to potential customers. For example, why is it not necessary to cheat subscribers? Because it is very easy to figure out and ruin your reputation.
Yes, recruiting real subscribers is a time-consuming process, but it is better and more rewarding. Instagram has a fair amount of tools to help match you with the right audience. This is targeted advertising, and the possibility of collaboration with other bloggers, and hashtags. By the way, about them. The service allows you to add up to 30 hashtags under each post, use them all. Focus not only on the popular ones, with which you can get lost among the competitors, but also on the original ones. Tag the pages of brands and people with whom you are targeting potential collaborations. Show your imagination, look at yourself and your page from the outside. Choose the "hottest" time for posting. Hubspot conducted a study of the statistics of the highest activity of people on social platforms.
