How to get paid brand deals on instagram
How To Make Money on Instagram in 2022 (7 Best Ways)
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.
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- 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
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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 They 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 fueled 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 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 Get a Paid Instagram Sponsorship (Land Your First Collab)
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Figuring out how to get a paid Instagram sponsorship wasn’t easy for me. I can’t tell you how many free products I took or how many times I undercharged for my sponsorships because of something I read on Google.
All that bad advice was written by social media experts who was never actually an influencer themselves. Learning how to properly pitch to brands and sell my content creator services was the game-changer.
Pitching brands it a great way for new and current influencers to get in front of companies and grow their portfolio (while making $$$). And it can actually be quite simple once you master the tested strategies we’ll go over in this post!
So, as a full-time influencer and coach, I want to lay out everything you need to know about working with brands on Instagram—whether that’s through email pitches or within the new Instagram Creator Marketplace (more on that soon).
These are the same tips I give my Instagram influencer course students.
Written by Influencer Coach Dani The Explorer
Paid Instagram Sponsorship Must-Knows
Let’s start with a few need to know details.
Why Should You Monetize Your Instagram?
Regardless of whether or not you see yourself becoming a full-time influencer, the fact that you have the opportunity to monetize an Instagram page in the first place is huge!
And you do not have to be a full-time influencer like me to score paid sponsorships on Instagram!
This can be a side hustle as well. All you need to know is how to sell yourself to brands, which is why fill-in-the-blank brand pitch email templates (like these) come in handy.
Imagine what you’d be able to do with the extra money you earn just from posting about your favorite products on Instagram!
And honestly, with Instagram Creator Marketplace, monetizing will be EASIER to do. Let’s talk about that.
Read Next: How to Turn a Gifted Collab Into a Paid Partnership
Paid Instagram Deal with Theo ChocolateYes! You do NOT need thousands of followers to score paid brand deals.
Small accounts can get paid Instagram sponsorships too! Micro and nano-influencers are so valuable to brands.
You deserve to get compensated for your work, and you CAN. Don’t worry. The tips I’ll be sharing in the next sections will apply to you small creators too.
Just to give you an idea of what’s possible, one of my influencer coaching students landed a four-figure brand deal with under 5,000 followers. It just comes down to how you sell yourself!
Read Next: How to Grow Organically on Instagram
Here are the quick steps on how to get sponsored on Instagram:
- Set your prices
- Create a media kit
- Find brands to contact
- Pitch brands
- Negotiate the brand deal
- Seal the deal with a contract
Don’t worry! We’ll be covering these in detail.
Let’s begin!
Getting paid means you need to set a price for your content.
You can get paid $10 per thousand Instagram followers as a rule of thumb.
If you have 10,000 followers, for example, you can get paid about $100 per sponsored Instagram post (10,000/1,000 = 10, 10 x $10 = $100).
Please note that the final number you choose to charge should also consider your engagement. That is just as important.
Also… THIS IS THE VERY MINIMUM YOU SHOULD ASK FOR.
I have a whole write-up on how much to charge for sponsored posts (click here to read). You can read it if you need more help setting your prices!
Free Download: Find Your Rates Roadmap— influencer pricing guide
Paid Instagram Sponsorship with MazdaA media kit is a document that lists out who we are in sum! Influencer media kits are a necessary part of getting a paid Instagram sponsorship.
A successful media kit will clearly convey WHY brands should hire you.
It’s not an autobiography.
It’s the one tool you need to sell yourself! So if you’re ready to start landing paid brand deals, you need a media kit.
Step #3 – Find Brands to Contact
Here are the steps you should take to find brand contacts for pitching a paid Instagram sponsorship!
First, take some time to make a list of brands you would like to work with! Doing this will give you an idea of how many pitches you’ll be sending out and who to contact first.
Now look at your list and think about what brands you can work with today. In other words, if XYZ brand said, “We’re looking for influencers for our next campaign,” would they hire you?
Be honest with yourself.
Here are a few questions to ask beforehand:
- Does this brand work with influencers at all? When was the last time they worked with influencers?
- How big or small are the influencers they work with? Do they work with micro-influencers or macro-influencers?
- Does my personal brand match what this company would be looking for in an influencer?
It’s essential to do your research and be diligent about where you would fit into a potential influencer campaign.
Reach Out
There are quite a few ways to reach out to someone in your search for paid Instagram sponsorship contacts. One of the most common outreach methods is to go through an influencer agency.
Aspire IQ, Mavrck, and Whalar are a few more popular influencer agencies. Influencer agencies are an excellent option for small creators who are just starting!
Essentially, you’ll apply for influencer campaigns and get directed to speak with the person handling the campaign.
Your next option is to send the brand a DM on social media. Ask them who you can send your pitch to.
Read Next: Why Your Aren’t Landing Paid Brand Deals
Paid Sponsorship with Theo ChocolateNow that we’ve done all of our homework, it’s time to start pitching. Here’s a quick list of what goes into a brand pitch email:
- Who you are
- Your social media handles
- Why you’re reaching out
But that’s not all!
You’ll need to keep in mind some key elements to make your brand email pitches rock solid.
Let’s talk about what those are!
“What makes a pitch successful?” My answer: keeping the pitch short and sweet.
When you want to get a paid Instagram sponsorship, a long dissertation on why the brand should hire you won’t do the trick.
You want to be able to describe the purpose of your email as quickly as possible, while also positioning yourself as the perfect influencer for marketing the brand’s products.
Ask for Money
Okay, so now we understand what should go in our pitch, right? Almost.
One key element here is that you will have to emphasize that you’re reaching out for a paid opportunity. It’s easy to accept free gear and items, but what about asking for money?
My advice is to just go for it! The worst thing a brand can say is “no.” And at that point, oh well.
No one ever got anywhere by quivering at “no.”
Make Your Pitch Personal
As you craft your pitch email, constantly personalize it. This is ESPECIALLY true if you’re asking for the big bucks!
If brands get the impression that you’re sending them a blanket email, they’re less likely to throw you a bone.
Personalize it, and you’re more likely to get an Instagram sponsorship!
Write Amazing Pitches on Repeat
Honestly, writing an email pitch was the hardest thing I had to figure out when I was a new influencer. The best thing you can do is practice the art of selling yourself!
Step #5 – Negotiate the Paid Brand Deal
Next, we close. You have finished pitching companies, and got a reply! So what the heck do you do now?
How do you complete the pitch and get that Instagram sponsorship? Let’s quickly discuss negotiating.
Set Up a Phone Call if Possible
When a brand initially replies that they are interested, that’s your time to shine and explain what you want to do for them and why you’re the perfect influencer to market their products.
To do this, I suggest getting on a phone call to talk through your vision. After getting this initial response, you can send your media kit for their review.
Ask for Money… Again!
Whether or not you have a phone call, you need to clarify what you charge.
Ask the brand you’re speaking with if they allocate a budget to Instagram sponsorships and what that budget is.
Don’t know what to charge?
>>Click here for my free influencer rate calculator!<<
Expect a few negotiation exchanges to come to a price that works for both parties! Having a good handle on your prices will give you the most negotiation power.
Example of a paid sponsorship on IGStep #6 – Seal the Deal with a Contract
Always sign a contract!
You never want to get an Instagram sponsorship without one! Brands typically have a sample contract for freelance work, so make sure you ask them to put one together for you.
A contracted arrangement will help protect you from fraud and ensure you get paid!
As you get more experience and grow, you’ll begin to have brands reach out to you. Therefore, if you want to learn how to get a paid Instagram sponsorship and make money for content creation, you need to know how to respond to pitches, too!
Read Their Email Carefully
Understand exactly what the brand wants and what the partnership entails.
Ask Questions
Do not be afraid to ask questions! If the brand doesn’t mention monetary compensation, ask them if they have a budget.
Be sure to ask questions on anything that confuses you about the offer. Asking questions is by far the most crucial element to responding to brand pitches because doing so unravels details that may not have been expressed in the initial email.
Paid to Post with American ExpressKnow Your Worth and Stick to It
I have run into many situations where a brand tried to undercut my rates by over 50%. I kindly let them know that my rates are firm, and I would love to make it work, but we can try again later if they do not have the budget to match my rates today.
Do not be afraid to negotiate!
This is your Instagram sponsorship!
Send a Media Kit
Attach your influencer media kit to the email and let the brand know you have attached it for their review.
You can use my bestselling influencer media kit template—it’ll save you precious time and is designed to help you turn brands into paying clients.
Don’t Be Afraid to Say “No.”
See above! Also, don’t be afraid to say no to a collaboration you’re genuinely not passionate about.
More jobs will come, I promise.
Sign a Contract
Never agree to any job without a contract.
Free Download: Find Your Rates Roadmap— influencer pricing guide
Paid Instagram Sponsorship with Karma FoodsInstagram’s Creator Marketplace
Instagram just announced that they’ll be rolling out their Creator Marketplace. This will essentially be a place within Instagram that allows brands to reach out to creators directly in the app to talk campaigns and $$$$.
How cool!
It should be similar to the TikTok Creator Marketplace. With the Marketplace, you’ll be able to negotiate brand deals and accept campaign offers from companies without ever leaving IG.
While this feature is great, I still believe creators need to understand the art of pitching and negotiating brand deals.
You need to be able to ask brands for money, AND you need to be able to upsell brands.
You upsell brands by pitching.
Not to mention, you can pitch brands for even MORE money if you sell them on the idea of posting across multiple platforms ;).
So sure, you can take small deals offered to you all day long, but the creators who know how to upsell their services will be making more on a single deal.
Let’s cap things off by covering some frequently asked questions you might have about getting paid brand deals!
Now more than ever, companies are starting to allocate more marketing budgets to social media advertisements. As a result, influencer marketing is now a multi billion-dollar industry.
Why? If a company wants to get in front of a specific demographic, it can do it in a single influencer social post.
In addition, companies can work with influencers worldwide and have their products featured in marketing material, like viral Reels, that they may otherwise have to pay a production team to create in small increments.
You don’t need a certain number of followers to get a sponsorship! You can land brand deals with as little as 100 followers. It’s all about how you sell yourself.
My advice: start monetizing your social media channels now! This is one of my biggest regrets with my influencer business.
Read Next: How to Make Money on Instagram—Even with under 5,000 followers
Influencer paid sponsorship with American Express“Exactly How Much Money Should I Be Asking For?”
That is entirely up to you and the project at hand. Was doing 3 Instagram posts for a total of $50 worth your effort?
What quality of work and what results are you getting? Would you charge XYZ again, or would you ask for a higher amount of money in the future?
“A Brand Has Offered Me a Free Product Instead of Payment, Should I Take It?”
That’s up to you. However, the next time a brand offers you a free product, consider how easy you’re letting them get off.
Please do not confuse this as saying you should never do free work! If this is your first rodeo, yes, do it for free and get some experience under your belt.
But, the second you agree to a free product, you’re agreeing to work as a free marketer for a brand, and all you got was a material item that you probably won’t have in a year.
I think you should help set the standards for brands and ask for payment for the long term! Just think, would you ever work your current job if all you got was free stationery?
Take This: 60-Minute Influencer Rates Masterclass
“How Do I Pitch Through Influencer Agencies and Creator Marketplace?”
If you’re going through Creator Marketplace or an influencer agency, you sometimes have the option to send the brand a personalized note.
The note is where you would place your pitch in that instance! Doing so can increase your chances of getting the job.
“I Want to Pitch Brands, Help?”
If you want more information on pitching brands, I recommend you read my detailed guide on how to pitch to brands. You should also pick up my brand pitch email templates!
Next Steps for Landing Paid Brand Deals
Earning money as an influencer isn’t easy.
Pitching brands isn’t easy, and landing paid Instagram sponsorships isn’t easy.
But, there are hundreds of influencers in this space, and there is room for you.
You can make a living doing this too!
Don’t ever let anyone tell you becoming an Instagram influencer isn’t a real job or the industry is too saturated. That simply isn’t true. I hope this blog helped you realize that!
Next, check out these other influencer guides I have:
- How to Beat the Instagram Algorithm
- Create an Influencer Media Kit That Gets You Brand Deals
- How to Write a Pitch to Brands
How to start a business on Instagram from scratch and get real results - Marketing on vc.ru
Writing about the promotion of social networks is a thankless task. And not because there are now more experts than customers - just the speed with which the platforms roll out updates kills all romance.
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And everything would be fine, I would work quietly further, but somewhere between the analysis of the next account and communication with a marketer on Facebook (by the way, were you also offered such a unique opportunity?) I realized one important thing.
The problem of most entrepreneurs is in a fragmented picture.
They read bloggers, brand articles, watch free webinars, save posts with snippets of information, and test everything they see. Pieces, without understanding the basics, without a system.
And yes, tests are good. But strategies need to be tested - concepts and tools within the framework of these strategies, and not just the next "finds" of information gypsies.
Therefore, here I share a step-by-step launch and promotion system. Everything is as it is.
Developments went through fire, water and a couple of dozens of trials in real businesses. They will come in handy for entrepreneurs who are just entering Instagram, and for those who have already managed to screw up with bots, cheats and masslooking.
In general, I will write briefly and to the point. Get comfortable. And if anyone needs it later, extended information can be taken in PDF.
Strategy
Everything always starts with a strategy, even shopping.
What can we say about business?!
But!
Before the strategy, you should have a clear understanding of the audience (oh my bastard, I wrote this) and defined promotion goals. With goals, I'm sure everything is clear, but with people it's harder. Businesses need to find those who will willingly leave their money with them. But is the one who pays always the initiator of the purchase?
Does a big and busy politician himself choose gifts for his ladies? Or is he looking for a place for dinner? And does mommy overwhelmed with duties look out for handmade gliders herself?
No.
Wives, girlfriends or even helpers come to the politician with their requests; to mom - the daughter comes and points her finger at the account in which you need to order something.
Therefore, before defining your audience, ask yourself a couple of questions:
- Who pays for your product or service.
- Who makes the purchase decision.
- Who influences the choice and to what extent.
And now the strategy
It should grow on the overall marketing strategy and be tightly tied to the sales plan.
There are three basic scenarios that you can promote on Instagram today, adjusting any of them to fit your reality.
Development of a full-fledged blog, a community of people with the same interests
These are always accounts with a useful component. Regular posting and high-quality content are important here - tons of unique photos and engaging texts - to keep the interest of the existing audience and attract new subscribers. Focus on organic reach and all the perks that go with it.
The option, you understand, is not simple and definitely not cheap.
Creating a showcase - posting if necessary
When there is something to say, something to show and something to share.
In this version, the focus is not on the community, but on a quick result.
We put ads on each post and control the volume of traffic, coverage, recognition, interactions, responses to invitations, sales, and so on.
The strategy is suitable for businesses that simply have nothing to write blogs about - developers, sales of special equipment, transportation - or those who do not have a budget for a constant flow of content.
Combined version
Keep a blog, gather an interested audience around it, and advertise some of your publications to enhance the effect. Here are the results of content boosting we received in a travel blog about Italy:
RK for involvement even for a couple of bucks gives excellent results Marina Velitchenko
OK, we have chosen a strategy, created a business account, let's move on to the settings.
Preparing page
In Instagram, the system is important.
The system is the parts that work together in a large mechanism.
Therefore, everything influences the process and the final result of promotion.
Normal design, competent filling of information, use of all the tools that Instagram offers - pinned stories, TV, marks, branded content, and more.
All page elements should match in style with adjacent objects and send readers a magical vibe, just kidding - should clearly present the business. Be understandable and pleasing to the eye for a specific audience.
We all like to watch beautiful accounts, and even more so to buy from a business that has not stinted on a normal brand packaging. Personally, I just love the @petroglyph_water page.
Conciseness, naturalness and "wild" atmosphere permeate every element - from a brief description of the page to the style of photo processing and truly live content.
Two short sentences in a header, but how catchy
When not just pink and blue presets from the network, but normal author's processing of photos in the same style
I will not describe how to correctly fill in the account description or set tags here - everything is in the document.
But let's talk about content and its design.
Content
Promotion does not happen without a thoughtful content plan. Even if you or your copywriter are truly brilliant, there will come a time—in a month or three—when the ideas run out, the showcase products run out, and you still need to go on air regularly.
For these purposes, they are working on a strategic content plan. Not just a set of ideas from the Internet, but a sales system through text. Make a plan at least a month in advance. Ideally, three to six months. How to do it correctly, I already wrote on vc.ru.
What to publish
Many things. Who needs ideas - a lot of ideas - for content, write to me, I'll give you huge collections. But the main thing is that all these posts should be positive. As Anketologist reports in one of the latest studies, Russians have already formed their own feed and are accustomed to its appearance and effect. They see and want to see more positive things.
I would venture to suggest that people have enough problems and "pains" that someone is already pressing on in everyday life. In social networks, they want to relax. Give them that opportunity.
How often to post
It is not so important with what frequency, the main thing is with the same frequency. Every day, every three days... if once a week, then strictly once a week, on the same day. It is important. Failures in posting are fixed by algorithms and reduce organic reach.
Y - uniqueness of posts
And their naturalness. Real product photos sell better than polished stock photos. Galleries get less coverage, videos, on the contrary, get more coverage and charge live emotions, which is always good for business.
And unpacking videos from customers show the result even cooler, because they combine both social proof and motion, which our attention clings to more readily.
But all this must be unique, like the content on the sites, in order to be properly indexed and get more impressions.
Visually
In brand style. Filters, of course, can be used, but this is already out of date. Endless tapes also sunk into ... somewhere very far away.
Now the trend is block design - publication of 9-12 photos from one photoset or location. I found the most beautiful example of this concept from @brunellocucinelli_brand.
You can play with color and shape, you can shoot your product on one - preferably inactive - background, as here:
You can get confused with the design, take multi-layered photos, alternate near, far and macro shots, or you can just make a neat look of a classic checkerboard. And you can never go wrong with light colors:
If this is very difficult, long, unbearable, order a set of neutral templates from the designer. It's not expensive, but it helps out when there are not enough product photos.
Optimization
In social networks, these are hashtags. The same search queries and keywords by which new subscribers will find you.
Instagram is one of two social networks where these tags work to their full potential.
Would you like to see how it works? I give screenshots of the current project with a statue of literally a couple of previous weeks.
Want to be even tougher? The same 500-600 subscribers, and this is the buzz:
Geotagging
Here, too, everything is extremely simple - they work, and not bad. It is important to mark not cities or countries, but specific locations: maternity hospitals, art schools for children's goods; cigar clubs, expensive restaurants and country resorts for a luxury shoe manufacturer.
Aim consciously and you will be happy.
But Instagram notifies restaurant owners about marks. Vasya tagged the men's club in his Stories, a notification about Vasya arrived on the club's account.
Good way to track your audience, collect user generated content and even find advertising partners.
Stories
Instagram Stories.
Why do you need them if you sell pizza ovens? Not everything is so simple here - Stories have ceased to be a toy for children and lifestyle bloggers, they are constantly turning into ... turning ... into a powerful marketing tool - Stories are viewed by more than 500 million users a day.
In the summer of 2018 it was 400 million, and in the fall of 2017 it was about 300 million, in 2016 it was 250 million. The pace is reactive, right?!
Let's see how they help you:
What to do with it all
- Play . Now it is in trend. Screenshots of predictions, rebuses with emoticons, mazes, chains of questions with stickers - all this appeals to the audience and algorithms.
- Telling stories . Literally. Stories are used for multi-page storytelling - such a consistent story on several spreads. You can write about anything in the storytelling format.
- Put active links to products or other social networks.
The feature is also available for accounts with less than 10,000 followers. If you confirm your page with documents - get a blue checkmark - you can put links even with 20 subscribers. This works for brands as well as people. - Run long advertisements . You can now start targeting from the Facebook account for Instagram Stories on videos 60-120 seconds long, instead of 15, as it was before.
Promotion
Promotion methods directly depend on the business goals. What do you want from social networks - recognition, subscribers, traffic to other resources, sales? What? Decided? Then choose from the list.
- Paid and effective methods: targeting (works especially well by geo), bloggers, advertising in public, mailings in direct (a mini analogue of email marketing), native advertising on websites, in articles, in videos - everywhere, where the hands and imagination will reach.
- Free , but slow options: optimized profile header, beautifully designed page, normal content, tags - hashtags, geotags, name tags - post relinking, external links to an Instagram account, cross-posting, guerrilla marketing, commenting, liking and following (preferably in manual mode), networking, contests, mutual PR and joint promotions.
- Gray and frankly toxic methods of developing a subscription base: giveaways - they are also star contests with expensive gifts and a bunch of sponsors - activity chats, like-times, etc. d.
Useful resources
I left the full list of services in the document, here I will quickly go through the most useful ones. I’ll tell you about the little-known ones in more detail, so that you understand what to expect from them.
Microlendings
To group contacts and business cards if there is no site: Mssg.me, Taplink, Linkin.bio. Or a direct link to WhatsApp: https://wa.me/[your number].
In addition, a whole WhatsApp ecosystem is now developing, where you can assemble a convenient landing page, connect a bot and completely forget about other sites.
Official delayed posting
Facebook Creator Studio or Boompublic - Content can be purchased from creators.
Business sets the price. There is a convenient editor, a calendar for planning, cross-posting to all social networks and, most importantly, safe posting on Instagram.
Crossposting
Content reposts from Instagram to other social networks are limited, so onemorepost.ru helps a lot. It knows how to distribute even old posts in auto mode to VKontakte groups, to most popular social networks and instant messengers.
Moderation
This is a pain for every SMM manager, and even more so for a businessman who manages social networks himself and often misses important questions in the comments. It is advisable to use the official Pages mobile app from Facebook, but it also often loses comments. There is a legal alternative.
Morecom.ru - collects and does not lose comments, sends them to VKontakte or Telegram. Works officially, approved by Facebook to use the Graph API.
The bot helps answer questions directly from Telegram, the answers fall exactly into the original comment thread, and do not fly apart.
You can work with a team and multiple accounts.
There are extended statistics on the page and search by comments - by phrase, nickname, tags. Soon they promise push notifications and binding to Slack. Our sales team is very helpful.
Analytics
Livedune is the only Russian-speaking Instagram partner in the niche, and the most adequate in terms of price and features.
For target
Deep links or spacers to open ads directly in the Instagram app - as much as some colleagues may protest against these assistants, I recommend using urlgeni.us. Why am I there - Facebook marketers recommend!
Audience parsers
There is no way without them now. Pepper.ninja or InstaParserPro are good but expensive.
SERM - online reputation management
YouScan, Brand Analytics will show what was said about you, even if it has been removed.
Marketing base
Without the basics of doing business, no promotion will be successful, so here is a link to a free business development program.
Joint project of Google and Sberbank.
I have everything.
Use, upgrade Instagram, get more sales.
How to connect monetization on Instagram and earn
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DEVELOTS IN THE ACCHUAN I want it to pay off somehow. But direct monetization is not available, that is, the social network does not embed ads directly into your content and does not share part of the income from advertisers, as YouTube does.
But there are other ways to enable monetization on Instagram. We talk about five options for making a profit from a social network.
The level of income for all methods of monetization depends on the number of subscribers and coverage. The larger the audience, the more you can earn.
Content
Article reading time 5 minutes
Method #1: Sell ad integrations
Method #2: Sell your products and services
Method #3: Paid access to close friends content
Method #4: affiliate programs
Method #5: driving traffic to another site
Method #1: selling ad integrations
that you mention their brand or praise a particular product and recommend it to the audience.
There are several options for such integrations:
- native advertising, when you do not advertise the product directly, but show options for its use or simply place it in the frame while filming another story or photo session;
- mentioning a profile, when you tag an advertiser's account in the description of a photo or story, and people can go there to subscribe or place an order;
- active link - it can be posted in stories if you have more than 10,000 subscribers: you can link to the advertiser's website or his chat bot in one of the messengers.
All three integration formats can be sold to advertisers. But keep in mind that native ads are more often bought from millionaire bloggers, and not from novice influencers with a small audience reach.
An example of how advertising in your account might look like: a product demonstration and a link to a page where you can buy it.
To start making money selling ad integrations, tell advertisers that you can promote their products.
There are several ways to do this:
- write to small companies, talk about your audience and reach, and offer to buy advertising on your profile;
- leave contacts in the profile header where you can be contacted for PR issues;
- register on advertising exchanges on Instagram and offer your services there.
Advertising exchanges are platforms where advertisers and bloggers meet. You can post your profile information there, and advertisers can find it and contact you. Some exchanges work differently: advertisers leave orders for promotion there, and you can apply for its implementation.
There are more than 20 different ad exchanges in total: Epicstars, Sociate, LabelUp, GetBlogger and many others. The more sites you register on, the more advertisers will be able to learn about you and offer you cooperation. And how much money to take for advertising integrations, decide for yourself - look at the prices of the nearest competitors and form an adequate price.
An example of pricing on one of the exchanges. Most often, the cost is indicated based on the number of subscribers, the subject of the profile and the activity of the audience
Storytelling is a proven way to get closer to the audience and win new subscribers on social networks, and therefore potential customers.
If suddenly your company does not have a page in social networks, create it. And in addition to posts with news, promotions and wishes for a nice day, tell stories. The topics are very different - about the work process, about employees, about the emergence of a company, about difficulties. Let it be emotional and on the same wavelength with the audience.
You can also learn how to create fire storytelling in the course from Praktika. school.
Method number 2: selling your products and services
With this method of monetizing followers on Instagram, you also promote products, but not advertisers, but your own.
You can sell anything, for example - goods. The difficult way is to register a company, purchase production equipment, rent premises, organize storage and marketing of finished products. A simple way is contract manufacturing: you order a batch of goods at the factory and stick your logo on the package.
An example of selling goods: Oksana Samoilova is promoting her own brand of cosmetics Sammy Beauty
You can also sell your services — this is how fitness trainers, coaches, tarot readers, consultants, lawyers and many other people develop a personal brand on Instagram. Another option for monetizing Instagram traffic is selling information products: webinars, marathons or online courses. In this case, you teach the audience what you know and can do yourself: write lyrics, dance, work in Photoshop, or something else.
Instagram promotes a make-up course: teaches subscribers how to properly paint
Profit with this monetization scheme will depend on the cost of products, the cost of goods for the buyer and the number of sales.
Someone sells a set of face masks for 1,700 ₽ and invests in production, while someone records the course without cost by voice messages in Telegram and gets the maximum net profit. For example, Elena Blinovskaya's Marathon of Desires course was bought by more than 200,000 people (according to the information in the profile header). With the cost of the first step of 4,500 ₽, this is already 900 million ₽ in revenue.
To earn that much, you need to get at least more than 5 million subscribers, as Elena did
What to choose and what product to sell is up to you. Think about what you would be interested in doing: hosting online webinars, making merchandise (clothing with your unique print), or getting into the production of cosmetics, phone cases or accessories.
Sometimes bloggers do not use this method of monetization because they are ashamed to sell or they are not confident in their abilities. In fact, it’s not so scary - watch the master class on monetization on Instagram, which analyzes the sales strategy, audience psychology, and the mechanics of creating in-demand products.
Method #3: Sell paid access to content in close friends
One of the best ways to monetize for expert blogs or commercial accounts, benefits: make closed sales in close friends and sell access to these sales to the most loyal customers. The online store receives additional revenue from closed access sales, and the client feels chosen and has the opportunity to purchase items of his favorite brand at a discount.
expert blogs can create special content available only to close friends, the benefits are obvious: customers get content without leaving instagram, and an expert does not need to create a website for their products and promote it.
Method number 4: affiliate programs
The amount of earnings will depend on how many subscribers go to the advertiser's website and perform the target action there. The more sales you make, the more you can earn. For example, if an advertiser pays 500 ₽ for each sale, with 100 orders from your audience you will earn 50,000 ₽.
To start earning on affiliate programs, find offers that have products that suit your target audience. This can be done in CPA networks: sites that collect offers from different advertisers. For example, Admitad has offers from Lamoda, M.Video, Adidas, AliExpress and other major brands.
Popular online stores usually pay 1.5-10% of the amount of each order
The only caveat is that you will have to place an active link in your profile. Without it, the advertiser will not understand that the sales came from you.
Method No. 5: attracting traffic to another site
Another opportunity to monetize the audience on Instagram is to attract it to sites that pay for content. For example, on:
- YouTube - in it, anyone who has gained 10,000 subscribers can connect to the affiliate program;
- Yandex. Zen - everyone can turn on monetization on it, whose articles have been read in total for at least 10,000 minutes in 7 days in a row;
- "Pulse Mail.
ru" - you can get to the site only by invite (invitation), but it pays after the publication of the first 10 articles.
If you attract part of the audience to another platform, you can monetize it twice: on Instagram, and on YouTube or on Zen.
How much you earn from monetization on another site depends on the niche and audience coverage. For example, on YouTube, for 1000 views of a video on a channel with videos on a game for mobile devices, they can pay a little more than 28 ₽. And to earn at least 50,000 ₽, you will have to get more than 1.7 million views.
An example of how the price per 1000 views on YouTube changes depending on the audience Sell paid integrations, promote your own products or those of advertisers from affiliate programs. If you use several ways to earn money on different sites, the income can increase by 2-3 times compared to the income from one monetization method only on Instagram.
To attract part of the audience to another platform, it is enough to place a link to your profile on it in the profile header.
And in posts and stories, sometimes remind you that you release content not only on Instagram. To summarize: how to get monetized on Instagram and how much you can earn To do this, send potential advertisers offers of cooperation, leave contacts for communication in the profile header and register on advertising exchanges.
