The reason why I prefer this method instead of the physical product method is because it’s a lot more passive work. 

You basically create your product once. Post it on your website or whatever platform you are selling it on. And then sell it over and over again without a lot of work on your part, except for maintenance and customer service.

There is a lot of work to be put in creating and setting up everything for digital products as well, but it is a lot less work after it’s been launched.

You can also find digital products to sell in almost any niche. For example: you could sell fitness cheat sheets, workout plans, meal planning kits, kids activities ebooks, workbooks, guides, planners etc.

7. Sell a niche service

Another way you can start making money on Instagram with a small following is to sell your services in your niche. 

For example, you can offer your services as a coach, consultant, designer, website developer,  content writer, photo editor, logo creator etc. 

Anything that would help someone who is looking to outsource some sort of project in their business.

You will need to have a website for this, because it is the best way for people to find out more about the services that you offer and it allows you to create a portfolio of previous clients that you have worked with.  

Testimonials and feedback in this type of business is what helps the most to get new clients.

It might sound intimidating at first, but it’s a really great way to monetise your Instagram even if you are just a beginner.

Ready to start your own website? I use and recommend Bluehost for your blog. If you have no idea where to begin, use my free ultimate guide on how to start a blog and make money blogging.

8. Offer social media services

Another way to monetise your Instagram is to offer your social media services. 

What this means is you can use your Instagram as a portfolio, again, to show your style and the type of content you can create. 

You will then use this to get clients that might need someone to manage their own social media platforms.

You can create Instagram photos for them or Facebook posts. Reply to their comments or Dms and just be their social media manager in general.

A lot of small businesses these days know they should have a social media presence, but they don’t have the time to spend being active on those platforms. Which is why they look to hire social media managers and assistants to help them stay consistent on those platforms and grow engagement for them.

You do not need to have a huge social media presence for this. You just need to show that you are serious, you know what types of posts would work well for their niche and you have the skills necessary to post consistently on Instagram, for example.

9. Add to email list

Something not a lot of people talk about when it comes to monetising your Instagram account is how important an email list is for this. 

An email list has one of the highest conversion rates out of any platform out there these days. 

It is the best way to have a direct connection to your audience, because you have their exact email address.   

If something were to happen to your Instagram account, you might lose access to all of your followers and not be able to get them back. 

But on your email list you can save a backup of that list of email addresses and you always have a way to contact them if anything should happen.

If you want this to be a full-time business for you, an email list is crucial in order to have a safety net. So you don’t panic if for some reason you lose all your followers or access to your account.

But how does this make you any money?

An email list is one of the best ways you can monetise, because people are more engaged and they trust you more. 

So regardless of what type of monetising you choose (whether it’s affiliates, sponsors or selling your own products or services), an email list will help you get more sales and a higher income faster.

10. Drive traffic to post with display ads

If you already have a blog, a great way to make money through Instagram is to drive that traffic from Instagram over to your blog.  

For example, if you have a blog post that is monetised through displaying ads, you can direct your audience from Instagram over to your blog.

You can do this by asking them to do so in your Instagram stories, giving them a reason why reading your blog post will help them. Obviously, the more traffic you can drive to that blog post,  the higher your income will be from it.

If you do this consistently and you have an engaged audience that you have grown in an organic way, you can start to see an income coming in even if you have a small audience.

11. Sell through DMs (the right way!)

Selling through DMs gets a bad reputation, because it is often done the wrong way.  

Cold messaging people in DMs is not an effective way to do this and I do not recommend this. 

This is viewed as spam these days and people don’t respond to it, so it is a complete waste of your time.

However, there is a right way to sell through DMs.

The way to do this is to create a connection to your audience through your stories and your post captions. Use engagement stickers, such as polls or question boxes, to get people who are interested in your story to engage with you.

When they reply to that engagement sticker, you can then DM them back and give them more info on what you have to offer or give them more help on that topic. 

This way, you are not cold messaging anyone and you’re not annoying people by spamming their accounts. 

Instead, you are simply messaging back someone who has shown an interest in what you have to say or how you can help them.

FAQ

Can I make money on Instagram with 500 followers?

Yes, you can absolutely make money on Instagram with just 500 followers. You just have to get more creative on how you do this.

Simply waiting for sponsored posts will not be an effective way for you to monetise your Instagram if you only have 500 followers. But using some of the other methods in this post can work really well even with a small following.

For example, you could easily monetise your Instagram with 500 followers if you sell a physical or a digital product, if you offer a service of your own, if you become someone’s social media manager, if you do brand deals specifically for content creation etc.

Can you monetise Instagram posts?

Yes, you can monetise your Instagram posts easily. 

Most people are only aware of the traditional ways to make money on Instagram, such as affiliate links and sponsored posts from brands. 

However,  as you might have noticed from reading this, if you get creative you can actually start monetising your Instagram posts in a lot more ways than you might have expected.

How many followers on Instagram do you need to make $1000 per month?

You do not need a lot of followers in order to make your first $1,000 per month. 

Depending on your strategy and how much time you have to dedicate to this, you could easily make your first $1,000 per month from Instagram if you get creative and use a few of the ways presented in this post.

For example, if you strictly want to focus on sponsored posts, you will need 10 posts at $100 in order to make the $1,000 month. But this is only realistic if you do have a bit of a following already.

However, if you use some of the other methods you can start reaching that goal faster without having to wait for followers. 

You can offer a service package at $200 per month, which would mean you only need 5 sales for you to reach that income goal.

You could also sell a content creation package to brands even if you have a small following.

Or you could sell your physical or digital products in order to reach the $1,000 month goal. 

The number of followers is not everything. It really depends on how engaged and how niched down your audience is to the product or service that you sell.

How to make money on Instagram without followers?

In order to make money on Instagram without followers, you cannot count on sponsored posts.  But you can use the other methods to make money even if you don’t have a following yet. 

For example: selling a service, selling physical products, selling digital products, becoming a social media manager for other accounts, doing brand deals for content creation only or some of the other methods mentioned above.

How much does Instagram pay for 1k followers?

Instagram does not pay you simply for having a number of followers. 

This might be a feature to come sometime in the future, but at the moment it is completely up to you to monetise that audience. 

Some people have accounts with 500 followers and make the same amount of money as people who have 10K followers. 

Simply having a follower number does not mean anything, unless you know how to actually monetise your account.

Using the methods presented previously, you should be able to start monetising efficiently even if you only have 1k followers.

Does Instagram pay you for having a lot of followers?

No, Instagram does not directly pay you for having followers. At least not at the moment.

As mentioned above, it is completely up to you to monetise your Instagram and find ways to make money with the following that you have. 

However, using one of the 11 monetising ways presented above you should be able to start making money on Instagram without having a lot of followers. But obviously, the higher the engaged following, the more income opportunities you have.

How many followers on Instagram do you need to get paid?

You can start making money on Instagram without having to wait for follower counts. I would focus on creating an engaged audience for the first few weeks, but you can easily start implementing the monetising strategies above from the very beginning. 

If you already have 500 to 1,000 Instagram followers that are engaged and you have acquired in a real and organic way, I would highly recommend that you start using some of the monetising ways above.

Do Instagrammers get paid for swipe up?

Instagram does not directly pay you for using the swipe up feature. The way instagrammers monetise the swipe up feature is they add an affiliate link or a link to their products in the swipe up. 

Saying that, you do not need to wait to have the swipe up feature (AKA reach 10K followers) in order to start monetising your Instagram.  

You can easily use the link in bio to do so.Read how to create your own Linktree easily, so that you don’t have to use a service like that and you can do it for free, while being able to customize it yourself.

How to make money on Instagram as a teenager?

Congrats, the fact that you’re even thinking about monetising your Instagram as a teenager shows that you are one step ahead of a lot of other people.

Having a niche or a target audience in mind will really help you focus on the type of content that you need to create for them. 

And this in turn will help you find more ways to monetise your content. 

In order to make money on Instagram as a teenager you can use one of the following ways:  sponsored posts, affiliate links, brand deals for content only, selling your own products or services or any of the methods mentioned above. 

I hope these 11 clever ways on how to make money on Instagram with 1000 followers or less was helpful. 

Have you tried any of these methods before? 

Which way to make money on Instagram are you looking to try next? 

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How to make money on Instagram: all the ways

How to make money on Instagram* from scratch? You can become an SMM specialist and set up Instagram ads for your clients*. Or maintain their profiles so that they receive new orders - money is paid for all this. But it is much more interesting to maintain your profile and earn income.

Yes, someone keeps an account "for fun", and someone - to earn money. We tell you exactly how you can earn money on Instagram * on your profile, how much you can receive and what you need for this.

Ways to make money on Instagram*

Sell ads

The most obvious and common way to make money from your Instagram profile* is to sell ad integrations. You can do this in different ways:

• mention the account in the next post or story;
• talk about the product, just show it or mention that you use it yourself;
• place a link to the advertiser's website in the profile description or stories;
• to agitate to do something or express "one's" opinion in publications, and so on.

Advertising can be anything. For example, many bloggers said that they would go to the polls themselves and called on the audience to do so. Some campaigned for amendments to the Constitution of the Russian Federation and also received money for this.

Advertisers will pay you not for the number of people who came from you, but simply for the fact itself advertising placement. But at the same time, they will track the results, and if they don’t like them, they are unlikely to contact you again.

And to tell advertisers that you are ready to place ad integrations, you can create a second account on Instagram* and leave a link to it in your profile description. Or indicate there a phone number or email address where you can be contacted.

And if there are not many subscribers yet, but you want to earn money right now, it is better to additionally register on the blogger exchanges: on Epicstars, LabelUp and others. Advertisers can look for bloggers with a small audience there, and you can get clients from both your Instagram profile* and exchanges.

Traffic arbitrage

It's like advertising integrations - you also have to promote some product or product. But the earnings scheme is arranged a little differently:

• traffic (people) will have to be directed directly to the advertiser's website, and for this - place a link in the description of the main profile or create an additional account and first promote it;
• you will be paid not for the very fact of placing an advertisement, but for the targeted actions of users who clicked on it: for example, 2% of the order of all those who came from you.

The more loyal the audience is and the more purchases (orders, registrations) it makes, the more you earn.

To be able to earn money in this way, you need to look for advertisers who are willing to pay according to a similar scheme. This can be done in CPA networks: this is the name of the "catalogues" of affiliate programs. The largest CPA network in Russia is Admitad: M.Video, Lamoda, OZON and other brands offer their programs there.

Optimal Instagram* is suitable for making money on the following products:

• Goods for beauty, fitness, weight loss.
• Gadgets, fashion novelties, accessories, various wow-goods. Everything from which it is easy to make a beautiful picture and is designed for an impulse purchase.
• Offers for training or employment of students and recent graduates.

Accepting donations

In practice, this way of making money on Instagram* is rarely used. The bottom line is that you simply accept donations (voluntary money transfers) from subscribers. They can throw off money for different purposes: buying a new computer, overexposure of a sick animal, restoring a passport.

at DonationAlerts. If you make a link, people will be able to transfer money to you in different ways: from a card, from a mobile account or from electronic wallets.

Selling services

One of the most popular ways to make money on Instagram* is selling your services. Many manicurists, SMM specialists, psychologists, cosmetologists and other specialists promote their profile in order to receive orders from there. Tarologists, business coaches, English teachers are not far behind - the list can be long.

In order to sell services and make money from it, you need to be able to create high-quality interesting content, communicate with the audience, and work out objections.

Sale of information products

Another opportunity to make money, which famous bloggers often resort to, is the sale of their own information courses. You can teach your audience something you know yourself: promote your Instagram profile*, bake delicious cakes, sew handmade soft toys, and so on.