Instagram is a force of nature. This is why I created Gram To Grams - to teach people about all the opportunities to make money on Instagram.
What was merely a photo-sharing app initially has become one of the top social media platforms in less than seven years.
It has quickly doubled its user base in the last two years to 700 million users. Its growth has exploded since it launched Instagram Stories in August 2016.Pretty impressive.
It just goes to show how well people respond to simple, visual-driven content.The interest in Instagram has grown tremendously over the past six years. And I highly doubt that it will be slowing down anytime soon.
No matter how you slice it, people love Instagram. It’s one of the most popular ways to share photos. In many cases, I even choose Instagram over Google Images when searching for photos. It’s just so easy and accessible, and the vast majority of the images are super high quality.
The opportunity for making money on Instagram
Want to know something that I absolutely love about marketers? They are committed to serving the audience.
And when you’re creating a great experience for your prospects, then money is a byproduct. But I won’t leave you with such jargon and motivational statements. I assume that you’re a smart marketer and you understand that building a following and then running ads to sell your product is a great way to generate income.
Wait a second though…Didn’t you know that already?
Instagram is the most obvious strategy to make money online. So let’s extend the conversation beyond such cliched tips. Let’s get into the thick of things and see how to actually make $200 to $10,000 (even more) per month from the visual social platform.
To begin with, allow me to share 3 inspiring stories of people who made money from Instagram.
1. Theresa Nguyen isn’t your average teenager. She shares drool worthy videos of her homemade slime on her Instagram account that get hundreds of thousands of views.
Her account is filled with colorful posts. With just 228 such live posts, she has garnered a following of 747k people (at the time of writing the post). And she shows how to leverage the precious Instagram profile link.She has a clear CTA driving her Instagram followers to her online slime shop.
Do you think Instagram users are interested in buying homemade slime from a teenager?You bet.When I checked out her website, all the flavors were sold out. Time.com reported that she’s making $3,000/month. Not so bad for a 13-year old whose parents laughed at her idea of selling her creations.Theresa isn’t alone. Rachel Albus, a 13-year-old from California, and Sara Y., a 12-year-old from North Carolina ,have also built their Instagram accounts to thousands of followers. And they make decent money from them. As they say, age is just a number. But I don’t remember being so innovative when I was twelve!
2. With the diversity of the audience on Instagram, everyone has an opportunity to make money. So meet the next Instagram money making star on our list: Sara Tasker.A 32-year-old woman from Yorkshire, she worked as an NHS speech therapist. Four years ago, while on a four-month maternity leave, she created her Instagram account.
Her motivation for signing up on Instagram was the free products and money that brands were offering to Instagram users. And now, she has honed her way to becoming what’s called as a micro-influencer with 170k followers.Her account is filled with beautiful lifestyle pictures from her life. And she made approximately £120,000 last year. Besides getting paid by brands for posting, she’s also making money from coaching people about creativity and Instagram marketing.
3. If you’re thinking that gathering such a huge following is necessary for making money, then meet Jeena Farmer. She’s a qualified nutritional therapist and freelance writer from Warwickshire. Her Instagram only has 3,361 followers.
But brands pay her in the range of £50-£100 (64 USD – 128 USD approx) for mentioning them on her Instagram. She also packages an Instagram update with a blog post and a tweet – for which she charges £200-£300 (250 USD – 350 USD).
I’ve gone down in the Instagram trenches with my clients in a variety of niches. And I’ve found that you can launch businesses independently based on Instagram alone (you don’t even need a website). Otherwise, you can ignite other business models and catapult your revenue with support from Instagram.
In this article, I’ll show you 9 Instagram money-making tactics. As you know, I like to keep my articles comprehensive and beginner-friendly. So, even if you haven’t heard of Instagram before, you’ll walk away with actionable strategies to make your first dollar from the platform within a month. Before we dip our toes in the specific tactics, let’s look at the prerequisites for making money.
Money from Instagram: The prerequisites
You can’t slap a catchy Instagram handle, write a cute description, and start posting pictures from your daily life. That might work well to impress your friends, but if you’re looking to make money, here are a couple of requirements.
1. Reach and Influence – Why do businesses pay money to an Instagram user like you?They get exposure to your audience, and they hope to make money in the process by having your followers buy or recommend their products.Instagram is generous with sending your post to more of your fans’ feeds. If you post at the right time and use hashtags (we’ll discuss these tactics later), then your organic reach will be higher compared to other social media platforms.But what if you only have a few hundred Instagram followers to begin with?Your potential audience size is low. With a small sample space, your content won’t get seen by a lot of people, let alone drive sales for your or a brand’s products.That’s why you definitely need a few thousand followers to make any money from the platform.Now as you might have guessed, reach only contributes to the first stage of the funnel: awareness.If you want to generate sales, then you need to have persuasion skills (known as influence).Your audience has to take action on your recommendations. Alexandra Lamachenka illustrates the process below.
One of my favorite writers Robert Cialdini authored a terrific book on the subject: Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.A great real life example of people of Influence is Tim Ferriss. When he signed up for promoting Mizzen+Main dress shirts on his podcast, little did they expect that their inventory would run out. Their CEO and Founder Kevin Lavelle vouched for the Tim Ferriss effect.
So just creating a random account and collecting a few thousand followers alone isn’t sufficient. You need to become a compelling Instagram personality.
2. Engaged Followers – Sure, more followers will boost your ego. Even mathematically, it increases your probability to appear in more Instagram feeds.But what if everyone is cold to your updates?It feels like a failure in spite of putting forward your best work.In my journey of creating more than four blogs, I’ve seen it all. Back in the day, I used to flaunt the number of visitors that I drove to my site. Now I understand it’s about engagement. It indicates that you’re solving problems for people around you.So on your Instagram account, if you rarely get people commenting, liking, sharing, and following you, then you’re doing it wrong. Your updates aren’t striking chords with the Instagram universe. Now we’ll understand how to fix the issue in the next section.But for now, understand that even if you have 1,000 followers who are engaged, the potential to make money is there. Brands are willing to invest in you because of the profitable actions you’ll drive through your account.Indeed, Jeena Farmer gets paid a decent sum of money by health brands because she gets good engagement on all her posts. Look at the post below. Despite having 3,368 followers, she got 98 likes and 15 comments on this collagen shots picture. That’s over 3% engagement!
Exceptions to the above requirements You know what I hated about chemistry in school?After we had been taught rules and equations, there were always exceptions that we had to learn as well.I feel that won’t be the case here with you guys.If you directly sell your products on Instagram, then you don’t necessarily need a huge following. Suppose you sell a high-ticket course priced at $297 on Instagram marketing. Then even with a low conversion rate and about a thousand followers, you can make decent money.
Similarly, if you’ve a specific skill (like photography/writing/cartooning/video editing), then Instagram only plays a functional role in your service business model.You can start your account today, post about 3-5 updates that display your work, and message potential customers directly. Depending on your skill, experience, and pitch, you can close your first client by tomorrow and start minting dollars.
By now, I hope you understand that Instagram is not easy money. You need to hustle your way. And the next section discusses how to organize your hustle.
END OF PART 1 - TO READ PART 2 UPVOTE THIS ARTICLE
I’m Jonny Rose, creator of Gram To GramsI read. I write. I watch. I hustle. I believe Instagram is the biggest untapped opportunity for people that want to make money. I explain how you can too at my Make Money on Instagram Blog BUY MY BOOK: INSTAGRAM MARKETING: HOW TO BUILD A BRAND, PROMOTE YOURSELF, GAIN FOLLOWERS, AND MAKE YOUR BUSINESS GROW
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