How to earn money from Instagram?

You probably are already on some of the social media platforms to connect with your friends, or get news and gossips. However, in this digital age you may also create online assets using these social media platforms and earn money.

This is gonna be one of the article in a long list of articles, where we learn how to earn money from social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc. Focus of this article will solely be on Instagram.

So, here we will learn about how to go about it, how to increase your followers on Instagram, various methods you may employ to earn money on Instagram, and various tricks to earn money even if you have low number of followers. Instagram does no directly allow you to monetize your page as YouTube does. So, here we need to apply some creative ways to earn money.

Table of Contents

Setup your Instagram page
How to grow Instagram page?
Different ways to monetize Instagram page
Some more tips for Instagram

Setup your Instagram page

If you are planning to earn money from Instagram, then you should create an Instagram page. Just your normal Instagram personal account won’t work here (unless you are an influencer or a celebrity of some sorts). You may create multiple Instagram pages attached to your Instagram personal account.

Decide the Niche

The first thing to do is of course to setup your Instagram page. Before you do so, you will need to decide your niche, i.e. the subject-area of your page, e.g. whether you will be focussing on health, education, entertainment etc. It will depend on your interest and expertise. How you can monetize your Instagram page depends a lot on your niche.

Language

Also, you should decide the language you are going to use (if you are bilingual). It is advisable to use one language on one page. For example, if you know both English and Hindi, then you may setup two pages for them, rather than posting both English and Hindi material on the same page. It may be irritating for some of your followers who understand only one of those languages.

Content Type and Frequency

You can post content on Instagram in various forms. Some of them have been listed below:

Pictures - You can post 2-3 pictures per day. Initially you may post 1:1 dimension pictures (i.e. 1080 * 1080 px).
Video - You may aim for posting 2-3 videos per week (5 to 10 minutes long).
Reels - 2-3 reels per day can be posted. As per my experience, reels work really well in growing your page. At least that’s how it is in 2021.
Stories - 4-5 stories per day may be posted.

You may use all or some of the above content type to get your ideas out in the world. See the types of content that your competitors are posting and also their frequency. It will give you some clue regarding what content posting strategy to adopt in your niche.

You should also use hashtags and try to post on the trending topics on your niche. Kindly don’t use irrelevant hashtags. Use only those hashtags that are related to your niche. Also, don’t overdo it. 7 to 8 hashtags on a post are more than enough. Use those hashtags again and again on your various posts, so that if someone searches for those hashtags, they get to see your posts. Moreover, always use the hashtag of your page with your posts.

Timing of posts

Our aim as social media managers and marketers is to ensure that our Instagram posts reach to the maximum possible target audience. For this to happen we should also learn:

on which days should we post more
at what time should we post

For example, in one of my motivational Instagram page, I have seen that users engage more on weekends (Saturday and Sunday) and after office hours on working days (i.e. from 6 PM to 9 PM). So, this is when I try to post or shedule my posts to go live during this time. It ensures that my page gets the best benefits out of the efforts that I am putting in.

You may do some experimentation by posting at various times of the day, say one post at 7 AM, another at 9 AM, yet another at 7 PM and so on. Just observe the number of views you get.

How to grow an Instagram page?

Once you have setup an Instagram page and posted some content, the next step is to think about giving it a boost. But before you do so, your page should have some content on it, so that it looks interesting to anyone who visits that page.

Content is King

As always, if you are putting out valuable and useful content, then your page will definitely grow. No one can stop that from happening. Just be consistent and give it some time.

Collaborations with similar pages

You may collaborate with other content creators in your niche and support each other. For example, you may repost their posts, or mention them in your stories if you find their work impressive. It will also provide value to your followers.

Moreover, if you are mentioning someone in your page then chances are that they will also repost that thing in their page and you may get some traffic from their audience base.

Post Comments

You may go to similar pages of your niche and post comments on their posts. In the explore feed you will get to see the Instagram pages as per your interest. Visit those pages and post comments.

Create Viral content

Sometimes you should aim to create viral content, e.g. memes on some controversy etc. Something that has the potential to get viral. Though there’s never a guarantee of what content may go viral, but put on your creative hat and hope for the best!

Live stream with Experts

It’s another great way to boost your Instagram page. You can do a live session with some expert(s) of your niche. This always attracts a lot of crowd. But make sure you are talking on some relevant and useful issues and not just chit-chatting. This method has two benefits:

Of course you will attract a lot of people to your page, including the audience of that expert.
It will help to establish your page as an authority page in your niche. Just like in Google, authority matters on social media pages too, including Instagram pages. People will start believing in you, and the information that you are providing. This is how brands are created.

Q and A sessions

You may indulge in question-and-answer sessions with your audience to increase their engagement on your page and provide them more utility. This can be done once a week or so. The bonding that is created by doing one-to-one sessions or even group sessions is unbeatable.

Warning!

It is essential to grow your page organically. Do not try to increase your followers by hook or crook. Otherwise, even if you get a lot of followers, the engagement on your posts will remain low, i.e. the views, likes etc. will be less. Anyone will easily tell whether you have grown your channel organically or artificially.

Adopting a lot of shady means may even lead to banning of your Instagram page and account. The parent company of Instagram is Facebook and you probably know that Facebook do ban pages and accounts if they find anything suspicious.

Different ways to monetize Instagram page

Once your Instagram page is a few months old and you have gained some followers, you may start thinking about reaping in the benefits by monetizing it. Let’s see what are the various options available to us in this regard.

Note

Instagram does not provide you any direct monetization option as Facebook or YouTube does. Neither can you connect it with Adsense like we do in case of blogs. So, you have to make money using indirect methods.

Sell your own products and services

You may provide links to various of your products or services, if you have some.

You may earn a lot if you have some online product, e.g. some course or e-book etc. You may promote others' courses too and get commission out of that.

Affiliate links

You may place affiliate marketing links on your bio or in stories (if swipe up feature is enabled), say Amazon Affiliate links, Admitad links, VCommission links, Commission Junction Affiliate links etc. Some people visiting your page will surely click on the links too. You will get commission on any purchase done via your links.

To find some more affiliate marketing websites in your niche, just google it. For example, if you are in pet care niche, then you may google - “best affiliate networks in pet care”.

Note

As of now, in 2021, swipe up feature in Instagram Stories gets activated once you reach 10 thousand followers.

Get ads from businesses

You may get ads by contacting appropriate businesses. They will pay you if you run their ads on your page, in the form of stories, videos, captions etc. If you have sufficient followers then many marketing guys will start approaching you on their own. But your page should have good engagement too, i.e. make sure people are viewing, liking, sharing and commenting on your posts.

One of my friends started an Instagram page on healthcare; kept on posting 3-4 posts everyday for around 15 months. Now he has over 50 thousand followers and is earning more than a lakh just from ads. Businesses contact him on their own and when I last talked with him, around 9 days of his page were already booked for ads, i.e. of you want to run your ad on his page, you will have to wait for 9 days. The more the number of followers and the engagement, the more a company will be willing to run their ads on your page (and the more they will pay!). Some celebrities and big Instagram pages charge even lakhs of rupees to post one story or reel.

Initially, you won’t earn much. For the first ad I got, I was paid a mere Rs. 120. But this will grow as your followers grow. It also depends on your niche. One of my friend has only around 16 thousand followers, but he charges anywhere between 3 to 5 thousand for one picture post. His niche is digital marketing, so big companies with deep pockets (like Bluehost, Hostgator etc.) are more than willing to pay him handsomely.

Promote fellow Instagram pages

You may also get approached by other content creators on Instagram to promote their page. Just like brands, you may charge them for it.

Some more tips for Instagram

Search for the top Instagram pages in your niche and see how they are putting out content - quality-wise and quantity-wise. Also observe how they have monetized their page. It will surely give you a lot of ideas.
If you have a good number of followers on Instagram, you may divert that traffic to other places too, e.g. your YouTube channel or your website and that will allow you to earn extra money, and help your other online assets to grow too.
Do keep on checking the insights of your Instagram page. It will give you a pretty good idea regarding the reach and engagement of your content. Build-up your future strategy accordingly.
It is essential to be regular in posting on social media in general. Same is true for Instagram. You should aim to post at least 2-3 posts everyday, especially in the initial few months, otherwise your page won’t grow. Competition is increasing each day and it’s becoming difficult to grow your page. But don’t worry! Be consistent and you will definitely gain good number of followers. But even when your page picks up, you should not abandon it for long. As soon as you stop posting for a few days, your page will start losing popularity. Once you start earning good money, you may build a team so that consistency is maintained.