How to Make Money on Instagram – Turn Followers into Customers

You’ve been spending time and effort on Instagram.

You’ve been building an audience, putting out great content and getting some great engagement.

But is that all you want?

Is that all there is to get out of your Instagram efforts?

Or can there be a way on how to make money on Instagram using your account?

If yes, do you need 10,000 Followers for it? Do you need a website?

I know you have so many questions and that is exactly why I decided to write this article and answer all your questions.

If you read this article till the end, you will learn multiple tested ways to make money from Instagram and even turn it into a full time business!

Don’t you want to know how do people make money on Instagram?

Trust me, no one is going to tell you this stuff in such detail for free because these are the entrepreneurs’ best-kept secrets. But I am revealing all these methods for you today.

Sounds exciting? Then keep reading!

Pro Tip: If you haven’t seen my video where I teach how to scientifically do Hashtag Research for more likes and followers on Instagram, you can Click here to watch it.

Can you Make Money from Instagram?

We need to normalize this more.

Why? Because you are putting your effort, time, and even money into your Instagram account.

You are doing so much to build that community, and keep it engaged.

And honestly, it doesn’t matter what niche you are in. It could be fashion or travel or marketing or food or anything else.

If you are serious about social media, you need to monetize it.

That’s why I am going to give you 5 recommendations on how to make money on Instagram account. Make sure you read till the end to see all of them.

Prefer Watch Video than Reading? Watch this video on How to Make Money on Instagram:

Let’s see how can you make money on Instagram.

Method number 1: Through Influencer Marketing – Get Paid to Post Ads

An influencer is someone who is an expert or an aficionado in a particular niche – whether it is fashion, food, travel, digital marketing, or anything else.

An influencer is someone who has a loyal community that trusts their word over the word of any brand. And that is why both big and small brands leverage the power of these influencers to talk about their products in front of the influencer’s audience.

This brings credibility for the brand’s products.

If you have a loyal, engaged community, you can get paid by these brands to give them shoutouts and promote their products.

The best part is, you don’t have to have millions or tens of thousands of followers. Today, micro and nano influencers have become very important for brands too.

So, even if you have 1000 or 5000 followers, you can still get influencer gigs.

There are a few ways to get these gigs from brands:

• First is by approaching the brands that are from your niche yourself. You can email them or DM them or their agencies. Have a nice custom pitch where you describe yourself, your audience, and how you can help them. Tell them why you are passionate about their brand. To do this, you can use one of my DM Scripts that I posted on Instagram. It will be a good reference.
  
• The second way is when brands start noticing you and approaching you. This will happen when your content is so good that it starts spreading organically. Brands are always on the lookout for new influencers and you might just be one.
  
• The third way is to sign up for an Influencer Network. These platforms connect brands to their relevant influencers. If you are new to this, you must sign up for these platforms.
  Some of them are: Plixxo, Indian Influencer Network, Upfluence, Influencer.in and there are a lot more.
  Google “Influencer Network” and you will see the popular ones from your country.

A lot of brands do barter tie-ups with new influencers and you might get just the products in return for posting about the brand on feed and stories. But the more you grow, and more tie-ups you do, you will start getting paid more.

I have worked with influencers who even charge Rs 30-60 thousand (USD 400 – 800) for putting up a single post on Instagram.

That’s pretty cool right?

Method number 2: Affiliate Marketing

If you are very active in a niche and can build a loyal following that trusts your word, Affiliate Marketing is also a way how to make money on Instagram.

Affiliate marketing means when you recommend a company’s product to your audience and when they buy that product, you get paid a commission.

The best part about this is, you don’t need to create a product or worry about the shipping or customer service. You just have to make a sale and you get paid for it.

And you could become an affiliate for any company that has an Affiliate Program.

Let me give you an example.

Let’s say, your niche is Website Development and UI/UX.

You post tips on how to build websites and how to manage them.

You could join the Affiliate Program of a Website Hosting Company and recommend their hosting to your audience and give them a coupon code or a custom link using which they can buy the hosting.

The moment they buy the hosting using your link, the company will know that the sale has come through you. And the company will pay you an affiliate commission.

Companies pay anywhere from 1-2% commission to even 80% commission in some cases.

You can go to the websites of the companies in your niche and see which of those are running their affiliate programs. You can sign up for those programs and start promoting them.

In the example I just gave, most hosting companies including Godaddy run their affiliate programs.

If you are new, and want to join a simple affiliate program, you can join the Amazon Affiliate program. It doesn’t pay high commission, but they have the widest range of products and vendors you can sell for. And if you can bring in volumes, you will be able to make good money through that.

So, go ahead and try doing Affiliate Marketing.

Method number 3: Selling Digital Products

I love this method because this is a great way to transform your followers into your customers.

Digital Products are those products that are not physical in nature (duh!).

I’m sure you have encountered or even bought many digital products.

Those could be – E-Books, Online Courses, Checklists, website templates, apps, and many more.

These products are a great idea because you don’t need to invest in inventory or shipping. The cost to create digital products is generally lesser than that for creating physical products. And because of that, your profit margins are higher.

The first thing to do is introspect what is it that you are really good at. What is your expertise. That is what you can teach people through an online course or an e-book.

So how can you create Digital Products?

You need to understand what are the pain points in your niche. What is it that people are struggling with? Can you create something that will help address that pain point for your customers?

And once you have created your product, you can sell it to your existing Instagram audience – that already follows you and considers you an expert.

To scale it up, you can also use Facebook & Instagram Ads to acquire more customers.

I know some of you are already thinking about it so let me give some ideas that you can use to make your own digital products:

• If you are an Instagram Marketing expert, you can create an online course to show people how to get more followers and engagement.

• If you are a food blogger, you can create an e-book with 50 of your best recipes that can be made at home.

• If you are a fashion blogger, you can create a paid newsletter where you will share travel hacks, discounted travel opportunities, stay offers and more.

And so on… What you have to understand is that you have to find a pain point of your audience and solve it through your digital products.

Method number 4: Dropshipping

If you have never heard of Dropshipping before, let me tell you what means.

For example there is a supplier that makes t-shirts.

And you, as an influencer or a digital marketer, get in touch with this supplier and tell them – “hey man, I will sell your products to your audience”.

The supplier will give you the t-shirts at a certain price. And you will get orders for the t-shirts. You can set the final selling price after adding your margin to the cost the supplier gave you.

But the supplier will have to take care of fulfilment – which is invoicing, shipping and customer service.

The best part is, you don’t need to maintain the inventory. You don’t have to take care of shipping and post-sales service. You just need to bring the order and pass it on to the supplier. And retain the profit.

To give you an example, you can sign-up with one of the Print-on-demand Dropshipping T-Shirt companies like Printrove, Teelabs, Quikink, Printship.

Even Shopify has inbuilt print on demand services.

These companies allow you to just create t-shirt designs and get orders on those. These companies will print the t-shirt after the order comes in and then they ship it themselves.

Best part? They will even put your brand’s labels so it will look like you are the supplier.

You can actually start selling merchandise to your Instagram audience without investing a single dollar in inventory.

And finally, we move on to the last method.

Method number 5: One-on-One Consulting

If you have an engaged audience on Instagram that is following you and considers you an expert in a particular niche, you must already be giving out some free content to them and that is great.

I do that too, I put out Free content on Instagram, my podcast, on YouTube daily which is something I want to do.

But sometimes, a set of people need a little more personalized help and they are happy to pay for it to get one-on-one guidance and advice.

And that is where you can have another opportunity to monetize your Instagram.

Let’s say you review Bikes and Cars on Instagram. You are an auto-blogger and you put out reviews, and tips to buy vehicles all the time and people love you for that.

But your free advice is generally a blanket advice and might not be one size fits all.

So you could actually start a service for people who are actively looking to buy a new bike or a car where you can consult them one-on-one and guide them on which vehicle to buy based on their unique requirements. And you can get paid for this.

You can do the same thing as a Fashion expert, or a mental health expert or in any other niche.

To do this, you must add this in your Bio – to let people know you take one-on-one consulting. Give a link to them from a service like Calendly so they can book a paid appointment with you.

This will be an easy sell for you because your audience already perceives you as an expert.

And it will help the set of your audience that is looking to get personal advice from you.

It’s a win-win.

And those are my 5 methods of making money using your Instagram account that I wanted to share with you.

I hope you have got some nice ideas from this article and you will be able to make the most out of your Instagram community.

I would also like to hear your thoughts about the methods mentioned in this article in the comments below!