How to make money on Instagram

Making money on Instagram requires clear planning and the right strategy. Brand col­lab­or­a­tions, affiliate marketing, and selling your own products are par­tic­u­larly popular options. Getting paid on Instagram can be prof­it­able from just several thousand followers, and it can generate an income of between a few hundred and several thousand pounds.

Instagram has grown from a small photo-sharing platform to a trillion-dollar business. With 500 million active users daily and over one billion users in total (as of March 2022), it’s no surprise that you can make money on Instagram. With Instagram Shopping, Meta (formerly Facebook) offers users the pos­sib­il­ity of con­vert­ing Instagram accounts into business accounts to go pro­fes­sion­al by selling via Instagram. But even without a business profile, if you’ve got more than 500 followers, you can get paid on Instagram.

No matter whether it’s five-figure sums through social selling and social commerce or just an e-commerce side income, at the beginning, there is always a well-thought-out strategy and a business model involved. Ways to generate income on Instagram are:

• Ad­vert­ising: Co­oper­a­tion with suc­cess­ful brands through product placement (e.g., as an in­flu­en­cer or model).
• On com­mis­sion: Com­mis­sion-based selling on Instagram through affiliate marketing
• In­de­pend­ent sales: You can easily sell your products online on Instagram. (e.g., photos, paintings, fashion, music, books, or dec­or­at­ive items).
• Drop-shipping: Selling products without any inventory, pro­duc­tion, warehouse or dis­tri­bu­tion by drop­ship­ping

Before we present suc­cess­ful Instagram strategies, it is important to un­der­stand what it takes to get started on Instagram.

If you want to make money on Instagram, you don’t have to have followers in the seven-figure range. That said, the more followers, the better. Depending on the niche, target group and brand, however, 500 to 1,000 active followers can be suf­fi­cient for decent royalties. Active and suc­cess­ful cat­egor­ies include fashion, nutrition, fitness, travel and beauty.

What’s es­pe­cially important is that followers must not be fake. Reach can only be generated with an engaged community. The Instagram algorithm measures success by whether posts are fully viewed or clicked on, whether users read captions, whether posts receive many likes in a short time frame, and whether hashtags are used. Also have a look at our tips on how to get new Instagram followers to generate more reach and in­ter­ac­tion.

The way in which the Instagram algorithm works is a trade secret of sorts. Despite that, it is possible to determine factors that the algorithm rewards with more vis­ib­il­ity. These include:

• Content con­tinu­ity
• High frequency of con­tri­bu­tions
• Follower in­ter­ac­tion/en­gage­ment
• Content relevance
• Lots of likes and comments in a short time
• Dwell time on posts

For accounts with few followers, it’s useful to know that the algorithm remembers the reg­u­lar­ity of in­ter­ac­tions, so you don’t have to have millions of followers to end up at the top of a feed. However, you do need to encourage followers to interact. To do this, you need high-quality content and call-to-actions that invite people to visit your shop, to like, comment or follow you. To measure success, analysis tools can be used for Instagram stat­ist­ics.

An important re­quire­ment for earning money on Instagram is re­gis­ter­ing a business. In the UK, anyone who has so-called permanent profit-making and repeat in­ten­tions must register their business for tax purposes. So, if you intend to make a living from Instagram and e-commerce, a business re­gis­tra­tion is mandatory.

On Instagram, a lot happens at first glance. How many followers you attract and how much in­ter­ac­tion you generate is de­term­ined by the quality of your content. This begins with the Instagram bio and Instagram profile picture. Product photos, Instagram stories and Instagram Reels should also offer the best possible res­ol­u­tion and video quality. So don’t skimp on technical equipment, use powerful image editing software and use Instagram tools for more reach. Also remember to change your Instagram name if it doesn’t fit the target group.

Since 2020, Instagram has offered a feature called Instagram shopping that allows you to sell products directly through an Instagram business account using shop links and product tags. If you want to earn money with Instagram Shopping, the following re­quire­ments must be met:

• Comply with Facebook policies
• Only sell your own products (not services)
• Sales/company location in Facebook-supported markets
• Proven re­li­ab­il­ity, trans­par­ency, and customer friend­li­ness

A widely used strategy is sponsored posts and product placement. This Instagram strategy is suitable if you, as an in­flu­en­cer, have an active community, many followers, and a lot of reach. If this is the case, you can actively ask brands for co­oper­a­tion in the form of spon­sor­ship in order to give your products more attention. You will be fin­an­cially rewarded in return. Depending on the brand and post, this can be in the range of several thousand pounds.

Con­tri­bu­tions take the form of posts, carousel posts, stories or reels and use functions such as in­di­vidu­al­ised or branded hashtags. Par­tic­u­larly well-known in­flu­en­cers are actively contacted by companies for in­flu­en­cer marketing or register on special in­flu­en­cer mar­ket­places.

Affiliate marketing is a direct sale of products from other sellers. To do this, you place traceable product links or promotion codes in your Instagram profile, in your Instagram bio and in Instagram posts through which a sale can be made. Links lead either directly to the vendor page, or to a cor­res­pond­ing landing page. Clicks generated by you and converted sales are at­trib­uted to you and rewarded with a sales com­mis­sion that varies depending on the affiliate programme.

If you want to get going yourself, you can market your own products, services, or art com­mer­cially on Instagram. As a platform with a focus on visual content, Instagram is ideal if you want to sell photos online or offer designs, drawings, posters, videos, and other visual products.

Of course, physical products such as fashion, beauty articles, jewellery, design/fur­nish­ing items, books or even food can also be sold using Instagram. Selling via Instagram Shopping with its own shop tab and product feed is par­tic­u­larly practical. A business account is required for this, however.

Drop-shipping sounds technical and abstract at first, but it is a simple way to sell goods without your own warehouse or pro­duc­tion. You neither need your own inventory, nor do you have to worry about logistics. With your own drop-shipping shop, you order goods from retailers and sell them to your customers. Storage, shipping, and delivery are not dealt with by you, but by a logistics company linked to your shop or by the man­u­fac­turer. In other words, you act both as an online retailer and as an in­ter­me­di­ary between end customers and whole­salers or man­u­fac­tur­ers.

In order to be able to start with drop­ship­ping, you usually need an online shop for linking to Instagram, an account with suppliers or man­u­fac­tur­ers and a re­gistered business. You can find suppliers via supplier databases and wholesale mar­ket­places such as Printful, Oberlo, Spocket and Modalyst.

A question that many people ask them­selves is what profits can be made on Instagram? That depends on how many followers you have, how engaged your community is, how well-known you are and which sales strategy you choose. If you sell your own products and services, you determine how much they cost. If that is the case, the profit is measured by how suc­cess­ful your marketing strategy is. The situation is different when it comes to spon­sor­ing and af­fil­i­ates.

Sponsored posts on profiles with up to 5,000 followers can bring in around 100 pounds per post. For affiliate marketing, prices depend on the con­di­tions of the affiliate programme. As a suc­cess­ful in­flu­en­cer with a large reach, you can negotiate lucrative contracts and col­lab­or­a­tions with brands that can range from 850 to over 8,500 pounds per post or story. How much you earn depends on your ne­go­ti­at­ing skills, your market value, and your business model. The real currency on Instagram is, therefore, called en­gage­ment and reach.

To get a better idea of which business models are lucrative, we present three suc­cess­ful practical examples.

A frequent criticism of Instagram, a fixation on ap­pear­ance, is also a recipe for success. No wonder, then, that fitness and beauty profiles regularly top the in­flu­en­cer charts. Suc­cess­ful in­flu­en­cers with a fitness or beauty channel can earn around 1,300 pounds for a 15-second sponsored story post to around 900,000 to 1 million followers. Instagram can also only serve as an extension here. In addition, creating a YouTube channel, a blog or using Instagram al­tern­at­ives can be useful. Com­mer­cially suc­cess­ful fitness in­flu­en­cers include Joe Wicks, Chessie King, James Haskell and Carly Rowena. In the in­ter­na­tion­al beauty sector, Kim Kar­dashi­an’s KKW Beauty is at the top.

Clearly, in­flu­en­cers and af­fil­i­ates — as well as co­oper­at­ing companies — in the fashion sector achieve sig­ni­fic­ant market values too. With high-quality Instagram content con­sist­ing of fashion tips, product images or sponsored content in con­nec­tion with product links, con­sid­er­able amounts can be earned. The fashion label, Fashion Nova, with 125.2 million US dollars (110 million pounds) EMV is worth men­tion­ing here. Through col­lab­or­a­tions with celebrit­ies such as Cardi B, and through social media in­teg­ra­tion, the label is one of the most popular worldwide and was con­sidered the most suc­cess­ful Instagram profile in terms of in­flu­en­cer marketing in 2018.

Something you cannot simply plan or generate is prom­in­ence. However, prom­in­ence can be used as a marketing tool if you start a part­ner­ship with celebrity in­flu­en­cers for your own products and thus increase your market value, for example. As an extreme case – with around 400 million followers, Cristiano Ronaldo not only has the most suc­cess­ful Instagram profile, but also earns an estimated $1 million (around £900,000) per post and thus rep­res­ents enormous ad­vert­ising and vis­ib­il­ity potential for companies. Prom­in­ence is a value in and of itself, therefore.

There is no secret or blanket recipe for financial success on Instagram. In the following list, however, we will give you some tips and tricks that have been proven to work.

Those who don’t want to wait for brands to come to them can equally contact companies directly, or sign up on in­flu­en­cer mar­ket­places like In­tel­li­flu­ence, Nox­In­flu­en­cer and Afluencer.

Anyone who uses online shop software such as Shopify or WordPress with Woo­Com­merce can integrate Instagram into their own e-commerce business. This is par­tic­u­larly useful for con­vert­ing sales directly on Instagram.

Use Instagram ads to help get more attention for your products and reach new followers.

The length of time users spend looking at posts is a success criterion for the Instagram algorithm. So include content with added value as well as shop links and price in­form­a­tion in your captions. The ideal length is between 138 and 150 char­ac­ters.

Observe the guidelines on Instagram image sizes and video formats as well as on the length and number of hashtags (max. 30, ideally: 5 to 10). Do note that is a single post has more than 20 hashtags, a ‘shadow ban’ could threaten to make your post invisible in the search. Also, take some in­spir­a­tion from your com­pet­it­ors’ recipes for success.

Sponsored content and affiliate marketing doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice your own Instagram style. So make sure to integrate and label ad­vert­ising and products naturally in your feed to inspire trust and in­ter­ac­tion with au­then­ti­city.