Hey guys, I'm super excited you're here today because we're talking about a big topic. Okay. Today we're talking about how to earn money on Instagram.
So I'm guessing you've probably Googled this before. Maybe that's even how you ended up here, and you're wondering how can I actually use my Instagram account to make money? You hear things like influencers are getting hundreds of thousands of dollars for one single post on their Instagram feed, and while that is true and it is possible, it can take some time to get to that level.
Now, that often discourages people because most people will think, I need to have X amount of followers before you can make money on Instagram and it's just not true.
Okay, so today I'm going to give you four practical ways that you can start making money with your Instagram account today, regardless of how many followers you have. But before we get started, I'm super excited to say that this article is sponsored by Skills hare.
This is an awesome collaboration for me because I've been personally using Skills hare for the last few years. If you guys know anything about my back story,you know that I did some traditional schooling, but most of what I know and what has gotten me to where I am today is all self taught.
I am a huge advocate for Googling and YouTubing everything. So Skillshare is amazing because it is an online learning community that has a database of thousands and thousands of classes covering all types of creative and entrepreneurial topics.
So if you've been meaning to improve your photography, your graphic design, illustration, creative writing, filmmaking, web development,or even productivity, then Skillshare has the class for you. All of the classes on Skillshare are professionally created and are designed to educate the watcher.
So sometimes when you go on YouTube and you're looking for an answer, you might go through five or six videos before you actually find what you're looking for. But with Skill share, you know that by the end of it, you're going to have practical skills that help you implement that particular thing in your life or in your business. Lately.
I have been exploring the photography category a lot because I got a new camera and I'm trying to take better photos for my personal Instagram account. So inside of Skill share there are all kinds of videos ranging from beginner to advanced photography, DSLR to iPhone and every thing in between.
So if you want to improve your photos, whether it's for product photography or self portraiture, or even taking photos of other people then Skill share has a class for you. I also regularly find myself inside of the freelancing category because in here you find all kinds of amazing content that answer my most pressing questions.
So there is a tutorial for how to price yourself. So if you're a freelancer and you're starting your business and you don't know how much you should be charging, well there's a class that will help you figure it out. There's also classes about financing and managing your taxes and things like that, which can be a really difficult thing when you're self employed.
So as you can see, skill share is an amazing resource for any entrepreneur or business owner. So Skill share is giving everyone two free months of membership if you sign up using the link in my description box below so i highly suggest you check it out.
It truly is such a powerful resource. So now that we have that sponsor ship out ofthe way, let's get back to the video. I'm going to teach you guys four different ways that you can use to start making money with your Instagram account today. So the first way to make money on Instagramis by selling paid advertising and shout outs on your account. So this is your typical influencer marketing where a company will approach you and asks you to promote their brand in exchange for money or product.
Now of course. I want you to be taking them oney from these collaborations and not the product. But if you are new or your following is still quite small than accepting product may be appropriate. It also may be the way to get your foot in the door to working with these people on a more long term basis.
So don't worry if you have a small following,you can still get these opportunities. You just have to make sure that your Instagram account is set up for it and that you're doing your part to get that sponsorship. So the first thing you need to do is edit your profile to make sure that anybody who lands on your feed knows that you're currently accepting paid advertising, collaborations, sponsorships, whatever you want to call it,and you're going to add your email.
Okay? This is something that so many people miss. They want to be an influencer. They want to promote other people's stuffin exchange for money, but they don't give these brands any way to contact them. So you want to make sure that you put your email in your bio so that people know that they can contact you there to discuss anysort of collaboration. Then you need to get prepared for the fact that someone will contact you.
So you need to know what your rates are and how much are you going to charge for a singular post for an Instagram story and for adding someone's link to your bio. So of course this becomes the hard part. What is your value? What are you worth? If you've never done a sponsorship before,how can you know how much you should be charging? So those are all valid questions and something that is different for everybody.
Okay? So you're going to learn as you go, how much you're going to charge for these things and you're likely to increase or change your pricesas you go as well.
they're going to give you an estimate of what you could charge for specific services. So I do find that it is a little bit inflated. So just understand that this number might be on the higher end, but what it's doing is giving you a starting point. Okay? It's giving you an idea of what your influence might be worth.
Now of course, let's address the fact that perhaps people aren't reaching out to you yet, and that's totally normal and totally fine. It doesn't mean that you're a bad Instagram or where you don't have influence.
Basically what you have to do in this pointis you have to do the out reach. So what I encourage you to do is consider what companies you would want to work with and actually reach out to them. Okay? You're going to send them an email. You're going to tell them all about your Instagram account.
Whatever stats you have and why you promoting their product or service on your feed is going to benefit them. Then that's going to start the negotiation process. They're going to ask you about your ratesand et cetera, so if people aren't reaching out to you, that doesn't mean that there aren't sponsorships or paid advertising out there for you.
You just have to go and look for them yourself. I'm going to teach you how to increase your following and your engagement on Instagram in just five minutes. So go ahead and click that link. So the second way to make money on Instagram is to become an affiliate for your favorite products and services.
So I'm sure you've heard of affiliate marketing before, and basically how it works is that you sign up with a company, you promote their products or services, and if someone buys through your unique link, you're going toget a commission. So the amount of money that you can make by doing this ranges widely because each different company's going to have a different affiliate program.
So the easiest one to sign up for is the Amazon affiliate program. So it's called Amazon associates, but you can just type into Google, and from here you're going to sign up. And basically after that you can promote anything that's on Amazon and get a kick back from the sales that you make. So with Amazon, the percentage that you makeis actually quite low.
I think it's anywhere from like one to 5%,but it does change based on the products that you're selling. So Amazon is not the best affiliate program to be a part of, but it's the easiest one to join. And it's got the widest variety of products.
So if you want to make more money with your affiliate efforts, then I highly suggest you go to the actual brands that you use the most. So for example, if you are a graphic designer and you use Adobe Photoshop or illustrator, you can go to the Adobe website, find their affiliate program link and sign up to be an affiliate for them.
They actually pay out 85% of someone's original purchase.So if someone buys an annual membership fromyou, you will get 85% of that sale. So if they spend $100 you're going to get 85 which is pretty good. If they signed up for a monthly member ship,you're going to get about 8% of each monthly payment that they make.
So this already is much better than Amazon,but it's more specific. So you kind of have to figure out which products will be best for you to promote to your audience. Now, some things to keep in mind is that you only want to promote things that you think your audience is going to benefit from. If my audience is interested in marketing and I tried to sell them some athletic clothing, then the is probably not going to be there and you're unlikely to make any sales.
So I encourage you to one, think about what your niche is and what products fall into that niche and to think about the things that you use on a regular basis. So for me, I use all kinds of scheduling softwares. I use email marketing platforms and I use things like skillshare, like we mentioned earlier in this video.
So those things make sense for me to promote. So you gotta figure out what makes sense for you and your audience. And then from there you can go ahead and mention them in all of your Instagram posts. So for example, if you're an affiliate for a clothing company, you're going to want to take a photo of you wearing that clothing,upload it to your Instagram at all the details to your caption, and tell your audience to click the link in your bio to go ahead and buy it. That link is then going to be your affiliate link.
So when they click it, they're going to go over to the company's website and potentially purchase that product. But the great thing about being affiliate is that sometimes people will end up on the website and they won't actually purchase whatyou recommended, but they'll end up purchasing multiple other products and since they came through your affiliate link, you are going to get a commission for that.
So basically your job as an affiliate is to just get someone to click through your link and viewing that brand's website from there that the brand is going to do their job to sell that person a product.
Like I said, you want to sign up for Amazon,you want to join the affiliate programs of all of your favorite services and products that you actually use personally. And you might even want to look into people like me who have online courses. So I have an affiliate program where you can promote my Instagram course and get a 30% commission. So almost every company has an affiliate program in these days.
You just have to go to their website, find that link and sign up. So the third way to make money on Instagram is to design and sell your own merchandise using a print fulfillment company. The company that I use is called the Printful and they allow you to create your own custom designs on a variety of products such as tshirts,hats, coffee mugs, posters, throw pillows, backpacks, phone cases, and more.
So I will leave the link for the printfulin the description box below because you guys are definitely going to want to check this out. Basically how it works is that you create your own design and they'll give you the design guidelines and tell you exactly how to submitit and you're going to choose whatever product it is you want.
And then you can go ahead and list that product on your website. Now the great thing is that you don't need to buy any in ventory from them. So when you list that product on your website and someone ends up buying it, the Printful will get notified and they'll start preparing your product. You're going to have to pay your fee to the principal for that one product and then you're going to make your profit on top of it. So for example, a tee shirt might cost you $12 to get printed from the Print ful and then you're going to go ahead and sell it for $20on your website.
So now you're making an $8 profit with zero up front investment. So the profit margin is a little bit smaller than if you were to go to a company and order 1000 tee shirts. But you don't have to put any money up front. So this is a perfect way for you to test if your audience is interested in the products that you're offering.
Once you have a few designs set up, you can either create a store on your own website or you can use the printful to create a store on their website. That means that you can easily just send your Instagram visitors straight to that link and they are going to be able to choose their products and checkout in one easy step without you having to do too much technical work.
So if you have no idea how to set up an eCommerce store, don't worry, the printful will handle it for you. And all you have to do is create your designs,get one or two items shipped to you, take some great photos of them and put them on your Instagram and start promoting.
So this is exactly how I made my first bitof money on Instagram. So I decided to make some custom coffee mugs and sell them via my men in coffee account. And I made my first couple of hundred bucks that first month. At that time, I probably had less than 10,000 followers.
So again, you don't need to have a huge following,you just need to offer the product that your audience wants. So you need to really understand who your audience is, what makes them tick, what they're interested in, and what they're willing to spend money on.
So the printful has a ton of different options. Choose the one that's best for you. You don't need to make 700 different products. In fact, it's probably better if you just stick to a couple so that it's easier to promote and go from there.
The fourth way to make money on Instagram is to create and sell your own digital product. Okay? This is the way of the future, and this isthe most sustain able option that I've given you today. So when I say create your own digital product,this means creating a ebook or a video tutorial or a online course that someone can buy directly from you.
Okay? All these other options kind of rely on other people to supply the product or the income, right? Whereas with this option, you're going to create your own product, you're going to promote your own thing, and you're going to take home100% of the profits. So here's my step by step for creating a successful digital product. Number one, you need to determine what problem your audience has. So everyone has a different audience.
They all have different problems. So figure out what yours is. For example, it could be someone trying to lose weight. Number two is you're going to create a step-by-step solution for their problem. So if it comes to losing weight, that could be you simply creating a multi page PDF that gives them a work out regime or a nutritional regime and you know all the details on how to follow that to be successful.
On the other hand, it could be a series ofvideos or maybe even just audio MP3s, so you have to decide what your format is going tobe, but at the end of the day, what you need to really accomplish is that whatever you create is the solution to their problem. Step three is you have to host this producton your website so it doesn't have to be complicated.
Just make a single page, create a PayPal account and put a buy now button on that product. From there, you're going to need to decideon your price, so how much are you going to charge for this? How much do you charge is deter mined by how much work you put into it and the value that someone's going to get out of it.
Now I do encourage you to keep things small and start with a lower price item. Now, the reason I say that is because it's more difficult to get someone to buy a $3,000 product off Instagram than it is to get them to buy a $50 or $100 product. Okay? You need to understand that it takes people time to make purchasing decisions, and the more expensive your product is, the longer it will take them to do that.
So if you want to create something that you can start selling tomorrow, it's going to make you a little bit of recurring money,then definitely keep it simple, keep it small, and keep the price under a hundred dollars. Then finally, you're going to have to add that link to your bio and make sure that you're consistently promoting it and giving your audience calls to action that encourage them to go check out that link.
So the best way to do this is to tell them the benefits about it, explain to them all the different things that they're going to get, and especially what problem it's going to solve for them. Okay. So creating your own digital product is one of the best ways to make money with Instagram.
And it is my personal favorite. As you guys know, I've been creating digital courses for the last few years and they are what make me the most money every month and what really sustains my business. So that's it guys. At the end of the day, how to make money comes down to it, your knowledge of your audience and how you promote the product.
So if you really want to make money on Instagram,you need to constantly be promoting. I know at first it might feel a little slimyfor you to try and sell things to your audience, but the thing is that if people don't know what you're selling, then they can't possibly buy from you.
Okay? So you need to mention it regularly. You need to create posts specifically about it. You need to create stories about it. You need to be using that swipe up link if you have it, changing the link in your bio, using calls to action to tell people to go and buy what you have to offer.
And of course, making sure you educate your audience on what it is that you're selling. Okay? So that's how you can make money on Instagram starting today. You can go ahead and choose any of these optionsor use all of them. Okay? It's always a good idea to have multiple streamsof income. So I hope this video helped you.
I hope you learned something new today, and I want you guys to go out there and start making some money. You can absolutely do it. You don't need a lot of followers. You just need to start. So thanks for reading.
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