Instagram is one of the most popular social network sites out there. It’s a turned into a powerhouse!

With 1 billion active users on there,  you don’t want to miss out. In this article we’re going to go through 8 ways you can make money from Instagram.

If you want to make money with Instagram, you’re in the right place. Here are some of the top ways you can make money with Instagram.

Paid Shoutouts

A shout out is just making a post on Instagram and mentioning the account in the caption and/or tagging the account.

If you have a account with a high enough following you can command a good amount of money per shout out. You can sell one shout out depending on your following between $5 – $500.

If you have an account and want to get started list your account on shoutout marketplaces like Shoutcart.com and BuySellShoutouts.

Paid Shout outs are normally done with niche accounts. A niche account is an Instagram account that is typically focused on one niche or subject.

This could be anything like; humour, memes, chess, football, science, trainers, fashion, style, etc. There’s niche pages for almost anything and everything.

If you have a personal account and quite a few followers, then you can command a lot more. Which takes us to the next way you can make money on Instagram, as an influencer.

Influencer

Influencer’s get paid when they partner up with a brand and mention that brand on Instagram. The brand sends them products and pays a fee for them to make a post on Instagram.

People like Kim Kardashian, The Rock and Neymar and can make up to a million per post. 

They do have millions of followers on the platform though.

However there are tons of people on the platform with hundreds of thousands and they can still make a few hundreds of dollars to thousands of dollars depending on their engagement.

@chet_sket has over 500,000 followers and while that is a lot it still falls short compared to what well known figures like Conor McGregor may have. 

However he can still earn a lot of money as an influencer and regularly has brands hitting him up. He works with many fashion brands like Hera and Jameson Carter. 

If you have less than that though you can still make good money. To get started with becoming an influencer you can sign up to influencer marketplaces like Hey Influencers, Tomoson, Famebit and Tribe.

It’s about building your following up, but don’t despair if you have 1,000 to 100,000 followers you can be what’s classed as a micro-influencer. 

A micro-influencer is someone who might not have as many followers as the Kardashian clan but they have a smaller follower base but one that is more engaged. 

If you have a small but engaged following why not start messaging other small businesses on Instagram and ask them if they need any help with influener marketing. 

This way you could have content and you also are able to partner up with other brands.

Affiliate Marketing

If you have an Instagram niche page or business page with a strong passionate following that are engaged, they will likely want to buy what you have to offer. 

Affiliate Marketing is when you sell other peoples products but you receive a cut or a commission from each person you refer. 

Say I have a fitness Instagram page and I want to promote a book on Amazon.

All I would have to do is get the affiliate link from Amazon for the specific fitness book and put in my Instagram bio for my followers to buy it. 

When someone buys the book I have linked in my Instagram bio, I would receive a small commission every time someone buys that product.

And it doesn’t just stop at books, it’s almost anything. Books, physical products, digital products, etc.

That’s what @tailopezblueprint does. They promote content related to Tai Lopez and entrepreneurship on Instagram but they are affiliates for Tai Lopez’s Social Media Marketing course. 

You can use bit.ly to tidy up the affiliate link and make it look more shorter and professional.

There’s so many affiliate programs you can sign up to. I recommend signing up to one or two of them.

Some affiliate programs you can sign up to are: Clickbank, Share-a-sale, Commission Junction, Amazon Associates, eBates and Stylinity.

Sell Services

A service is something you can offer to followers for a fee. That service could be anything, whether that be consulting or logos. 

If you are a good artist then you can use Instagram as a platform to showcase your talent.

Not only that but you can do artwork for other people who request it for a fee. People will gladly pay for awesome art.

All you need to do is put in your bio something like ‘DM or email for custom artwork/commissions’ in your bio. There are plenty of people making a killing on Instagram just from doing that.

Not only that some savvy artists are then adding their art onto mugs, shirts and canvas’ using print on demand services like Printful or Printify.

Physical Products

If you have physical products to sell, Instagram is a fantastic way to get your products in front of a targeted audience. You can create a Instagram page for your business if you don’t already have one.

The new Shop feature on Instagram is a great way to promote your products. The Instagram Shop feature makes your posts shoppable on Instagram.

All your followers have to do is tap the post that is tagged with your product and in a couple of taps they can go straight to your website to purchase the product.

Not only that you can now make your Instagram Stories post shoppable so this make it a even better way for your followers to engage with you and go to your website and purchase your products.

@boomanofficial make posts shoppable but make lifestyle photos that show their products in everyday scenarios like the one above. 

What I recommend you do is mix up your post and not make each post promoting a product.

Not only will this tire out your followers but they will become uninterested in what you have to post as you are continuously shoving your products down their throats. 

Provide them with some valuable posts and then mix in your products with that, try to keep it a mix of every 3 value posts you offer you then follow it up with the 4th post being about your product.

To get started with selling physical products you can use Shopify, an ecommerce platform.

Sell eBooks

eBooks are a good way to make passive income. Write about the topic you are passionate or knowledgeable about.

Even if you have an online course you want to promote, Instagram is a great way to get more eyeballs on it and ultimately get more sales.

Rob Lipsett (@roblipsett) is a YouTuber and author and uses his Instagram account as a platform to promote his fitness content. He provides value to his followers by providing fitness tips and advice to his followers for free.

He also uses it to promote his book. Notice how in his bio he has ‘Order my book’ with a link to it.

The key to selling things well on Instagram is not to sell them all the time. You have to provide value to your followers above anything else.

What I mean by this is not to plug your book or promote your book on every post.

Obviously let your followers know that you have a ebook or online course for sale but don’t overdo it.

Put the link of your book or online course in your bio so anyone interested can buy it and download it.

Author Tim Ferriss (@timferriss) makes use of Instagram by promoting his books and podcast. But he provides tremendous value in terms of his content that he puts out.

And he doesn’t plug his books to his followers everytime. 

There’s plenty of platforms out there where you can list your ebook. Some include iBooks, Amazon Kindle, Google Play Books and Smashwords or Gumroad.

If you’ve got an online course try Teachable, Udemy or Gumroad.

You can share snippets of your book or online course with your followers to entice them to download and purchase the full thing.

Drop Shipping

This is kind of like running your own online store but the thing is you’re not actually selling your own products.

The products are another stores but to the customer it is as if they are ordering from you.

When the customer purchases something from you, you then send the details to the supplier/store and they send the product out to the customer on your behalf. 

You keep the markup you added and they take the money for the product. It’s a win-win situation.

It’s not as simple as it sounds though. Drop shipping has gotten extremely competitive in the past and bad practices like poor customer service and bad products have given it a bad name.

Although there still is money to be made from drop shipping, you just have to do it differently, provide a good experience for the customer and promote good products.

You can use Shopify to launch your drop shipping store and AliExpress or Chinavasion to get products to promote.

I would recommend using the same method as promoting physical products on Instagram to promote your drop shipping store. 

If you need help growing your Instagram account, monetizing it and getting people to engage with your account then I have the perfect solution for you. Our book is coming soon. Sign up to our email list to be notified and get a special offer.