Instagram commands prestige not only as a widely used social media platform but also as one of the best online networks for making money.

Listening to people’s pretty stories of how they made amazing income figures on Instagram, you may think such stories are all falsehood.

However, it’s highly realistic that you can make money on Instagram provided that you’re ripe for one or all of the strategies for monetizing your Instagram presence.

What are the ways I can make money on Instagram?

It’s pretty good if the question above is all you’re thinking right now. Reading this post further, you can rest assured of discovering the top 3 ways people are making money on Instagram.

Top Three Ways You Can Make Money on Instagram

1.Serving as an Instagram Influencer

If you’re quite conversant with Instagram, you’ll have heard the term “Instagram influencer”.

As we speak, there are thousands of active influencers on Instagram. While this tends to draw more people’s attention to what it means to be an Instagram influencer, it should interest you that being an influencer is one great way you can make money on Instagram.

So, who really is an Instagram influencer?

An Instagram influencer is somebody with a huge Instagram following and influence which they probably acquired through their field of endeavour. The definition doesn’t stop there as an Instagram influencer leverages on their huge following and excellent engagement rate to win over the attention of many Instagram users to certain products/services.

In a simpler term, Instagram influencers are great personalities (who could be celebrity athletes, popular musicians, film actors, etc.) who have taken the advantage of their charisma to build excellent Instagram followings. Meanwhile, Instagram influencers, in turn, leverage on their massive followings to capture the fancies of brands, companies, etc., who need such influencers for making products and services appealing to customers.

One, therefore, can argue that Instagram influencers serve as some sorts of (indirect) marketers who make Instagram posts about products, services, brands, etc. that they’re indirectly selling to people.

Most times, the idea of making money as an Instagram influencer works best for celebrities because they tend to readily have huge followings coupled with high engagement rates. Even if you don’t have any celebrity status to your name, you still can rake in a decent amount of fortune for yourself through being an Instagram influencer.

All you’ll need to become an Instagram influencer is first building a strong following and winning the trust and confidence of your followers. Following that, you may consider yourself ripe for assuming the status of an Instagram influencer.

While on the lookout for the brands to work with, you should pay great attention to the ones that fit into your personality. Frankly, partnering with a brand whose activities contradict your values might prove counterproductive to you in the long run.

Also, you shouldn’t downplay the essence of extensive research about any brand that comes knocking your door. You might not want to believe it but it’s plainly factual that some of the brands out there (looking for Instagram influencers) are fraudsters. Advisably, always be on the alert while looking for brands that align with your taste.

2.Working as an Affiliate Marketer

If you have prior knowledge of affiliate marketing, you should readily understand what it means to serve as an affiliate marketer on Instagram.

Verily, affiliate marketing is a marketing strategy by which people buy the products of a third party through you (the marketer). It does have the advantage of helping you make money without you producing something. Put simply, affiliate marketing is more concerned with making sales on specific products rather than just making people know that the products exist.

Just like being an Instagram influencer, affiliate marketing on Instagram demands a substantial amount of following. This is because people with thousands of Instagram followers tend to get many buyers.

Affiliate marketing guarantees a decent number of benefits with the chief benefit being that you’ll earn a certain commission on every product sale made through you. Quite unfortunately however, a not-so-good reputation has been cast around affiliate marketing due to the deceptive promises of unusual mouthwatering earnings that scammers often make.

If you ever feel affiliate marketing is your best bet as regards making money on Instagram, you should be ready to approach the idea with an ethical mind. You should avoid attaching deceptive materials to whatever promo code or link through which people will purchase the product you’re marketing.

As an affiliate marketer on Instagram, you may have to market your chosen products such as jewelry, health supplements, etc. by suggesting them to your Instagram followers. You should note that as mentioned earlier, the third party (company or individual) for whom you’re marketing the products will reward you with a fee for every product sale recorded through your promo code or product link.

Given that affiliate marketing is your utmost preference for monetizing your Instagram presence, you should be ready to work with one of the trusted affiliate networks out there. Advisably, you should partner with Amazon Associates which appears to be your best bet in terms of trust and getting as many as possible products that you can choose from.

The only downside of choosing Amazon Associates, however, is that you’ll be restricted to utilizing the network’s affiliate link since there are no codes. It’s this link you’re expected to attach to your Instagram Story (provided you’re running a business account) or simply your bio.

3.Selling Your Own Products

Having read this post with great attention, you’re likely to have observed that the first two top ways to make money on Instagram (being an Instagram influencer and working as an affiliate marketer) both involve helping others to promote their products, services, brands, etc.

Interestingly however, the third top way to make money on Instagram (which implies selling your own products) differs considerably from the two others. Precisely, this is because the concept (of selling your own products via Instagram) works very much like e-commerce.

If you have an already-budding business and feel giving some online presence to the business will help augment your customer base, Instagram could be the perfect place for you to do this. For this idea to work, you must have garnered a considerable number of followers whom you’ll eventually turn into customers.

Perhaps, you’ve got a nice fashion business running and you now feel you should widen the business’ reach beyond its physical store. Establishing an online store for the fashion business would be a great idea and Instagram could help you achieve just that.

Observably, you should reckon that this third way of making money on Instagram emphasizes selling your own products. Needless to say, selling your own products demands that you have a real-world product which, perhaps, myriads of your Instagram followers are willing to buy. But what happens if you haven’t got any tangible product to sell?

Well, one of the beautiful sides of selling your own products on Instagram is that the idea isn’t limited to tangible products. In actuality, there are dozens of Instagram users such as consultants making fortune from the rendering of professional advice.

Foolproof Hints for Making Money on Instagram

To make great success with your Instagram monetization effort, it’s important that you try any or all of the top 3 ways for making money on Instagram but more important is that you incorporate the following foolproof hints into your monetization effort:

Displaying a sense of professionalism –Particularly if you’re an Instagram influencer, you’re strongly expected to portray yourself in a professional manner. Practically, doing so involves treating clients, customers or brand partners (as the case may be) with utmost respect, reflecting the sort of respect we see among formal business partners. Some of the ways you can show courtesy to your clients or brand partners is handling contracts very smartly and keeping to client-stipulated deadlines.

Avoiding counterfeit followers –Some people will always want to cut corners, thinking they can make success without having to follow the due process. You’ll be joining the guild of such people if you ever attempt to buy fake Instagram followers.

Advisably, you should avoid purchasing fake followers at all costs. In fact, it’s considered illegal to buy fake followers in the hope that they’ll replace real followers. Instagram frowns upon the idea and so, you too should consider it a condemnable act.

Making good use of Instagram tools –If you hope to monetize your Instagram presence through selling your products, utilizing Instagram tools will be your best bet for ensuring efficient Instagram activity. You wouldn’t want to spend hours trying to complete a few tasks such as editing your video/photo and preparing your post for sharing. This best explains why you should have an automated means for doing all that by combining a couple of Instagram tools.

Final Thoughts

As we speak, Instagram boasts more than 1 billion monthly users, giving intending brand influencers the assurance that they’re very likely to garner huge numbers of followers in their respective areas of interest.

If making money is what you mainly prioritize as an Instagram user, there’s no denying that you really need amassing hundreds of thousands of followers and achieving an excellent engagement rate.