In recent years, Instagram has become a real force in the social media world. With over 1 billion monthly active users, Instagram has become a favorite social media channel for many brands.
These brands are now spending a substantial amount of their social media budget for gaining more customers and leads from Instagram.
So, this is the best time to cash in on the growing popularity of Instagram.
If you are ready to put in the time and effort, you can definitely grow your Instagram account to a level that can fetch you serious money online.
Suitable For -
People who love to use Instagram and take photos.
Skills Required -
1. Ability to take good quality photographs.
2. Ability to edit photos professionally.
3. Ability to edit high-quality photos or wallpapers using tools such as Canva, Befunky, etc.
4. Creativity and imagination.
How To Get Started -
To get started all you need is an Instagram account, a nice username, attractive profile picture, and impressive bio.
If you are ready for these things, then you are ready to post and begin your marketing campaign.
Tips -
1. Select your niche: Before you can start marketing on Instagram, you need to pick a niche in which you’re going to operate. The best way to find a suitable niche for yourselves is to look at the things which interest you the most or the things in which you are good.
For example, if you are a fashionista and love to stay updated with the latest fashion trends then you can start an Instagram account on which you can regularly share fashion trends, styles, tips, and tricks with your audience.
2. Fill out your bio correctly: Your bio is the first place where your potential followers get the information about you. So you need to make sure it is creating the perfect first impression on them.
You can add one or two liner description, a link to your website, and emoticons for catching attention.
You can also add in few keywords and a couple of hashtags to ensure that you’re easily searchable by the right kind of followers.
3. Create posts for your ideal followers: Before you can start posting images on your account do some research and find out what people like the most in your niche? Which images are going to appeal to them? Which taglines will make the best impact on them? And so on.
Finding answers to the questions mentioned above will help you to create targeted posts that will fetch in lots of true followers to your account.
4. Post regularly: To grow your followers at a faster rate, you must post several images per day. But make sure you don’t post all of them at once, post them at a different time in a day. Sometimes if you are too busy to post several images then try to post at least one picture every day.
5. Use only high-quality images: Your Instagram account should be a brand. So make sure you are posting only high-quality images with the best effects.
There’s no point in posting low-quality images as they all decrease your account’s value.
High-quality images build a long-lasting visual impression into the minds of your followers, they also help to catch the eyes of the many casual browsers who will just discover you only because your high-quality image grabbed their attention, eventually increasing your followers.
6. Use relevant hashtags: Hashtags is the most dominant feature of Instagram, if used cleverly they’ll help your posts to reach millions of people who might be interested in your profile. Do some research and find the best hashtags within your niche and make sure you are including them in every single post.
Visit the website Tagsforlikes.com for discovering the most popular tags within your niche.
Also, keep the hashtags relevant, and don’t try to fit in too many. Instagram allows you to post 30 hashtags per post.
7. Engage with your followers: You need to interact with your followers to build trust, get an insight into their problems, needs, and expectations so that you can use this data to bring in more relevant content for them.
A simple way to engage with your current followers or potential followers within your niche is by liking their images, providing valuable comments or even following them back.
You can even run daily contests which might seem relevant to your followers.
For example, a reputed watch brand runs a “Pic of the day” of the day contest in which they ask their customers to post images wearing the brand’s watch.
They then select the best image out of submitted ones and post it on their Instagram profile.
Followers like such contests because if selected they get the chance to become popular among the brand’s other followers.
How To Monetize -
Following are the best ways to make money on Instagram:
1. Affiliate Marketing
This is a good way to start making money especially when your Instagram account has gathered a few thousand followers and is growing fast.
Affiliate marketing on Instagram is quite different than other traditional channels such as blogging and video marketing.
Here you’ll need to post beautiful images of the products you want to promote and drive sales by placing your affiliate URL into your bio or caption.
Following are the links to a few reputed companies where you can sign up as an affiliate and get started:
If you are taking high-quality photographs and professionally editing for your Instagram posts then why not sell them to make some extra cash?
There are many individuals, bloggers, and businesses who are always looking for new and creative photographs. Instagram can help you to find them and sell your snaps.
There’s a very simple way of doing this. Add a watermark to your images and list all the selling and contact details precisely within the caption. People who are interested in purchasing them will contact you, and you can sell your shots to them.
The following are the names of some trusted sites where you can put your Instagram photos for sale.
4. Sell your own products
If you personally create any product or you are a retailer, you need to leverage the power of Instagram for getting more sales.
Product promotion works great on Instagram because you can post personalized photos of your products which cannot be found anywhere else.
You can use many promotional tactics such as creating beautiful infographics, asking existing customers to post pictures of them using your product, or even post pictures of the raw materials and actual product creation process.
5. Sell your Instagram account
If you already made it big on Instagram by gathering millions of followers. You’ve achieved all your goals or just you need to move on from Instagram to doing something else.
If you want to go away from Instagram, you’ll be happy to know that you can sell your Instagram account and earn some hefty amount of money.
The price of your Instagram account will depend on the niche, the number of followers, engagement, and so on.
Here’s the list of few legitimate websites where you can sell your Instagram account:
Extra Tip -
Above mentioned are the best ways to monetize your Instagram account once you get a few thousand followers, but I’ll suggest you not to start any promotions until you get 10 thousand followers.
Some of you might think waiting to start making any money until the account gets 10 thousand followers is really insane.
But believe us, it’s the right way. You need to first build trust and confidence about you into the minds of your followers and you can only do that by providing consistent value to them over a period of time.