Making money is in fact one very crucial part of our lives as youths and adults. Analyzing critically, one would realize that a great portion of our daily activities and general life patterns are geared towards making money either in the short-term or long-term. Education is a perfect example, most of us only ever seek to get educated or go to school simply because there’s the hope that after everything, money would be made.
Fortunately, you don’t necessarily need to own a degree before you can make money these days. With the rise of technology, the internet amongst other things has been an invaluable tool in the business and money-making venture. It not only serves as an avenue for crowdsourcing, advertising, building trust, marketing and even selling for physical business enterprises but also provides independent job opportunities.
‘Influencing’ is one of these many opportunities and it can be carried out across the numerous social media platforms that exist. Today however, our focus is one of these many social media platforms –Instagram!
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Ready to find out how you can make money as an Instagram influencer? Dig in.
First of all, who is an Instagram influencer? We have to understand that before we can find out how it could serve as a money-making machine!!!
Instagram influencers are basically Instagram users who have established credibility, trust and audience in that social space, as a result of their trustworthiness and reliability, they get to persuade others (influence people’s decisions- just as the name implies). In essence, these are simply personalities on Instagram with a tangible number of followings ranging from as little as a 1000 followers(Nano-influencers) to as much as hundreds of millions of followers (Macro-influencers).
You’d find that most celebrities fit in this spot because of their large follower base. Hence, 60-75% of celebrities and popular societal figures are brand ambassadors for a particular organization or promote for a particular brand.
You’ve probably seen a post by one your favourite celebrities asking you to patronize a business/brand or one of those hilarious comedy skits where a brand is stylishly promoted as an intertwined part of the drama with all the repeated mentions and shout-outs. Yes! It’s all part of it. These respected, trusted and loved personalities are usually paid to this, mostly as a fixed sum or sometimes an agreed commission. People are making this money already!
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Now to the part you’ve been itching to see; ‘How can you make a ton of money from this thing?!’
Here’s an interesting fact you probably never knew, 1 billion+ people in the world right now are Instagram users! That’s without counting those using its substitute version- Instagram lite, which has over 10 million users on its own.
Why am I telling you this? There’s a fundamental business principle that states, simply put;‘where people are, money abounds!’
From this, we could logically deduce that ‘the more the people, the more money there is to make!’
How do I mean? As a matter of fact, there’s nothing that you want to sell, product or service for which you won’t find a buyer/client/customer for amongst 1 billion people. Name it! Your potential customers can be found on ‘the gram’.And in their massive numbers!!! People waiting to spend money!
Brands and businesses have this understanding andInstagram influencers simply leverage on this fundamental principle.
So basically, brands scout for Instagram influencers and pay them to become brand influencers. Records show that brands spent a whopping $5.67 billion on influencer marketing in 2018 and the numbers are projected to multiply as the years go. I can only imagine how much these similar brands are willing to spend on influencer marketing right now, especially with the massive increase in the use of social media and the rise of digital marketing as a norm in this era.
You could have your cut! There’s apparently enough money to go around. You could start building your follower base from today and start getting paid to run adverts, promotions and shout-outs in a few months’ time and if you already have a good number of followers it’s probably high time you started making use of what you have to gain some extra cool cash. Wait…I know what you’re thinking! You’re wondering….
How much exactly are we talking about?!
Well, typically,Instagram influencers charge between $50 and $3,000 for a single post! Price of course depends on factors like how big the brand is and the number of followers one has. Nonetheless, you would agree with me that the range is far beyond a fair sum of money for just a few clicks. It turns out to be totally worth it!
A lot of fascinating things have been said and you already understand the typical Instagram influencer’s money-making secret but there’s one question left…
How do you go about this?!
Here’s a simplified arrangement of things you need to do to start making money as an Instagram influencer and some pro-tips to guide you through your journey and help you avoid costly mistakes many have made along the line. Let’s begin.
- Become an Instagram influencer: Of course before you can start to make the money you must first of all be an Instagram influencer and that’s not so difficult if you’re already an Instagram user, it simply involves a few technicalities, your total commitment and dedication and the promise to be consistent. Have those and you’re good to go! Here’s what to do.
2 Choose a niche (area of specialty/specialization) you have adequate knowledge/experience on or you‘re passionate about. This simply puts you at an advantageous point, helps you enjoy the work you do and gives you enthusiasm about the work thereby boosting your productivity.
- Create an interesting, captivating and relevant Bio.
- Share your stories and experiences. This helps people connect with you on a more personal level. This is more reason why you should pick a niche that resonates with you.
- Post content consistently. This is one of, if not the most cogent part.
- You have to be consistent in posting content relevant to your chosen niche. You would need to post up at least 3-5 times daily. In doing this, there are certain techniques and elements that help optimize your post such that it gets to more screens. These include:
- Create an interesting, captivating and relevant Bio.
- Share your stories and experiences. This helps people connect with you on a more personal level. This is more reason why you should pick a niche that resonates with you.
- Post content consistently. This is one of, if not the most cogent part.
- You have to be consistent in posting content relevant to your chosen niche. You would need to post up at least 3-5 times daily. In doing this, there are certain techniques and elements that help optimize your post such that it gets to more screens. These include:
- Pro-tips.
- Proper use of hash-tags (#). Use hash-tags relevant to your niche or post, you would attract more people who are interested in such topics than just random followers.
- Tag relevant brands. You could also tag bigger brands in the same or closely related niche. Who knows? You just might catch their attention.
- Use schedulers. Manually posting content at stipulated times might be stressful, especially if you just want this as a ‘side hustle’. To help with that, there are apps designed to post content for you at set times. All you have to do is create the content before and schedule the date and time. You could create a whole weeks content in a day and schedule it. You’d only need to visit your page to monitor the growth and responses/engagement rates and also engage with people through their comments.
- Engage properly. As I mentioned earlier, it’s important to relate with followers and connect with them through the chat/comment box.
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- Build your follower base: As you know, you need at least 1000 followers to be officially referred to as an influencer. However, ‘the more the people, the more the money’. So, the bigger you follower base is, the more you get paid. To grow your follower base you could
- Host contests or challenges. You simply start a challenge with a grand price for say the post with the highest likes with a condition that they must follow your page to qualify to be a part of the challenge. Thousands of people, sometimes even millions of people will try their luck. Celebrity musicians sometimes use this tactics to push their albums or newly released songs. You could also partner with a bigger influencer to host one of these.
- Celebrity shout-outs. You could work with a bigger voice on the social space who would tag you and encourage his followers to check you out and follow you.
- Follow-for-follow. As a small growing influencer, this is another way of building your follower base. You follow people and they follow you in return. However, this isn’t always the best option because it doesn’t necessarily attract people interested in you niche. It just brings people who are randomly looking for more followers.
- Referral contests. This works across most major social media spaces. Here, you simply host a contest where each participant has a unique code or link through which they bring new followers who can be tracked to them. Eventually, the contestant with the highest number of referral wins and is rewarded with a promised price.
Pro-tips
- Do not buy followers. It’s a complete no-no if you want to build a real follower base.
- Make your wall/Instafeed attractive. This is usually the first thing people check and first impressions do matter.
