Last Updated on May 7, 2019 by Larious

Everybody wants to make money on Instagram, but not everybody knows exactly how. In this post, I’m going to be showing you 10 incredibly creative ways how you can make money on Instagram. Here we go.

#1. Instagram Shout outs (paid mentions)

It’s pretty straight forward: people who want more publicity for their Instagram accounts pay you to mention their handles in a post. It could be a post about, say, a suit piece or gown you are wearing in the photo and you simply tag the designer.

It could even be in the form of a post where you call to your fans to go ahead and follow this, this a this IG accounts.

As for how much to charge for this? It depends on your follower numbers and engagement rate. For example, if I had 100k followers, I would charge around N5k per mention.

This particular method to make money on Instagram is pretty much the most affordable of the ten listed here.

Also read: How to borrow credit or airtime from MTN, airtel, 9 mobile (Etisalat) and Glo and not pay back.

#2. Sponsored posts (Image & video)

Sponsored posts on Instagram are easily the most popular way to make money on the platform. A business pays you to put up a post about their dry cleaning services. They send you the creatives and you post it and tag their IG account and add their phone number (sponsored posts typically fuse paid mentions within them).

As for how much to charge for this, if I had 100k followers, I would charge around N35k per sponsored post. I could also decide to charge for videos on a CPM basis of N1,000 per 1000 views.

Also read: How To Get 1K Followers Asap With Instagram Followers Generator

#3. Branded native videos

These are videos that are created usually by an Influencer for a brand whereby they creatively infuse the brand’s product or service into their own original video content such that it naturally occurs with the video and not look like a blatant ad.

Top Instagram influencers like Lasisi Elenu, Wofai Fada and Broda Shaggi are great examples of Influencers who have done a lot of these type of campaigns for big-name companies.

Personally, I think this method of making money from Instagram fetches the most money out of the ten on our list. For instance, I know of an Influencer marketing agency in Lagos Nigeria that once contacted Lasisi and Wofai Fada for this and got  N500k and N700k bill respectively.

If you’re to offer this service, you’d have to first be known for dishing out creative original video content that uniquely stands out.

#4. Link placements

By default, I think most people use the bio link on their IG pages to feature their website or YouTube videos. You’re leaving stupid money on the table.

Why put up your own link when you can get others to pay you to put up their own links on a weekly or monthly duration? You can charge as much as N20k per week with a follower count of 100k.

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#5. Paid Following

The king of paid follows is probably Instablog and they are over 2million followers. But what are paid followings? Exactly as it sounds: you pay a popular Instagram influencer to follow you.

Have you ever seen Instablog’s profile and realized that they’re only following 1 or 2 accounts, then after a while, it’s zero? That’s exactly how you do paid followings.

It’s a very subtle but effective logic that doesn’t require a word of text. The thing is that their followers will naturally become so curious to know who it is that is so important the Influencer they are following had to follow and they will click through to the account.

However juicy the idea of this looks, mind you, this will only work if indeed you have that Influencer status and your following count reads zero, then you can create space for a maximum of only 3 (one cannot be greedy with this one or it just wouldn’t give that premium, exclusive vibe).

#6. Affiliate marketing

In case you didn’t know, Affiliate marketing is not restricted to blogs alone. As long as you have the link, you can short link it and place it either in your bio or Stories.

Next, you’d need to craft your sales pitch in your posts or bio description in such a way as will drive clicks and sales.

I hope you know that the best way to get conversions from Affiliate marketing is to sell products that tally closely with the niche of your page i.e – you can’t have a lifestyle page and be selling Smartphones from Jumia.

And one more thing, Affiliate marketing WILL NOT WORK if you bought virtually all your followers. You require real people who fit the intended target audience and are interested in your niche topic. That’s food for thought.

#7. Direct marketing

This is much like the opposite of Affiliate marketing. While you sell people’s products via a link in the former, in Direct marketing, you sell your own products & services on your page and have interested buyers DM you.

Once again, Direct marketing WILL NOT WORK if you bought virtually all your followers. You require real people who fit the intended target audience of what you’re selling and who are interested in your niche topic.

If you want to know what direct marketing looks like on IG, just search for #adire #ghanaprint and you’ll see how it’s done.

#8. Sponsored stories

We all love and use the Instagram Stories feature (except me). But why simply post images of yourself when you can run 24hr time-sensitive ads for clients on your Stories and enable your followers to swipe up into the advertiser’s landing page?

With Stories, you can easily charge on a daily basis because after all, these posts disappear after 24hrs, right?

#9. Instagram live event coverage

You could also make money on Instagram by getting paid to cover an event via your Instagram live. Your followers get notified that you’re going live and log on to your live feed.

A great way to use this monetization method will be to use sponsored posts to create a buzz about the event first of all. More money for you.

#10. Pay to follow.

If you thought that paying for a big influencer to follow you was outrageous, then our number 10 is definitely the kicker.

If you serve up some really great content that you’re cocksure your followers will pay to see, then you can charge them for following you.

Bobrisky once did that with his (or is it her…I’m as confused as you) IG account and charged people to follow.

Here’s how to get it rolling. Once you’ve got your killer content ready (don’t ask me for ideas, that’s totally up to you), simply make your account private and announce on your bio that you’re charging anyone who wants to follow you so so and so amount to get access to your content.

Imagine charging $ 10-lifetime access per prospective follower and 5,000 people pay up.

It’s a long shot but as I mentioned earlier, If you serve up some really great content that you’re cocksure your followers will pay to see, then you can pull it off.

When is the right time to monetize my Instagram account?

How many followers do you need to have before it’s right to monetize your IG account? I’ve also asked several experts this question and from all their replies and my professional opinion, you shouldn’t begin until you have not less than 10,000 followers and an engagement rate of 5-10% per post.

Related: Full Tutorial On How To Increase Engagement On Instagram + My Tips

That will be all for now people. If you know any other way to make money from Instagram not mentioned here, please kindly drop it in the comments below.