How Do Influencers Make Money? Turn Instagram Into A Money Making Machine

Are you trying to work out how do influencers make money? We’ll share some of the top things that increase your earning potential. It’s only a matter of time before your Instagram earnings go to the next level. Furthermore, the strategies and insights we share in this article specifically refer to how Instagram influencers make money. However, the advice applies to most other social media channels since they are good business practices.

How Much Money Do Instagram Influencers Make?

Are you wondering how much Instagram influencers make? It’s a valid question to ask before trying to figure out how to earn money on the social media platform for yourself. However, the range of money an Instagram influencer can make is vast. It’s anything from a few hundred per month to hundreds of thousands. It all depends on how influencers make money and the strategies they use.

Usually, people estimate how much an Instagram influencer makes depending on the number of followers they have. For example, accounts with 10,000 to 50,000 followers can make $200-$800 for every sponsored post. The more sponsored posts you create, the more money you can generate.

Instagram Influencer Average Salary

The Instagram influencer’s average salary is around $2,970 per month, but it varies from one content creator to the next. In this section, we’ll focus on some of the top factors contributing to the differences between the average salaries of Instagram influencers.

• Age on the platform: The amount of time an influencer has spent on the platform plays a big part in how much they can expect to make. More time spent means more popularity and connections with brands. 
• Follower count: As a rule of thumb, a higher follower count leads to a bigger average salary. That’s because the brands review your follower count before they decide how much money to give you for a sponsored post. For this reason, people tend to buy Instagram followers to be perceived as having more popularity.
• Niche: Some Instagram niches allow you to receive more money than others. For example, the brands operating in the make money online niche will give significantly more per post than the buy yoga mats niche. Therefore, you need to choose the niche strategically after doing market research on the earning potential. 
• Negotiation: Your ability to negotiate with brands that want to give you money for posts is important. Naturally, brands want to get the most of their money by giving you less money than you’re worth. Hence, it’s your job to negotiate the payment, even if it’s just a few percentage points. 
• Consistency: You need to be consistent with your activity on Instagram to attract more offers and make money. The posting frequency is a big factor in how influencers make money. 

How Do Influencers Make Money

Now, let’s take a closer look at how influencers make money. There are different methods at your disposal, and using all of them is a great idea. The more channels you have available, the more money you can make.

Sponsored Post

The sponsored post is one of the easiest and most popular methods for how influencers make money. Social media influencers do one of these posts in exchange for money and will get more based on performance. Therefore, the influencers with the most followers will get the best sponsorship post deals.

Furthermore, the kind of brands that contact you for sponsorship posts depends on your Instagram target audience. For example, if you have acquired a community that enjoys gym equipment, then you can expect sponsored post opportunities for gyms.  

Affiliate Products

In some cases, the influencer does not receive money but instead gets affiliate products. Depending on how much the affiliate’s products are worth, this could be a better deal. Influencers make money in a variety of ways, and this is one of them. That’s because influencers can sell the product after they are done with the promotion. It’s one of the ways influencers make money strategies that can be lucrative.

Influencers are expected to include products in posts, stories, reels, or Instagram live shows. Sometimes, it’s up to the influencers to decide how to advertise the product. Alternatively, there might be a contract where the rules are set in stone.

Collaboration Posts

Influencers can do collaboration posts with one another where they promote each other’s content and account. This tends to happen when Instagram content creators operate in the same niche. Are you wondering how influencers make money with collaboration posts? Well, it’s a numbers game. 

The more Instagram influencers you contact to create a post about your account, the more successful you’ll be. Using a spreadsheet to keep track of the Instagram account you communicate with is a good idea. Ideally, you should contact every IG account in your niche to increase your chances of success.

Also, you need to state what you want in return for the collaboration post. They can give you money, products, or a post about your IG account. 

When creating posts, you shouldn’t do too many of them since that will look like spam to your audience. Ensure each can provide something of value since content quality must always come first.

The Basics of Instagram Affiliate Marketing

Instagram affiliate marketing is another popular method for making money. Affiliate marketing works by promoting the products of other brands and receiving a commission in return. The size of the commission could be as low as 1-5% all the way up to 100%. Instagram used to have its own in-house affiliate marketing program, which was discontinued in August 2022. In this section, we’ll share a few basics of affiliate marketing to help you get started.

Affiliate Websites

Creating an affiliate website has several advantages, including having ownership of a digital asset. On the other hand, your Instagram account may get shut down at any time without your input. With that thought in mind, here are a few ideas for how to be successful with an affiliate website on Instagram:

• Target the right audience: It’s important that the followers you target on Instagram line up with what you’re prompting on the affiliate website. For example, if you promote VPN services on your website, then your IG content must be about the benefits of VPNs. This will increase the conversion rate of the audience you capture from Instagram. 
• Call to action: Add plenty of call-to-action links in your posts. However, don’t place the links awkwardly. This will have a small effect on the number of people who want to click. Instead, include a message that shares what benefits they receive from visiting your website. 
• Instagram ads: You can use Instagram ads to send traffic directly to your website. This is a good strategy to drive traffic to your website. However, social media traffic is among the lowest converting, so your advertisement needs to be on point.

Instagram Insights

When figuring out how influencers make money, you need to consider using Instagram insights. This is the platform’s analytics software, which allows you to look at the performance of different content. This includes Instagram Reels, Instagram Live, Instagram Stories, and more. 

Here are a few Instagram Insights best practices to increase your affiliate commission earning potential:

• Identify top posts: Figure out your top-performing posts on your IG account so you can post more of the same to drive up commissions. You need more attention to winning posts. This includes posts about driving traffic to your website or selling products directly on IG on behalf of another brand. Instagram Insights is a great tool for getting the job done. 
• Tags: You can view your top-performing Instagram tags on the IG Insights console. Therefore, you can figure out what tags to use on your future content to increase the searchability of your posts. 
• Remove bad posts: Instagram Insights will help you find the poor-performing posts so you can avoid repeating similar content in the future. It’s equally important to find the bad performers as the good ones. Therefore, your posts will have more attention, and brands are more likely to give you the deal you’re looking for.

How Much Do Influencers Make per Post?

Are you interested in how much influencers make per post? You need to know the answer to this question to accurately determine the money you can earn on Instagram. Now we’ll share the top factors determining how much money you can generate for each post.

Likes per Post

Some brands pay attention to the number of likes you receive per post. For that reason, you’ll find that some people buy Instagram likes to increase the earning potential of each post. However, this is not good business practice since the likes are usually artificial. This means that your business pattern will not get the benefit of those bought likes.

However, if you must go down the buying likes route, choose a vendor that delivers genuine likes from real Instagram accounts. This ensures that the people leaving likes might lead to purchases. The best likes are ones that are from the same target audience that would pay for the affiliate products you’re promoting.

Engagement per Post

Higher amounts of engagement lead to more sales. Therefore, you need to develop a strategy for getting your audience to interact with posts. Here are a few ideas you should consider:

• Leave comments: You can interact with your audience in the comments section of each post. You can answer the questions of other commenters or initiate the process by leaving the first comment. It’s time-consuming to comment on each post, so you can hire freelancers to leave comments on your behalf. 
• Thought-provoking: Creating thought-provoking posts leads to more engagement with your content. Hence, you should consider the various hot topics within your niche. However, make sure to steer clear of controversial and banned topics since that may lead to an Instagram shadowban. Avoid this outcome to ensure that you can continue making sponsored posts, whether as a fashion influencer or macro influencer. 
• Social media service: You can hire the service of a social media company to help you improve the engagement per post. Do this for a limited amount of time and learn the tricks of the trade. Moving forward, you can deploy their strategies without paying for the service.

Consistency and Organization of Instagram-Sponsored Content

You need to be consistent and organized to maximize the earnings from creating posts. Next, we’ll share tips for how to create and release posts for maximum audience engagement:

• Content calendar: It’s important to create a content calendar that you stick to ensure you’re always putting out content. There are many third-party apps that come with a content calendar you can set up. 
• Automated scheduling: You can look into scheduling software so that posts are released at a designated time. Hence, you can line up posts for months ahead of time, which is great if you plan on going on vacation. 
• Best time to post content: You must do market research to determine when your audience views your content the most. You can use Instagram Insights to learn more or take the time to ask your audience directly via a poll.

Making Money on Instagram—Is It Easy?

Are you wondering about the difficulty of how influencers make money? With so many brands looking for influencers to work with, you’ll have a lot of offers flying your way. That’s because brands want to take advantage of the large audiences influencers have acquired. 

Your job is to focus on growing your Instagram account, and the lucrative offers will take care of themselves. Also, targeting an audience you’re passionate about interacting with is a solid idea. That’s because brands want passionate influencers with a loyal following.

Are you looking for ways to take your Instagram account to the next level to make more money? Then, take advantage of the service we provide here at Plixi. The mix of our in-house algorithm and Instagram influencers network allows you to target almost any audience. So what are you waiting for? Start growing and gaining Instagram followers today.