TikTok and X may get all the buzz, but Instagram is still a dominant social media platform with two billion monthly active users.
With engagement comes opportunity, and there’s plenty of it hidden in plain sight. It’s possible to make money on Instagram—and a lot of it.
At Foundr, we’re passionate about Instagram. It’s the platform behind our humble roots. From the get-go, we went from 0 to 10,000 followers in 2 weeks—now, we have over 3.7 million followers.
This growth has helped us crush sales, drive conversions, boost online exposure, expand our audience, and scale the business rapidly. And it’s all thanks to Instagram.
It’s not about if you can make money on Instagram—it’s about how.
Ready to make money on Instagram? Let’s get started.
Can You Make Money on Instagram?
Yes, and you don’t need 500K+ followers to get started. Any time you can build a following and drive awareness and traffic consistently, you’re going to have opportunities to make money.
Instagram users spend an average of 33 minutes on the platform every day. And they’re not just mindlessly scrolling—they’re engaging. Instagram generates almost 4x more interactions (likes, comments, shares, direct messages) than Facebook.
More than 80% of Instagram users admit that the platform has inspired them to buy a product or service—with over 2 billion users that’s a massive market of potential customers.
You have the market to make money on Instagram. The real question is how.
Don’t Skip: Expert Tips on How to Get 10k More Followers on Instagram
How Do People Make Money on Instagram?
We know people are making money on Instagram and it’s no mystery how they’re doing it. We’ve had thousands of students take our Instagram Domination course and they’ve provided plenty of testimonials on how they’re using Instagram to make money:
Black Dog Traders Selling on Instagram
Just three months after taking the course, Austin Peterson had grown Black Dog Trader’s Instagram to over 12,000 followers. Shortly after, they made their first sale of a $250,000 truck through Instagram. Now, they’ve expanded to over 20,000 followers and Instagram is one of their top sales channels.
Deonna Monique Using Influencer Marketing on Instagram
Deonna sells high-quality hair extensions that have been featured in magazines, TV shows, and movies. She used Instagram to connect with celebrities to endorse her products, and then she began to see huge sales—as much as $900K in 24 hours. Deonna has grown her account to over 100K followers and credits Instagram for helping her become a millionaire.
Emily Chong Finding an Audience on Instagram
Emily launched an ecommerce store but she needed a way to grow awareness and sales. Turning to Instagram, she built a following of 26K followers in just a few months and generated almost $70K in sales (90% of them coming straight from Instagram).
Adam and Chelsea Building an Email List Through Instagram
Adam and Chelsea launched an ecommerce store but they didn’t want to rely on huge advertising budgets to drive traffic and sales. With just a single Instagram post, they built a 600-person email subscriber list—helping them drive $2,000 in organic sales in less than 2 days.
Instagram is making people money every day. Now it’s time to learn how.
Parker Ruttan Building an Industry Staple on Instagram
Parker Ruttan’s Instagram account, Behind the Broadcast, has grown from zero to approximately 231,000 followers in less than three years.
He started the account as a project to show the behind-the-scenes of what was happening during Covid-19, and it’s now the largest Instagram account dedicated to the broadcasting profession.
8 Ways to Make Money on Instagram
1. Instagram Sponsored Posts
Sponsored posts are a popular way to make money on Instagram. Brands pay Instagram users to promote its content or products —it’s a form of influencer marketing.
Don’t be intimidated by the word “influencer.” You don’t need 500K or 2M followers to qualify as an Instagram influencer. Microinfluencers are emerging as an Instagram revenue builders and you could fall into that category with anywhere from 1K to 10K followers.
Brands care more about engagement rate—the number of likes and comments you get in proportion to your posts and follower count. If your 10K followers engage with your content at a higher rate than a 100K follower account, you might be a better fit for many brands.
Example of a Sponsored Post on Instagram
Ellie Huges is a prime example of a micro-influencer. With less than 10K followers, she’s still able to earn partnership opportunities with brands like Encircled, an ethical clothing line.
She crafted a beautiful video promoting the all-day jumpsuit, and she continued posting photos to her Instagram before and after the video launch to boost her reach.
2. Affiliate Marketing on Instagram
Affiliate marketing is when you promote someone else’s product and then receive a commission when a qualifying sale is made through your affiliate link.
With Instagram, you can promote affiliate products through your individual posts or your Instagram Stories. The tricky thing with Instagram is it isn’t always easy to get people to click links (especially since links are not clickable within the post captions).
You also need at least 10,000 followers (or verified status) to be able to get the coveted “swipe up” feature in your Instagram Stories. This feature makes it easy for followers to “click” your affiliate link with a simple upward swipe of the thumb.
Joining affiliate programs is relatively easy. Most brands don’t have rigorous qualifications—the more people who sell their products, the merrier. However, to get exclusive affiliate partnerships with some brands, you’ll need to show high follower counts and engagement rates.
You can find affiliate programs for many of the products and services you already know and love—just Google it. If you want broader affiliate opportunities, consider signing up with a popular affiliate network:
Earning potential is usually lower through Instagram affiliate networks than individual programs through brands, but they’ll get you access to an extensive collection of physical and digital products.
3. Using Instagram to Sell Products
From a recent Instagram survey, nearly half of people using Instagram do so to shop weekly.
So it should come as no surprise that creating a successful Instagram Shop can be extremely lucrative.
Instagram now lets any users create a shop, add their collections, and start selling their merchandise.
The best part? All you need to do is add a simple button to any product images you share, and users can quickly tap on it, discover the product from the image, and purchase it, all without ever leaving the app.
This frictionless approach to social shopping breaks down the barriers and can allow savvy Instagram users to make plenty of money using this feature.
Keep Learning: How to Set Up Instagram Shopping and Increase Sales
4. Become a Brand Ambassador on Instagram
Sponsored posts are usually a one-off gig, while brand ambassadors are typically long-term relationships. Become a brand ambassador for the right companies and that could be a full-time job.
Before becoming a brand ambassador on Instagram, brands require:
- Followers
- Engagement
- Experience
- Brand fit
- Activity
It’s a risk for brands to invest in brand ambassadors and they usually do it with quite a bit of paperwork to protect themselves. As a brand ambassador, you’ll be a representative of that company—and that means you’ll need to be a little more conscious and intentional with everything you post.
You may lose some freedoms as a brand ambassador, but it can be a lucrative Instagram money-making tactic—especially if you already love and use the products you’re endorsing.
5. Brand contracts
Over the past few years, many brands have realized just how important Instagram exposure is for growing their brand and improving sales.
They also know how important it is to have their own social presence that aligns with the most popular people in their space.
To do this, brands pay creators handsomely to create short-form content, whether it be for their own channel to increase brand exposure or to use on the brand’s Instagram channel to increase authority and popularity in the industry.
6. Instagram Support
With thousands of businesses joining Instagram, many need creative and administrative help. They may be new to social networks or they might not know how to appropriately reach their audience—and that’s where you come in.
If you have a proven track record of growing Instagram accounts, there’s a good chance someone will pay to learn from you (or pay you to do it for them). Sell your services growing social media accounts or even writing Instagram caption copy.
If you have connections to macro and micro-influencers, you can also sell your services as a talent networker (an agent, of sorts).
7. Start a Business Instagram Account
Why build other brand’s accounts when you can just scale your own success? If you know the art and science of growing on Instagram, you can do it for a living.
- Start a New Account: Identify high-traffic niches. Create an account that targets that unique audience.
- Grow Your Instagram Profile: Post content, connect with the community, and build a loyal following.
- Sell Your Instagram Account: Once you’ve sufficiently grown the account, find a buyer. Brands and individuals love a shortcut to the top and many are willing to pay good money for an already booming Instagram account.
- Repeat: Do it again. Keep building profiles and selling them to the highest bidder.
8. Drive Instagram Traffic to Your Website
You might not be able to sell ad space on Instagram but you can do it on your website or blog. Use Instagram to build a following and drive traffic back to your primary domains. There, you can sell to your audience or monetize with ads.
Once you get traffic to your website, you can do whatever you want. You can turn your organic traffic into email or SMS subscribers or you can drive them to your products and services. You could also run affiliate programs on your website to capitalize on traffic there too.
Instagram Money-Making Tips
Whether you’re becoming an affiliate marketer or a brand ambassador, this is what you need to do on Instagram to make money.
Grow Your Following on Instagram
It’s all about the numbers. Whether you like it or not, brands need numbers to make decisions. They’re looking at maximum reach and potential return on investment (ROI). Your follower counts and engagement rates drive these figures.
Grow your following and you’ll grow your revenue on the platform. But growing an engaged following isn’t easy. That’s why we launched an entire course on building a high-quality Instagram account and earning followers.
Instagram Collabs
One of the newest features Instagram has brought out is Instagram Collabs. With Instagram Collabs, you can team up with other influencers or brands to co-author posts, increasing your engagement even further without coming across as intrusive or as an advert.
Once accepted by your collaborator, your post will automatically be shared with their followers too, but through their profile and not yours, adding an organic look and feel to your content.
Their followers can also click to see the collaborators on the project, potentially increasing your followers and future revenue opportunities.
Not to mention the money you can charge smaller influencers for the opportunity to collaborate with you.
Selling on Instagram
Remember, first and foremost, Instagram is a social network. It’s not a shopping mall or an ecommerce website—it’s a place for friends, family, and communities to connect. If you sell too hard, you’ll risk alienating your followers and losing their trust.
However, as we have touched on, almost half the users also use the platform as a go-to option for shopping, so the trust for shopping is already built in and ready for you to take advantage of.
When you are setting up your shop and adding tags to the content you create, it’s important to be transparent with your audience, highlighting which products you are being paid to promote and so on.
That level of transparency will prevent your followers from becoming disengaged or no longer trusting your advice going forward.
Instagram Ad Space
Unlike an entire website with pages and blog posts, there’s not a lot of real estate on Instagram. You have your profile page, individual posts, and Instagram Stories—and that’s about it. Learn to take advantage of every opportunity
Write a compelling “about section” on your profile and swap out your link to match the actionable CTAs in your posts. Add a high-quality logo for your brand image. Include well-thought-out captions with every Instagram post—don’t let it become a last-minute afterthought.
Free Instagram Followers
Followers will come if you engage with the community on Instagram. It’s all about give and take. Don’t sit back, post, and hope an audience will come flooding in. You need to proactively find your followers, engage with them, and entice them to come see your content.
Follow (and use) relevant hashtags to find like-minded individuals. Search for your competitor’s followers to learn more about them and engage with them. You’re not the only one who enjoys seeing likes and comments on your posts.
Don’t Purchase Instagram Followers
Never purchase Instagram followers. Ever. They’ll hurt your engagement rates and ultimately destroy your credibility. Just don’t do it.
Keep Learning: The Latest Instagram Algorithm Updates
Accelerate Your Instagram Follower Growth
Ready to put your Instagram growth into overdrive? We’ve got the tips, secrets, and know-how to help you make it happen.
Sign up for our Instagram Domination course to learn the exact formulas we used to grow our following from 0 to 500K followers in just 12 months. Foundr CEO Nathan Chan will show you how to create content that attracts your target audience and drives insane amounts of engagement. He’ll also show you how to develop money-making posts that turn your fans into customers without coming off too salesy.
If you want to grow your Instagram following the right way, this is the course for you. Sign up now to begin your Instagram domination.
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This article was updated with support from Graeme Whiles.
The post 8 Ways to Make Money on Instagram Without a Following appeared first on Foundr.
