Instagram became a convenient application for creating and sharing photo slideshows and a relevant tool for any individuals and businesses seeking to monetize their online accounts.

Nowadays, it is rather challenging to overestimate the popularity of Instagram as it attracts more than a billion monthly active users and can bring stunning revenues if used appropriately. It doesn’t matter if you are already a famous influencer, a business owner, or a beginner who just started using Instagram, in this article, we will give you a step-by-step guide on how to make money on Instagram and provide examples of successful practices.

1. Build a Strong Profile

Optimize Your Bio

In short, the information in your Instagram bio is the first thing the audience sees on your page. Make it count by:

Profile Picture: Select a good image as your profile picture that’s not hard to show, and of high quality. In cases where one is a brand, they should embrace its logo as their icon. Personal branding is crucial for people and choosing a professional portrait photo that reflects who you are and what you do is the best strategy.

Bio Description: Convey in a few sharp, piquant, and noteworthy lines who you are and what you do. Ensure that your content includes keywords that people can use to search through the internet so that you can easily be seen. Call to action is an important element of any website, and you should consider including it in your website as a message to the visitors to take a certain specific action like visiting your website or subscribing to your newsletter.

Link: It is recommended that the reader should add a link to their website, blog, or landing page. Some of the platforms that can help include Linktree or Campsite since one can be able to provide different links that will help guide the fans to different pieces of content or products.

Example: ­@humansofny Another faultless illustration of a brief bio containing no hashtags or any other links but the main one to the website, which reflects the nature of the content.

Create High-Quality Content

This is so true because from the research we have seen that content is the most important aspect of Instagram. Focus on creating content that resonates with your audience by:

High-Resolution Photos and Videos: Have a good torch which may be in the form of an advanced Camera or smartphone with a better Camera. An aspect that should not be overlooked is that all your posts should be visually pleasing and should meet the required quality.

Consistency: Try to keep things consistent with the theme or colour scheme of your other profiles, to create coherent images. This goes a long way in ensuring that the brand becomes familiar amidst competition.

Diversified Content: You should also use Instagram Stories, Reels, and IGTV to be unique and to cover all the possibilities the platform provides. Stories provide the audience with daily updates or short time-limited content, Reels are made for short and entertaining videos, and IGTV is for longer video content that is more formal.

Example: Interestingly, @morganharpernichols is a poet and an artist, and she stays thematic with her inspiring quotes and drawings giving credit to her unique style.  Follow this link if you want to build a portfolio on Instagram.

2. Grow Your Follower Base

Engage with Your Audience

Respond to Comments and DMs: You should prove to your followers that you respect their input by replying to their comments and messages on your page. It assists in creating a loyal clientele in a particular area.

Like and Comment on Others’ Posts: Always be active and comment on posts from your followers and any other person in your niche. This makes you more sociable and people may like to follow you or observe what you are posting.

Interactive Stories: Engagement: Employ Instagram Stories to ask questions and answers, polls, quizzes, and other activities to enhance engagement. That in turn not only increases audience interaction but equally provides the information about what that specific audience likes to see more of.

Case Study: To gather some feedback on their content and events, a community platform for women over 50 years interacting with their audience through polls and Q&A sections, which are supposed to be part of their interactive stories.

Collaborate with Others

Shoutouts: Cross-promote the product or service on the other side, and ask influencers or other companies to help promote your service or product to their followers. This can help bring new people to your profile whom you wouldn’t have had a chance of coming across otherwise.

Instagram Takeovers: Let someone else take control of your social media account for a day. This can help your followers to follow them or their followers to follow your profile instead.

Instagram Pods: This is where you advertise with other users in the same niche to form groups in which they all like to comment on each other posts.

Example: Such partnerships are widespread, for instance, on social media, where a well-known travel blogger and his family, who go by the username @thebucketlistfamily, often travel with large brands and other influencers to energize their audience.

Use Hashtags Strategically

Popular and Niche-Specific Hashtags: So, it makes sense to combine hot hashtags to increase the popularity of your profile and specific hashtags to attract your target audience.

Branded Hashtags: Use a branded hashtag if you want to develop a whole community around your brand. If you want to get more out of the tool, teach your followers to use it in their posts.

Hashtag Performance: Recognise which hashtags are suitable for your content and which ones are ineffective to plan the next moves correctly. There are analytics tools to help you monitor the performance of Hashtags such as Hashtagify.

Example: For instance, the company ‘’goop addressing wellness and lifestyle targets its content both to the largest audience by using common hashtags (#wellness, #goophealth) and to the colourful readership – followers of the brand.

3. Monetization Strategies

Sponsored Posts

Advertisers hereby contract influencers to sell their brands or market their services. To attract sponsorships:

Build a Niche Audience: The audiences that brands care most about are relevant target ones and the influencers must have a high level of engaged audience in a particular category. Avoid the obsession of trying to get your numbers up and instead focus on creating a highly engaged niche audience that will listen to you.

Create a Media Kit: Create a memo with your statistics, demographics, engagement rates, and other information and samples of your previous work. This makes it easier for brands to understand your value, which will facilitate their decision-making when the market hits a rough patch.

Reach Out: Contact brands directly or get an invite to become an influencer marketer with influence marketing companies that include AspireIQ, and Influence. When scouting for sponsorship, it is advisable to try out Co, or Fohr.

Case Study: This kind of audience and engagement rates have enabled the fashion influencer @brittanyxavier to endorse famous fashion and lifestyle brands such as Dior and Revolve.

Affiliate Marketing

Sell merchandise from other companies and earn a percentage of the profits, having your unique referral link printed on each product sold. To succeed:

Relevant Programs: Select the affiliate programs that offer the products and services that you and your readers are interested in. Many programs come under those platforms like Affiliate Marketing by Amazon Associates, ShareASale Commission Junction etc.

Authentic Reviews: Be blunt and ought not to share or post fake content, they should only share or post content that will advocate for the product. Avoid sounding too salesy.

Trackable Links: Share it on your bio, in Stories, and in feeds using clickable affiliate links to track the sales. It should also be noted that there are tools like Bitly which enable tracking of the performance of links.

Example: For instance, fashion and lifestyle blogger, Leele of @houseofleoblog often includes affiliate links in her posts and Stories to share with her followers the products she loves and would benefit from the commissions that the brands offer her.

Sell Your Products or Services

Instagram is a great platform to sell.

Physical Products: Tag items in your images and videos as well as use the shopping feature added to images and different Stories, so the customers can buy something directly. See that your pictures of your product are clear and appealing.

Digital Products: Host online books, classes, templates, and audio, or video materials to sell. The type of posts that should dominate your social accounts entails an emphasis on the advantages and peculiarities of your products.

Services: Advertise for services like training, advice, or photo-taking services. Cite other patients and the degree of success of such devices as more evidence.

Case Study: Another popular blogger, @minimalistbaker, sells eBooks, courses, and other resources focused on plant-based cuisine through her account to her audience on Instagram.

Offer Paid Subscriptions

I already explained that you can use Instagram to make money by selling a subscription feature which allows you to make money by offering content for a monthly subscription. This can include:

Exclusive Content: Advertise additional lessons that are not free for the viewers, photos and videos or any kind of content that is different from the regularly shown ones.

Subscriber-Only Stories: Develop new Stories that many of your subscribers only. This can encompass anything which may be more specific or detailed like additional information.

Personalized Shoutouts: This can include personal greetings, calls for interactions, or even making direct calls to engage with your subscribers.

Example: Comedian and influencer @amandacerny is one of those celebrities who use paid subscriptions on Instagram, sharing extra materials, some of her daily life vlogs, and interacting with the audience behind the scenes.

Use Instagram’s Monetization Tools

Take advantage of Instagram’s built-in monetization options: Take advantage of Instagram’s built-in monetization options:

IGTV Ads: Get a slice of the earnings from advertisements placed in your IGTV videos. It is crucial to guarantee that the IGTV content is interesting and keeps the audience to the final seconds.

Badges in Live: You should inform the viewers that they can buy badges during your Live videos to help you. To entice your viewers to buy badges, use the call to action to give them a shoutout, or ask them questions when you are live streaming.

Shopping Features: Note the products in your posts and Stories to sell products right from the app. Ensure the use of nice captions and quality images to lure the buyers.

Case Study: The beauty brand which is still known as @hudabeauty utilizes Instagram Shopping and IGTV ads to make revenues from the content.

4. Analyze and Optimize

Track Your Performance: Use Instagram Insights to monitor

Follower Growth: Compare your followers on a daily, weekly, monthly or yearly basis so that you can identify what type of content has more tends to get more followers.

Engagement Rates: Track engagement that includes likes, comments, shares and saves on the post you shared to know what content is most likely to work on your audience.

Reach and Impressions: Learn how many people view your post and how many times the same person sees it. This assists in determining the efficiency of your reach.

Best Performing Posts: Determine which posts are effective or which format of posts should be posted and then understand why that particular format is effective. This assists in the generation of more content of what your audience enjoys.

Example: The selected social media influencer, @garyvee (Gary Vaynerchuk), often tracks the results concerning his Instagram activity to identify the formats and topics popular among his audience to improve the strategy further.

Adjust Your Strategy: Based on your insights

Post More of What Works: Pay attention to the types of content and topics that attract a lot of attention. This could mean creating more of them if they get good hits on the forum

Experiment: Experiment with the nature of your content, the times at which you post your updates, and your involvement strategies. It is not wise to stick with the regular methods or ways when you are exploring the possibilities of generating more sales leads.

Engage Continuously: Address the people frequently in your account by participating and answering comments, going live often, and posting rich Story content to gain followers.

Case Study: @nikkietutorials, a beauty influencer,

Nikki is a beauty guru with over a half million followers on Instagram.

often changes her scheduling and posting as she looks at analytics, extending on makeup tutorials, and product reviews.

5. Stay Authentic and Compliant

 Be Authentic

There is nothing like a fake audience and fake followers, and they will always remain fake and will not stick with your brand. Always:

Genuine Content: Post information that is personal or business-related depending on your account’s niche. It is recommended not to follow others’ examples and lay an emphasis on the benefits that can be provided only by the given company.

Transparency: Regard sponsored posts and partnerships as a crucial aspect of the process; this way, users’ trust won’t be compromised. Disclose paid collaborations.

Authentic Engagement: Create dialogues that are authentic and prolonged with the fans. To express their support and make the girls feel like they belong to a team.

Example: It is a very sincere project, which talks about real people from all over the world with no tricks, which is why it is loved by its audience.

Follow Instagram’s Guidelines

Community Guidelines: Do not scrape the Instagram community standards in order not to get banned or shadowbanned. Make sure what you put out there to the public is decent and socially acceptable.

Sponsored Content Disclosure: When reviewing products and services, this should be stated clearly, especially when it is sponsored/flavoured by the company and includes affiliate links, as per the FTC guidelines. It is advisable to tag paid promotions with ads or sponsors, and so on.

Avoid Unethical Tactics: Avoid services which employ spamming and generally unethical practices such as buying followers. Instruct specific efforts towards producing organic traffic by using frequent, active and relevant social media accounts of the client.

Example: @chiaraferragni is also very open about all the sponsored posts and collaborations, which she makes specifying it and meets all the rules.

Let me re-state, that although it is possible to make money on Instagram, this takes time, planning and hard work. So, utilizing a large number of followers, a well-built personal brand, and a set of various earning methods, one can make Instagram profitable for him or her.

Always be genuine and always talk to your audience and don’t forget to always adapt to what you find to be effective. Gather more information from other successful creators or cases to be more effective in utilizing the specific strategy. Happy Instagramming! Read more related posts on our affiliate page of the site.