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7 Expert Tips For Monetizing Your Instagram Account

Instagram is a fantastic place. While a many of us use it to share momentary snapshots of our lives and stay connected with those who matter, Instagram is also an extremely useful and lucrative tool for starting a business and making money online.

With over 1 billion monthly active users worldwide, Instagram is a great choice to showcase your brand to a massive audience for making money online. Let’s go through 7 expert tips to monetize your Instagram account in 2021.

Post Quality Photos

The lifeline of any Instagram account lies in the consistent posting of quality photographs. After all, beautiful photographs represent the soul of Instagram as a platform. Thus, it’s important to make sure the photos you post are edited to give off a natural, yet polished effect.

Therefore, a good photo editing tool is important. While some highly technical and professional photo editors such as Photoshop and Lightroom cost money and require skills to operate, there is a whole range of other photo editors that are absolutely free and pretty basic to operate. And don’t worry. They get the job done well too. Here is a well-curated list of the best free photo editors to help you create an unforgettable visual impact with your audience.

Videos – Reels, IGTV, Stories, and Livestreams

While photographs form a vital part of your feed, videos are the next step to creating diverse forms of content. Instagram videos can be classified into the following:

  1. Reels – Clips of 15 seconds or less.
  2. Video clips – Standard short-format clips that appear on your feed.
  3. Stories – A temporary, 24-hour hosting of a video through the stories feature
  4. IGTV – For long-format videos
  5. Live – The live streaming feature to add a more relatable touch to your Instagram presence.

The best part here is that for IGTV specifically, Instagram has launched IGTV Ads, which work in a very similar way to monetizing videos on YouTube to make money.

For the other types of videos, let’s look at the options further.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is extremely popular for monetizing an Instagram account. The basic principle behind it is that you pair up with a brand to promote their products through your posts, receiving a specific percentage of the product sale as commission. It’s important to pair up with brands which offer products that you know for certain that your audience would click with. That’s mainly because affiliate marketing brings in a lot of the other brand’s identity into your space. So make sure it’s worth it.

Sponsorships

This is especially useful for larger Instagram accounts that also get a lot of interaction. The place where this differs from affiliate marketing is that here, your own identity remains more paramount, with the sponsoring brand being given just a subtle mention in the posts, videos or stories. Also, sponsorships pay a fixed and agreed amount per post, rather than on a commission basis like affiliate marketing. Whichever method you choose, make sure you make it clear in your post or story that this is sponsored, either by using the sponsored tag or by mentioning it in the caption, as that’s a mandated requirement.

Selling your own products

This is where your online Instagram venture can take a more entrepreneurial twist. Structuring your posts around a specific product you have in mind, you can turn Instagram into an online marketplace. Not only that, but having a signature product will solidify your brand image and can be the gateway to many great things ahead. Instagram also has a shopping tag feature to directly link a post or a story to an online store. You can build your own or use a service like Shopify. As for the products themselves, you can handle the production and logistics yourself, use third-party services or create a system based completely on dropshipping.

Video Streaming Subscription

This is specifically for content creators as well as for brands that have a prominent digital presence. You can create a paid subscription service to stream premium and exclusive content, using Patreon, for example. Or even through your own website. Instagram is a fantastic place to market this, and it’s ideal for developing a longer standing relationship with your audience.

Sharing Your Knowledge

Now that you’ve built a prominent presence on Instagram and have successfully monetized your account, why not share your knowledge and experience by teaching it? Here, the medium can include E-Books, audiobooks, recorded or even live courses, etc. A lot of options are available. This in itself is another way to monetize your account as your already well established presence is proof that you know what you’re talking about and really do practise what you preach!

Conclusion

Social media is a truly powerful tool, not just for the sharing of information worldwide, but also as a medium to build a livelihood on. Hopefully these 7 tips help you in making the most out of your presence online!