How To Earn Money From Instagram in India?
There are two types of people on Instagram: those who know how to earn money from Instagram and those who have no inclination to do so.
We are going to talk about the people who fall into the first category – also known as social media influencers. People commonly use the terms content creator and social media influencers interchangeably, but there is a slight difference between the two.
All social media influencers are content creators, but vice-versa is not true.
So if you are a content creator and feel that you have the potential to become a social media influencer so that you start making money on Instagram, this article is for you.
Find a niche
This goes without saying, but the first step towards earning money on Instagram as a content creator is to be regular with posting content.
It will be ideal if you can find a niche for your content. Your followers should know what they can expect from your content.
Having said that, it’s advisable that you don’t get hung up on choosing a niche or a format for your content. As long as your content has a specific focus and a unique voice, it doesn’t matter what your niche is. Be it health, food, literature, or comedy, there is demand for almost everything on Instagram.
How to gain followers on Instagram?
One of the biggest challenges of earning money on Instagram is not having enough followers on your Instagram page. Before you start taking steps to earn money from your content, you need to have a strong base of followers. This will ensure that brands come to you for partnerships and other exclusive campaigns.
You can follow some of these tips to increase your follower count:
- Revisit your description page and re-write it so that people who come to your page understand what your account is about. Optimize the language in a way that visitors connect with your account.
- Make your account into a professional account. This will give you access to analytics about your followers, and account performance, reach more people through Instagram promotions, and you can add contact options on your profile page for businesses to reach you.
- Get your account verified
- Create the content on recent trends to gain followers
- Run quizzes or free give-aways on your page and ask people to follow you to participate
- Host more and more Instagram live events and talk to your followers. These events are quite meaningful for your followers as they can ask you questions and get answers live.
- Regularly post Instagram stories – save the ones that can be helpful as ‘Highlights’. Remember to organize these Highlights by giving them meaningful names
- Use appropriate hashtags every time you post videos or photos on Instagram
- Use geotags on Instagram posts so that people can visit the places you went to – this is an excellent way to add value to your followers’ life.
How much money can you make on Instagram?
A survey by HypeAuditor with influencers gave them the following results how much money you can make on Instagram based on your follower range.
But please understand that how much money your followers are worth also depends on your niche, what kind of people follow you, your reputation, and your content type. This chart can help you put a ball part number to quote any brands approaching you for paid/promotional content.
Also, this data is more apt for Instagram creators in the west and might not apply as it is in India. In our experience and research, we’ve come across the following numbers quoted by Instagramers on how much they charge brands based on their followers. Then we talked to a few brands to understand how much money the brands are willing to pay Instagram creators in India based on their followers.
How To Earn Money From Instagram in India?
If you follow the above-mentioned tips, there is a high chance that you will start seeing the effect in some time. Once you have a few thousand followers, you can actively start monetizing your Instagram account.
There are various ways to make money on Instagram. Here are a few tools to start earning money on Instagram in India:
Ways to Make Money from Instagram in India
1. Partner With A Brand
As a content creator, you can partner with a brand to endorse its products and services. You may make sponsored content to introduce the shoppers to the products and services they offer.
Having a big follower base, you can make huge money. However, there are certain restrictions for sponsored content that you will need to follow before posting it.
2. Instagram Super Follow
Twitter’s “super follow” feature and OnlyFans model of premium (paywalled) content is making Instagram build its own version of it. Instagram is calling it “Super Follow”. Instagram is calling it a “Subscription”. Just like you support YouTubers by paying for their channel’s membership, Instagram will allow creators to launch subscriptions that fans can purchase for exclusive content.
A paid subscription will allow the fans to view exclusive stories posted by the creator. The TechCrunch article on this feature mentions that Instagram has confirmed that this feature is under development. And will be soon tested publicly.
For more information about earning money and the latest news visit the site.
3. Product placements
One of the ways to earn money from Instagram is by plugging different products into your posts without explicitly talking about them. For example, if you are a food influencer and you are making a post about how to grill vegetables and meat, you are going to use a barbeque grill and other accessories.
Instead of diluting your content with brand endorsements, you can simply put the products’ details in the description. Depending on your partnership with brands, you can put the details of where to buy these products from.
It is a very good way for you to hit two birds with one stone – make quality videos and earn money from brands on Instagram. This way you need not make content just to promote a brand or product.
4. Promote Affiliate Links
Another way how to earn money from Instagram is to promote affiliate links. You can promote other people’s products and services to earn a commission.
Every sale would work to help you make significant commissions like about 5-10%. There are thousands of content creators in India that are making Instagram money through affiliate marketing.
5. Design and Sell T-shirts Online in India
Creators around the world sell their own official merchandise or their artwork and designs on products. This is a very popular monetization method and something that anyone can start doing in India without spending any money and very little time on it.
If you are an Instagram creator in India, then you can use Blinkstore to quickly launch your merchandise store. Blinkstore is free forever and it takes less than 1 minute to create, customize, and launch your merch store in India. You can design and sell 30+ variety of products, here’s the complete print-on-demand catalog available on Blinkstore.
6. Sell your own product
While you can earn money from Instagram being an influencer, the platform can also be used to sell your product. Whether you have a small line of physical products or a digital product like an e-course or software, you can leverage Instagram to sell your products.
However, this requires a lot more effort and patience on your part than earning money as an influencer.
To be able to sell your products on Instagram, your followers should have a strong trust in your domain expertise. This requires you to regularly post informative and novel content before you pitch your product to followers.
For example, if you are a yoga teacher, you should put up short clips of your yoga practice, and write detailed captions on each asana, their benefits, etc. In this case, you should also put up posts that talk about maintaining work-life balance, keeping your mind healthy and active, what kind of food will help to maintain this, and other tips.
7. Fan Membership & Exclusive Content
Various platforms let you earn money from the number of subscribers you have.
You can earn by giving the link to these platforms on your Instagram Bio, or in the videos you post.
Moreover, you can conduct a giveaway contest where you can set the eligibility criteria as a member of these platforms.
8. Sponsored Content
Sponsored content is very similar to Brand partnership with minute differences. Brands sometimes pay creators to make content for them to promote their events, product, brand, service, etc. The brands sponsor this content. They also try to make it look like organic or non-promotional content. Where the creator would post content and subtly plug the brand’s CTA within the caption.
Brands would pay you in a similar way for a sponsored post as they pay for the brand partnership. Sponsored posts are mostly one-time things and could be a barter deal instead of a paid one. Brands sometimes sponsored you by giving you their products for free and in return, you’d create content about their product and post it on your social media.
9. Consulting Services
Having a big number of followers automatically means you have become an influencer.
Now you can utilize your experience and stature to help other people increase their follower base, optimize profiles, or earn money from Instagram.
You can conduct one-on-one consultation sessions with potential influencers and also earn money by determining a charge for consultation.
10. Set up Instagram Shop
Instagram Shop is another such feature that is only available to a select number of brands and accounts. To enable Instagram Shop on your account, go to settings and find the Shop feature. You’d need to apply for it and not every brand gets it. That’s why we are not going to cover the shop feature in detail.
Conclusion
Social media has not only given people a way to entertain themselves and kill time, but also earn money. Among all the social media platforms, Instagram specifically has created an ecosystem that allows content creators to earn money in more than one way.
If you think you have it in you to create engaging content regularly, follow the above tips to start making money on Instagram.
