In 2020 Instagram is not about sharing pictures with friends and family anymore. Many new users sign up with a dream to make money on this platform. Blogging on social media is enormously popular, and as many other potentially profitable fields, many of its aspects are a full-blown mystery. There are a lot of false promises from other so-called successful bloggers who guarantee you a quick success if you buy fake followers or use another easy strategy to grow your audience. That’s why the first thing every Instagram newcomer must keep in mind is that every action with the aim of gaining profit needs a proper logical strategy. To grow awareness and attract new followers, so necessary to make your account profitable, you need to analyze each aspect of a future project and answer the following question:
- What will your blog be about?
- What is your concept?
- What are your points of difference (PoDs)?
- Who is going to be your audience?
- Who are the potential competitors?
- …
So, like any other business, profit-based blogging needs a deep analysis, SWOT, and potential cost to income estimation. But before you start the analysis, let’s think about the main ways to make money on Instagram.
- Shopping posts and stories
Influencer marketing is being a trend, and as everybody promises, will remain the trend for a couple of decades. That’s why you can make your blog look friendly for the companies eager to advertise their products via your blog. If you have a sense of style and can create a full-stuck outfit combining different items, then you can try to carry out very popular advertising campaigns, making up outfit ideas inserting advertising links for the pictures. Shopping stories are also widely popular. Many blogger who have gained numbers of followers are much appreciated when they try some new products, visit new places, and experience new trends before the followers. For example, a new trade center opens in the area. Local bloggers are always the first ones to visit the place and share their experiences. As users, sometimes it’s hard for us immediately buy some new cosmetics we’ve never tried before. So, we are looking for a person who’s already got a user experience with it. So, advertising posts can be a good source of income for bloggers, and there’s always a huge demand for credible blogs, even with less number of followers, but good post involvement rate. The only thing you must never forget is being sincere and true. Advertising offers may come and go, but if you’ve lost your audience because of advertising a low-quality product, it will be hard or even impossible to return their trust.
2. Direct product sale on the Instagram page
If you produce or import some goods to the local market, an Instagram page is a good platform to start your sales directly, using your account. In this way, you can turn your account into a selling catalog with pictures of the products, delicious descriptions, and price. So your followers will have the possibility to purchase the goods directly from your account. Of course, as you grow, you may prefer a completely web-based online store, and further reorganize your Instagram account into an advertising platform, having provided the link of your shop in bio. Fortunately, due to the existence of multi-link organizers, like linkpeak.io to put more than one link in your bio. In this way, visiting your Instagram page, potential customers will see all your contact information, and choose which link is more convenient for them to contact.
3. Integrated online stores
Being a part of the Facebook family, Instagram now provides a lot of opportunities to create an integrated online store. The interface is very modern and catchy, so, you can create everything yourself. It’s free, and you don’t have to spend a lot of money on maintenance of it. Besides, web-based shops may need additional expenses on the plugins and other supporting software. But here you have a well-organized system of pre-created features which make your shop functional. These shops easily integrate across Facebook’s family apps, the products and services are easily reachable by the audience via advertising and stories.
4. Becoming a brand representative
Influencers with a certain number of followers can easily take advantage of cooperation with brands on a regular basis, as their representative, or brand ambassador. The more conceptual your blog is, the easier it can be for you to attract potential partners represented by brands. If you have chosen a certain niche in the menace of content and concept, and it’s easy to recognize visiting your page, you may be a very interesting case to start cooperation with. That’s not a secret than many make-up designers who have become popular making short and longer videos on make-up tutorials, in particular using IGTV, are widely invited to become a brand ambassador for the companies producing cosmetics. In this way, they are trustworthy for brands, as they have proved to be a talented artist with the audience appreciation. So, as a candidate to become a representative, they have enough: concept, thematically oriented audience, post involvement, and the power of influence.
5. Creating content for sale
You can produce high-quality content to post on your page. At the same time, you can offer your content for sale. Many personal bloggers and Instagram magazines outsource their content to talented but less famous bloggers. Like many writers who enter the field of copywriting, photographers, text, video, and audio content creators can introduce themselves to the market and catch the eye of the content-hunters. If you have a good ability in writing engaging posts on ordinary topics, you are a professional in a certain field (psychology, nutrition, medicine) and can create attractive content, you’ll certainly get noticed. Of course, among the main conditions, there is a well-organized Instagram page, unique concept and style, a sense of humor in some cases, and good analytic skills.
