Are you tired of using Instagram just for fun and want to take maximum advantage of the platform? This article is for you!
People nowadays want simple, fast, and visual content. Instagram is all that! And quickly became a monster, reaching 1 BILLION users faster than any other platform. Impressive!
All this attention on the platform made brands give another importance to it creating new job opportunities and thousands of Instagram careers. The social media influencer concept exploded because it’s easier than ever to monetize Instagram as a micro-influencer.
In this article you will learn:
- What is a Social Media Influencer
- Why brands are investing in Instagram Influencer Marketing
- Why become an Instagram Influencer
- How to become an Instagram Influencer – 5 Steps
- How to Monetize Instagram – 4 Different ways
- Social Media Influencer: Facts and Myths
- Our Story as Instagram Influencers + THE TOOL
‘How many followers do I need to make money on Instagram?’ you may be asking… It’s a complex question but the short answer is: way less than you think! We’ll explain everything…
First let us tell you, if you are searching for how to become Instagram famous, this might not be the article for you! However, in the end, we share the tool that brought our Instagram to where it is today!
What is a Social Media Influencer?
An influencer is someone who built a reputation and is seen as a trusted source in a specific field that has experience or is passionate about. By creating original and authentic content, with time an influencer develops credibility and builds a community around it.
In the old days, when TV and magazines were the only media available, celebrities were the only influencers. Nowadays, social networks such as Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and many others, allow everyone to be a micro-influencer. At a smaller scale, indeed, but in a much deeper connection with the audiences.
The smaller the influencer, the bigger his relative impact (and ROI).
NeoReach
Why brands are investing in Instagram Influencer Marketing?
Information consumption changed a lot last decades. Platforms like Instagram, Netflix, YouTube and Twitch allow people to take control of what they view pushing TV and other traditional media to a dead end.
Plus, people are already skeptical of traditional advertising and even advertising on the internet is less effective because many people use ad blockers anyway.
69% of all Generation Z (mid 90’s – mid 2000’s) already avoid ads and by the end of 2018, 30% of all internet users will have ad blocker active. – Adage in this article
These tendencies brought Influencer Marketing to where it is today. A very common practice and everything points to further expansion.
According to Hubspot the total amount of money invested in influencer marketing from 2016 to 2018 doubled from 2,65 B$ to 5,67 B$ and is estimated to triple to more than 8 B$ by 2020.
Influencer marketing is a natural and non-invasive marketing, which has 3 times the ROI (return on investment) of traditional marketing returning, on average, 6.5$ for every 1$ spent!
Plus, there are no ad blockers to stop it!
Authentic and genuine content created by social media influencers is now a valuable means for brands to advertise their products and spread awareness.
The internet has democratized the power of influence and brands are opting to work with a large number of micro influencers (few thousand followers) over working with few celebrities.
Why become an Instagram Influencer
Well, if making a living of your interests and passions through a platform you already use every day is not reason enough… Let us ask you this:
How could you enjoy a full week in a 5-star hotel in an ocean-view suite? With several experiences on a beautiful island without worrying about the expenses?
Well… Do you have an epic job? Born into a wealthy family? Or worked your a$$ off to build an empire? Well, we know this is a reality for some but chances are this is not your case! But don’t worry, it is not ours either… And still, we’ve done it! And DANG what a week!!
As Tim Ferris said in his historic book ‘4 hours work-week’ people don’t want to be millionaires, people want to live the experiences they believe only millions can buy… And this is so true!
But, how could we spend this epic week in Madeira island without an important job or deep pockets? The answer is simple… Social Media Influencer Marketing!
A big majority of companies dedicate part of the marketing budget to Influencer marketing. Approximately 50% of the companies spend at least 20% in Influencer Marketing.
Survey of 800 marketing agencies and brands by Influencer Marketing Hub
As a micro-influencer your energy is focused on creating content and building relationships and, eventually, you’ll become interesting for brands in the field! They’ll start to invest part of their marketing budget in giving you stuff, providing cool experiences, and later on money, for you to promote them to your audience!
How to become an Instagram Influencer – 5 Steps
There are 2 things you need to know before. First, most of those Instagram hacks out there are not true – be careful. Second, you don’t need a trillion followers to be an influencer. 1000 (engaged) followers of a very specific and determined niche can be very interesting for brands in that field.
These are the steps you must follow to become an Instagram Influencer:
1 – Who are you? And who is your perfect follower?
Determine your brand image and what you want people to feel about your brand. Also, create an avatar of your perfect audience. Be specific! Age, gender, likes and dislikes, interests, dreams, etc – and always talk to it. Your Instagram bio should somehow express your brand’s image and attract your perfect audience!
2 – Create quality content
The hardest part! Instagram (IG) is a very visual platform and creating the best content possible can be challenging.
Don’t worry if you don’t have crazy photography skills, there are endless ways to show your creativity. Be versatile, and create different types of content. Use IG Stories. Write valuable or fun captions with context.
3 – Build an Audience
The most important to build connections with people! Relate and interact with them. Comment and answer. Inspire them and give them value. Offer things. You have to develop trust with your audience, and this might take a while. But it will happen with time!
4 – Never stop improving
There are Instagram apps and external tools that will help you with creative content. Analyze your statistics (insights) not only to understand who is your audience, where are they from and when are they online but also to understand what type of content performs best!
Tip: Study your successful competitors, and learn with them!
5 – Monetize your Instagram
You know exactly who’s your audience, you have been creating quality content and getting better at it, growing your following, building an engaged audience… Now it’s time to monetize your Instagram!
Find products or services that fit with your audience. If companies aren’t reaching out to you, reach out to them. Explain how your audience would love their product! If you generate sales for a company while helping your audience with the right products, everyone will win… Including you!
This is just a brief explanation of the process you must follow to become a social media influencer and make money on Instagram.
If you want more detailed and advanced information check this online course we took! It teaches, step-by-step, how to create quality content, build an audience, generate engagement and monetize your Instagram. Apart from that, has email templates to approach brands and a list of 1500+ brands ready to work with you!
We got so much value from it, that we got in contact with the creator to provide you with the same… With a 50% discount! Click here to watch the video teaser of the course.
How to Monetize Instagram – 4 Different ways
The best thing about being a social media influencer is when starting you don’t really know how to get paid on Instagram or anywhere else! But when things start to take off a lot of opportunities to monetize Instagram will appear. These are the most common ways:
1 – Sponsored Content
The most common. Brands pay micro-influencers to advertise their products or services, showing and talking about them to their audience. It varies from short references in IG stories or IG feed posts to packages containing both and even IG highlights or live videos.
It’s hard to determine how much influencers cost but a standard rule micro-influencers follow is 100$ per every 10k followers for a simple collaboration (Example: 25k followers – 250$). However, keep in mind that what is important is how engaged the audience is.
2 – Selling your own products/services
Don’t want to learn how to get sponsored on Instagram? So, monetize Instagram by selling your own products or services! For example, if you have your clothing brand or any e-commerce store you can and should sell your own items on Instagram. Or, if you are a life coach or a fitness trainer (for example), you can also sell your services to your audience. And you can also use influencers to create content for you and promote your products!
3 – Sell Affiliated products
You don’t have your products? Don’t worry, you can sell someone else’s products or services to monetize your Instagram. Affiliate marketing is a very common practice nowadays and has great earning potential!
You promote other companies’ products or services in exchange for a commission (up to 50%) for every purchase. The secret is finding products that fit your audience so much that they feel you are helping them instead of selling.
4 – Drive traffic outside of Instagram to monetize
Feeling like monetizing Instagram within the platform is limited? You can put your effort into driving people somewhere else like your blog, e-commerce store, product pages, etc.
Related: How to start a blog – Step-by-step guide
Instagram has 2 features to do this, and you should pay close attention to them:
4.1 – Link in bio
Instagram allows every page to have a link in their bio – a very important feature!
Make sure your bio not only describes what your page is about, but also has a call-to-action so visitors click that link and generate traffic to wherever you decide! If you want more links in your bio use linktr.ee, it’s free!
4.2 – Swipe up (IG Stories)
Business accounts unlock the “Swipe up” feature in IG stories after achieving 10k followers. This is one of the most powerful weapons to monetize Instagram because allows drive people directly from IG stories to wherever you desire: blog posts, product pages, youtube videos, etc.E
These are, basically explained, the options you have to monetize your Instagram.
Friendly advice: Choose 1 or 2 and focus on them! Dive deep and invest your time in learning them and improving them. It will take time and energy for results to show up.
If you want faster and more advanced information on how to monetize Instagram consider enrolling in this course. A great value for money! A series of videos where you’ll learn not only how to grow your Instagram, but also how to choose products for your audience, how to approach brands, how to get sponsored on Instagram and how to build a business with Instagram outside of the platform! Click here and get a limited 50% discount!
Social Media Influencer: Facts and Myths
Myth – It is a fast way to get money. – Nop it will take time, but it will be worth it.
Fact – You need a target audience (niche) and to position yourself in the market.
Myth – Social Media Influencer job opportunities only appear with a lot of followers. – If your niche is well-defined opportunities can come way sooner than you think.
Fact – You have to deliver a creative and satisfying job so brands get the results they expect, so more opportunities will come in your direction.
Myth – You will make a lot of money as a social media influencer. This can be true but either you need a long time in the game or extraordinary work.
Fact – You’ll love the amount of experiences you will have!
(Do you remember any other fact or myth? Let us know in the comments, we would be happy to add)
Our Story as Instagram Influencers
Our main focus was never to be influencers and still isn’t.
We opted to ‘attack’ Instagram to drive traffic to our website and while we were growing our Instagram we developed skills such as photography, videography, social media management, vlogging, etc. When we least expected we started to receive social media influencer job offers, such as a private tour in Bali and nights in a resort in Perhentian Islands, Malaysia (with 5K followers at the time).
At that point, we understood what being an Instagram Influencer could mean. The experiences we could live and the things we could receive! But Instagram is a saturated platform, we knew we needed to improve our knowledge and skills to have a chance. So we invested in our education and we took this course that completely changed our attitude in Instagram:
Since we enrolled in the course, we have not only improved our Instagram results but more importantly, we have lived experiences that we will never forget! From private tours and several nights in expensive resorts up to trips with all expenses paid. Plus, we also received cool stuff we use every day like sunglasses, clothes, shoes, etc.
Influencer campaigns we did: Left – Trip to Porto Santo island, Portugal + Rent-a-Car; Right – TIJN sunglasses
What is inside the course
The course taught us step-by-step how to grow our Instagram, optimize our content and feed aesthetics, build a community, generate engagement, and understand the IG algorithm. More importantly, it taught us how to approach brands (templates included + a list of 1500+ brands ready to work with you) and how to do good work with them.
>> TravelB4Settle Exclusive 50% Discount <<
“The course has reached 5000 students in just 10 months and over 350 of the students are already able to make a full time income from Instagram and blogging partnerships.” – António, course co-creator
The best education investment we made so far and we couldn’t be happier with it. It was only 50$ (with our discount) but in the months we had more than 10 times the value of the course’s worth of experiences and goods. So, as you can imagine, we couldn’t be happier with it!
Click the image below to watch the Promo Video of the course and some reviews!
We hope you decide to step up your Instagram game and start to take maximum advantage of what it can give you… If you do, let us know! We would love to share some ideas with you and learn with each other 🙂
Full disclosure – While you get a discount, we will also receive a small commission in case you buy it. This is an honest attempt to earn money by promoting things we use, like and believe in! Wish us luck and thank you!
Useful links for your business!
Some tools and platforms we use and recommend. By using these links, you help TravelB4Settle! Thanks 🙂
- Create your website in a fast, simple and affordable way with Bluehost. Read our Free guide for more info.
- Achieve more results online with E-goi – a complete platform of marketing and automations. Try for FREE
- Learn anything you want with Skillshare – a platform with thousands of online courses taught by the best in their fields.
- Revolut Card – Free transfers, safe payments and several investment options in 1 platform. Get your FREE card
- Get cashback in more than 120.000 online and offline stores with CashbackWorld . Read our complete guide
More tools, equipment and services we use and recommend on our Resources Page.
![Read more about the article How to Create a Website in 10 Simple Steps: Cheap and easy [Guide 2024]](https://www.travelb4settle.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/IMG_5368-1-3-300x200.jpg)
Really good! I work in marketing and at the same time I am building my own community. It is hard since it is such a saturated market. However, good news for me, microinfluencer is the thing now. Continue with your great content 🙂
Totally! In such saturated markets the smartest thing we can do it, invest in our passions and interests and add your personality and style to it. This way, you’ll never demotivate, you’ll do what you love, and above all you are yourself! Once you get this straight, things will get a lot easier and time will bring you a lot of opportunities Ana! Thanks for you feedback and sharing!
Really god info here and particularly now when social networks are tweaking their algorithms to make it even harder to get noticed. But as you say, and after speaking with several companies, it is now clear that big numbers aren’t all that matters! Thanks for sharing.
Hey, Jorge. Thank you for your wise comment. Besides the opportunities that can come from monetizing your social media we always recommend that is essential to always have your own website as any social media can finish on any day and your website is yours! If this is something that interests you, you can see our post about how to start your own website here: https://www.travelb4settle.com/how-to-start-a-blog.
Hope you like it 🙂
Inspirador, para quem deseje enveredar por este desafiante tipo de vida: ainda assim, continuo a achar que ser jornalista ‘remains as the best job in the world’ 🙂 Ser, de alguma forma, ‘influenciador das redes’ é estimulante e se for encarado com responsabilidade e deontologia. Belo artigo.
Muito obrigada pelo comentário, Rui. Ser jornalista é sem dúvida uma bela profissão. Ser influenciador tem as suas vantagens e desvantagens como qualquer outro trabalho, mas, para nós, as suas vantagens subrepõem-se às desvantagens 🙂
Super artigo para quem ambiciona crescer e construir uma marca nesse mundo tão fascinante e em constante mutação das redes sociais. O vosso sucesso é sem dúvida inspirador, parabéns!
Muito obrigado Maria João! Verdade, é a melhor altura para se estar vivo! Todos têm a oportunidade de realizar os seus sonhos a fazer o que gosta literalmente na ponta dos dedos! É só preciso coragem e muita força de vontade 🙂
Ohh que bom saber que gostas-te Maria. Muito, muito obrigada pelo comentário tão motivador, agradecemos muito o apoio. Um grande beijinho. 🙂
Sem dúvida motivador! Muito obrigado pela partilha de tamanha informação e parabéns por todas as conquistas. Continuação de grandes e muitas viagens 🙂
Wow, muito obrigado pela apreciação!! Sabe muito bem sentirmos que o nosso trabalho tem um impacto positivo! Obrigada pelo apoio e podes crer que muitas viagens se avizinham haha
Muito, muito obrigada. COntinuação de boas viagens também e esperamos encontrar-te um dia destes por um canto deste lindo mundo, Patricia. Um beijinho 🙂
Muito bom o artigo. Continuem no bom caminho 🙂
Obrigada meninos! 🙂
Obrigada pelo artigo e pelas dicas partilhadas! Estamos em constante aprendizagem, as vossas dicas serão com certeza muito úteis! 🙂
Aprender é vencer. Ainda bem que gostas-te Adriana! Nosso foco é e sempre será ajudar mais e mais pessoas a atingir o estilo de vida que sonham! e tudo o que poder-mos fazer nesse sentido, faremos!
Parabéns pelo artigo, sem dúvida inspirador!
Yay! Ainda bem que gostaram 🙂 Mais artigos úteis para vir!
Que excelente artigo pessoal! O nosso maior sonho é mesmo esse, conseguir trabalhar assim para podermos aproveitar o que o mundo tem para nós, é um trabalho difícil mas que com alguma dedicação vamos conseguir 😀 E vocês são a nossa inspiração há muito tempo, continuem assim! Beijinhos 🙂
Obrigado!! Acreditem que esse estilo de vida está muito mais ao alcance do que muitas pessoas pensam! Grande parte da nossa missão é não só criar essa consciência mas também ajudar no que puder-mos!!
Adorei as vossas dicas, está muito completo este artigo, parabéns e obrigada pela partilha!
Yay!! Ainda bem que gostaste Marina 🙂 Em breve poduziremos mais conteúdo nesta área, e provavelmente completeremos este artigo!! Se tiveres alguma sugestão ou questão que gostasses de ver esclarecida não hesites em dizer-nos!!
Muito bom post. Continuem o bom trabalho e a inspirar quem vos segue. Obrigado pela partilha.
Muito obrigado Sandro! Vamos fazer os possíveis e os impossíveis para continuar a fazê-lo ^^
There is noticeably a bundle to know about this. I assume you made certain nice points in features also.
Thank you very much! 😀