Today we are talking about how to make money on Instagram. My goal in this episode is first to make sure that, without any doubt, you are viewing yourself as a real business. Until you do that, you will not be able to focus on monetizing.
IE 233: How to Make Money on Instagram
You need to take the time to listen to the episodes that are linked in this post and make sure to download any guides that are referenced in those episodes. Whether you are focused on increasing Instagram engagement or growing your email list, you need those guides!
Send me a DM and we can continue the conversation on exactly what you need to do. I want to dive into this with you and help you figure out what you can do to make money on Instagram.
Creating The Right Content
If you want to make money on Instagram, you have to create content that will attract the right person. You want your content to cause your people to engage with you. You cannot just be throwing spaghetti against the wall and hoping that it will stick.
Knowing and understanding your person is so important. You have to know what they want to see and hear from you. If you don’t niche yourself, your content will fall flat.
Your Instagram should answer two questions very clearly:
- Who are you trying to solve a problem for?
- What is that problem?
Engaging Your Audience to Sell
In order to make money on Instagram, you need your people to be engaging with your content.
If you go back and listen to episode 58, you will learn about utilizing Instagram Stories to increase your engagement.
What are you doing to build the know, like, and trust factor with your audience?
Regardless of whether you plan to do affiliate marketing, work with brands, or sell your own product, if your audience doesn’t know, like, and trust you, you will not be able to make it work.
Start thinking about what you can do to get even more content in front of your people. I talk about that even more in-depth in episode 58, so make sure you check that episode out.
I love using polls in my Instagram stories in order to sell to my audience. I talked about that in episode 184, where we talking about selling from Instagram, and I also gave you a free Instagram Engagement Guide.
We have talked recently on the podcast about using IG Reels. Episodes 205, 206, and 228 were all dedicated to discussing Reels and what they bring to the Instagram platform. If you’ve been thinking about jumping into Reels, listen to those episodes.
Reels are not only a great way to engage your current audience but also a great way to grow a new audience.
Instagram is continuing to push out Reels to new audiences, and if you are niching in the captions and hashtags that you use, they will make sure to serve your content to the right audience.
Capturing Your Audience Off The Platform
Too many Instagram influencers aren’t aware of how to monetize their social media without doing sponsored work. If you’ve listened to episode 106, you will know that you can monetize your Instagram account through pitching to brands, but that’s not the only way to make money.
Sponsored work and affiliate marketing are the traditional ways that we see people monetizing their social media. It can be overwhelming to find the right people you can work with and continually be pitching to brands.
But remember, you cannot build your business on rented space. That is what you are doing if you only focus on sponsored work on Instagram.
In order to monetize your Instagram, you have to make sure you are actually capturing your people. Whether that is an email list, a blog, or a podcast, you need something that belongs to you so that you don’t lose everything if Instagram shuts down tomorrow.
Your email list, podcast, or blog gives you the opportunity to continue to sell to your audience regardless of whether Instagram is around, or whether they are seeing your content or not.
Training Your Audience to Buy
I hear from so many of you that your people on Instagram “won’t pay for a product or service.” The problem is that you have trained them to expect everything for free. You continue to provide them with free content. You have to offer them paid options from the beginning.
When you get them to sign up for your email list, offer them a freebie that then leads to a paid product or service.
This shows them that you care about them by offering them a ton of information in a free product or guide, but also that you are a real business that will provide them even more in the paid option.
Your people follow along with you and provide you with great engagement because they love you. If you are not drawing that engagement away from social media and to your email list, it is not going to be monetizing while you sleep.
Doing Your Keyword Research
Let’s say you already have a huge audience built on Instagram. Now you want to know how to make money as an Instagram influencer. You have proof that certain topics drive engagement. Find those people that are looking for those topics and send them to your blog or podcast.
You do this by using keyword research. Ty Kilgore discussed this in episode 154, “How to Improve SEO.”
Social media platforms do not want their users to leave the platform. They want people to stay on their site. I hear from so many people that they are now using Google instead of Pinterest to find recipes or DIY projects so that they can get direct links to websites.
This is why keyword research is so important. This is why blogging is so important!
Look at your insights to see what content is doing well, and create content based on those topics for your blog. Compare the content on social media to your keyword research on Google.
This is yet another way to diversify, get people on your email list, and monetize your business.
Grow Your Email List
Your person is 6x more likely to take action from an email list than from a post on social media. This is why your email list is so important. You are providing your person with an invitation to learn more about you and what you have to offer them.
Your email list is a way to think outside of the box. You don’t have to only do sponsored work and affiliate marketing on Instagram. You can sell your own products if you are focused on growing your list.
You need more than 2 people in your DMs talking to you. You need your email subscribers that are opting-in to your freebies in order to know what sort of products they would actually buy.
How do you take your Instagram audience to another level? Don’t stick yourself in the pigeon-hole of just being an Instagram influencer.
Be an influencer entrepreneur, be a business owner.
Now you can start diversifying your income and that provides you with the opportunity to create even more products and services for your audience.
Which piece of this do you need the most help with? Look back over this episode and decide which episodes you need to relisten to. Maybe you need to learn more about Instagram Reels or really focus on growing your list.
Send me a DM with any questions you might have. I am happy to get you on the right path to making money and moving your business forward.
Action Steps:
- If you liked this episode of Influencer Entrepreneurs, please subscribe and leave a fabulous review!
- Join the conversation on Instagram by tagging Jenny when you’re listening to the podcast. She’ll send you a personal message whenever you tag her.
