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Getting paid to post on Instagram may sound like a dream job, but it’s surprisingly easy to achieve.
There are many ways to make money on Instagram, but influencer marketing is the quickest and most lucrative way.
Influencer marketing is when businesses use real people on Instagram to advertise their business through sponsored (paid) posts.
These businesses are looking for two things: a large following and the following that will likely buy their products.
So to start getting paid to post on Instagram in the fitness world, for example, that means you want to build a large audience interested in fitness. Simple, right?
To give you an idea of how many followers you need before you can expect to start getting paid to post on Instagram, here’s a rough estimate:
Alternatively, you can use the calculator from Influencer Marketing Hub to calculate how much you may be eligible to make according to the performance of your last 12 posts.
With the above in mind, here are the 5 steps you need to take to start getting paid to post on Instagram:
Make Content that People In Your Niche Want to See
The first thing is pretty self-explanatory – you need to create content that resonates with people interested in your niche.
Put yourself in the shoes of your audience. For example, as someone interested in fitness, what kind of content would an Instagram page have to have for you to be interested enough to follow that page?
Some quick examples of this type of content could include:
- pre/post-workout shakes with the recipe included in the caption
- in-the-gym action shots (squats, deadlifts, etc.)
- exercise tutorials
- progress posts of clients you have helped train
- before-and-after progress posts
- motivational quotes from famous figures in the fitness industry
Here’s an example of something a fitness personality on Instagram might post:
If you’re stuck on ideas, look at what your competitors are doing. Read this article for 26 ways to create engaging Instagram posts in 2018, or watch the quick video below to learn how to find the best competitors in your industry to learn from.
Make it Easy for Your Target Audience to Find You Through Hashtags.
You could have the best content in the world, but if it’s not reaching anyone, it doesn’t matter.
Attaching the right hashtags to your posts makes sure that your content reaches the kinds of people you want as followers.
For example, if you are creating fitness-related posts but aren’t using any fitness-related hashtags, you’re making it virtually impossible for people in the Instagram fitness community to find your content.
And while using high-volume general hashtags like #fitness is definitely a good start, if you don’t also include smaller, more specialized hashtags more specific to your individual posts, you risk having your posts constantly be drowned out by the hundreds of thousands of other posts using #fitness.
For example, if you are posting a photo illustrating the correct way to perform a squat, in addition to using a hashtag like #fitness, you could also include a smaller hashtag like #squatforlife. This way, in addition to any general traffic you might get from #fitness, you’re also making your posts visible to a much more specific group of the fitness community who are more likely to appreciate your post about squat form.
According to Hootsuite, the use of around 9 hashtags tends to results in the most amount of engagement. Try to include a mix of popular-but-general and less-popular-but-specific hashtags.
This is an example of how your hashtags might look on a post about the correct way to perform a squat. It consists of both general, higher volume hashtags as well as more specific, lower volume hashtags.
Using the right hashtags and creating the right kind of content is so that when you do grow your page to an appreciable size and sponsors begin looking at you, they can see that the kind of people who follow you match up with what those sponsors are looking for in their own audience.
Read this article to learn how to find the perfect hashtags for your niche.
Engage with People in Your Community
Hashtags are one way that people can discover. Engaging with people in your community is another.
Neil Patel found that for every 100 likes, he received roughly 6 followers. Take the hashtags that you discovered through your research above and start engaging with people using those hashtags. This way, when you begin gaining followers from your engagement, you know you’re likely getting followers who fit your demographic.
If you’re strapped for time, you can use a tool like AiGrow to automate this process and begin automatically engaging with your target audience through Likes, comments, and DMs. See the quick video below to see how it works:
Get in Touch With Sponsors
If you’re doing the above steps correctly, 8/10 times, sponsors will begin contacting you.
This was a brand that reached out to my fitness apparel page. My page had only been in operation for five months and had just over 1,000 followers.
In some cases, however, it can pay to reach out to sponsors yourself.
This doesn’t always have to begin with a direct DM asking if they can sponsor you. This can come across as desperate.
If, after building a sizable audience relevant to your sponsor, your dream sponsor still isn’t sliding into your DMs, then you need to start getting creative.
If you’re not doing it already, start commenting and/or answering people’s questions under your dream sponsor’s posts. If your dream sponsor sells products, buy their product, post about your experience, and tag the sponsor in your post.
After enough of these types of things, you can then upgrade to DMs.
Here’s a sample DM you can send to your dream sponsor:
“Hey guys! I’ve been a huge advocate of your brand for years. You were actually an inspiration for creating my fitness Instagram page in the first place. Do you offer any sort of ambassador program? Over the past x years, I’ve managed to grow my audience to 0ver x fitness-obsessed followers who I think would fit with your target audience perfectly. Let me know! Keep up the awesome work.”
You can certainly send out DMs to every potential sponsor one-by-one, but as shown in the video above, to save you time and effort, you can also use a tool like AiGrow to send out hundreds of DMs a day automatically.
When these sponsors check out your page and see that 1) you post content that is relevant to their brand, 2) that your followers fit with their target audience perfectly, and 3) that you’ve already purchased and praised their products, it decides to sponsor you that much easier.
Conclusion
The above steps won’t transform your Instagram page into a money-making machine overnight, but they are bound to help you start getting paid to post on Instagram with enough time and energy.
Have any tips or suggestions not explored above? Have you successfully (or not successfully) grown an Instagram page into a reliable source of income? Know a way of getting paid to post on Instagram that doesn’t involve influencer marketing? We’d love to hear from you.
In the meantime, to help you boost the amount of engagement you get on every single one of your posts, give our new automated Instagram pods a try! Instagram pods are groups of people on Instagram who have similar-sized and similarly-themed pages that agree to comment and Like on each other’s posts.
Here’s how AiGrow’s Automated Instagram Pods work:
- Find (or create) a pod that applies to your niche.
- Drag and drop your post.
- Watch as all other members of your pod begin automatically Liking and commenting on your post.
