How much do Instagram influencers make? The 10 top earners in 2024

Making money as an influencer comes down to having an audience that is willing to listen to you and try the products you recommend. To get the attention of advertisers and make money on Instagram, you need to have at least a few thousand active followers who like and comment on your posts. At first you might just get free gifts, but as your following grows, so does the income potential. Here’s how.

Promoting a product to increase awareness by recommending it to your followers is one of the most lucrative ways to make money on Instagram. It’s also one of the harder opportunities to land, as advertisers tend to target accounts with larger followings.

To improve your chances of success, make sure your account has a unique niche. The beauty niche is oversaturated, but you might have luck if you focus on the beauty niche for active outdoor women, for example.

Link stickers, which allow you to add a link to your Instagram Stories instead of asking people to find it in your bio, were previously only available to verified accounts and accounts with 10,000 or more followers. The stickers are now available to all users. This makes an Instagram influencer’s job a lot easier, especially if you’re promoting more than one product at a time.

If you have a blog or following, you may be able to increase your work by promoting a product or service and receiving a commission for sales. Affiliate marketing is different from sponsored posts because you earn money when your followers purchase the product.

It may be an easier way to profit from your Instagram account. Instead of hoping to be approached by a brand for a sponsored post, you can apply to affiliate programs like Amazon to make money selling their goods and services.

If you have a business like a hair salon, retail store, or Etsy shop, Instagram can be a great way to sell your products. All you need to do is take some high-quality photos and upload them to your feed. Instagram has business accounts and tools like Shops that make it easy to set up a store and accept payments directly from the platform.

As mentioned earlier, you need followers before you can make money on Instagram. The hardest part is getting to 100 followers, then 500, then 1,000. Some people think they can buy fake followers and save themselves the hard work, but brands and advertisers are smart – the quality of the followers is just as important.

Not only does your audience need to reach the right number of followers, but they also need to be active and engaged. Engagement means your posts receive lots of likes, comments, saves, and shares. Here are some tips on how to grow your Instagram followers with a quality audience.

You probably know that hashtags, an optimized bio, and marketing your Instagram page on other social media platforms are good ways to grow your audience. But these days the competition for followers is fierce. Finding creative ways to gain followers is crucial. Some ideas include the following:

• Make sure your photos are beautiful and unique to your style.

• Post regularly. Creating multiple posts at once and scheduling them on a consistent schedule makes this easier.

• Host product giveaways for followers that invite others to follow you.

• Interact with followers who comment on posts from larger accounts in your niche.

• Make friends with other influencers and ask for shoutouts – or pay for them.

Engagement is just as important as the number of followers. Creating posts that encourage followers to share or comment should be as much a priority as growing your audience. To get an idea of ​​what level of engagement your posts should have, according to a study by Rival IQ, the average brand engagement rate is less than 2% and declining. Available for business and creator accounts, Instagram Insights can help you evaluate the performance of your posts.

Some ways to get your audience to interact is to ask questions or ask for advice or opinions. Don’t forget to reply to your followers who take the time to interact.

It’s a mystery, but many Instagrammers complain about being followed by vague accounts that look like bots. While these accounts increase your follower counts, they impact your engagement rates because they don’t comment or like your posts.

As your follower count grows, you may want to regularly clean your account and remove inactive followers. It will improve your engagement rate – and your chances of winning a lucrative sponsorship.

Cynthia Bowman contributed reporting for this article.

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This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: How much do Instagram influencers make? The 10 top earners in 2024