Instagram is relatively young in the social media arena. Yet five years after its initial release, the photo and video-sharing platform has gone a long way with roughly 300 million monthly active users, more than 30 billion photos, and 2.5 billion likes happening daily. When Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg bought Instagram for a billion dollars in 2012, he predicted that Instagram will reach 1 billion users in five years. This isn’t far from happening at all given that the average Instagram user these days spends 21 minutes on the app every day, just 19 minutes shy of the average time spent by users on Facebook.

Earlier this year, Danielle Bernstein of the WhoWhatWear blog revealed in Harper’s Bazaar that a single photo can rake in between $5,000 to $15,000. "I hate talking about money, but let's just say it's more than I could have ever imagined as a 22 year old. I fully support myself, and it's in the mid-six figures. I save, I invest, I'm trying to be smart about it all and learn as I go,” says Bernstein when asked about her Instagram earnings.

Why are top brands like Lancome and Virgin Hotels paying Danielle Bernstein $5,000 to $15,000 per Instagram post just to have one of their products or events included in her Instagram feed?

Let’s dig deeper, shall we?

From Average to Avant-Garde Bloggers

Justin Hall, a Swarthmore College student that time in 1994, is considered the first person to come up with a blog. He referred to it as his homepage on the Internet. Three years later, the term weblog was coined by Jorn Barger of Robot Wisdom. In 1999, weblog was shortened into blog by Peter Merholz.

When LiveJournal and the blogging platform that would soon become Blogger was introduced in 1999, blogging experienced tremendous growth -- from 23 blogs in 1999 to 50 million blogs in mid-2006 (based on Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere that year). Since then, hordes of obscure bloggers have become superstars in their own niche. Some have launched programs about how to make money with blogs like Darren Rowse of ProBlogger while others have written bestselling books and marketed them through blogging alone such as Tim Ferriss of the 4-Hour Workweek. And there are fashion bloggers who score front row seats to Paris’ Fashion Week just because they had 300k Instagram followers.

Where is the Money on Instagram?

Before you lament about the unfairness of it all, there are three popular ways to turn your presence on Instagram into a six-figure income gig. These includes the following:

• Sponsored Posts - involves posting a photo featuring a particular product or service
• Account Takeovers - involves being granted temporary access to a business’ account and given full rein to curate photos and engage with followers
• Selling Accounts - accounts with more than 500K followers and solid engagement can potentially have six-figure earnings

Instagram’s growth of 64 percent among its active users in 2014 is one sure sign that businesses are now shifting their marketing efforts to the social media platform that started out as an iOS-only app. In a Huffington Post interview, Thomas Rankin, CEO of Dash Hudson (a company who assists brands in finding influencers on Instagram) revealed that businesses these days are willing to cash out between $1 to 1.5 billion per year in sponsoring Instagram content.

So how do you you get your piece of the huge pie that is earning via Instagram? We outline the steps below.

Build a solid following.

You need to have at least 5,000 followers (preferably active users of course) for a campaign or company to consider you as one of their ambassadors, according to Rankin. Instagrammers who have had a solid following for a while now are typically approached by companies like Dash Hudson. Aside from being asked to promote a product or service, a separate rate is often part of the agreement as well.

Your circle of friends and family are less likely to help you gain 5,000 followers though. Therefore, you need to employ other alternatives to attract and retain followers. Strategies such as taking visually-appealing and high-quality photos, posting consistently (at least once a day), and adding relevant hashtags will help you get that boost in the number of followers.

Find out your target niche.

First, this step will help you curate the type and quality of photos/subjects in your daily posts. Second, carving out a niche is pivotal in narrowing down which brands or businesses you want to work with in the future.

Follow and engage with brands that you want to work with.

This is just another way of saying to keep your eyes on the prize.

Be authentic.

Instagram’s way of capturing the “here and now” is the secret sauce of its taking over magazines or TV commercials in terms of converting audiences to customers. While it’s tempting to simply come up with pre-planned or staged photoshoots on Instagram, followers can easily discern what’s fake and what really looks authentic.

Have a strong presence on other social media platforms.

Book author and brand ambassador Peg Fitzpatrick emphasizes the importance of maintaining an active profile in other social media platforms, particularly professional channels such as LinkedIn, if you want to earn via Instagram. Like traditional recruiters and employers, brands or businesses who are interested to run sponsored content on your Instagram will eventually look for more information about your professional life online.

Focus on audience engagement.

What’s a massive following for when there are no meaningful conversations between you and your followers? It’s not social media if the “social” component is missing.

At its core, earning via Instagram takes time and patience. It is more than just taking random photographs and adding hashtags. The surest way to be the next Bernstein is to tell stories with your photos, show up with a photo each day, and listen to what your followers has to say.

Have you thought about earning via Instagram? We’d love to hear about plans below!

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About the Author

 

About Kyjean Tomboc

Kyjean likes to think of herself as an online content machine but her love for all things feline makes her human after all! She writes mainly about health, science, social media, and online content marketing. If she’s not writing, she’s either scaling mountains or taming tardigrades. Follow her tardigrade taming attempts at Twitter - @autodidactikai