How Travel Influencers Make Money

Making money on Instagram is on nearly everyone’s mind, especially as we enter 2022. If you have IG with a decent follower count, you are probably brainstorming strategies to turn your Instagram into passive income. Maybe even a full-time gig. Why not? There are more than 1 billion monthly IG users you can capitalize on since 2018.

And Instagram continues to evolve. Now it is a mix of magazine, ecommerce store, and search engine. You can search and find just about anything via IG, and with the right strategy, earn money on people’s interests.

There are two main strategies to make easy money via Instagram. You can become an influencer or become an affiliate marketer. You can even do both. Let’s dive deeper into how you can influence and affiliate to make easy money on Instagram in 2022. 

Instagram 2022: Make Easy IG Money With These 2 Strategies

Strategy #1 — Become An Instagram Influencer

Becoming an Instagram influencer and getting paid for promotional posts is easier than ever before. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t even need to be a celebrity or mega-influencer to make money on IG. If you have 3,000 or more followers, you can make it happen.

According to Buffer, “The latest data shows that micro-influencers, influencers with 10,000 or fewer followers, are getting the best results for brands and businesses. More engagement, more clicks, and lower ROI.”

The only important factor when it comes to earning easy money on Instagram in 2020 is that your engagement rate is very good. This means that every post gets plenty of shares and comments. Why? Engagement is what brands and agencies look for before hiring you as their influencer.

Here’s a solid engagement example from fashion and travel influencer @dailykongfidence . . .

Why is this the top strategy for earning money via IG? You don’t need to do any of the mundane ecommerce tasks, such as sourcing inventory, creating an ecommerce website, processing payments, and fulfilling orders to customers. 

Instead you are a social media go-between. And consumers like a good go-between via social media, because they don’t really trust brands and their marketing messages. However, making your way as an influencer can prove challenging if you don’t have the know-how to be successful at it.

Here’s how to get started . . . 

Define Your Instagram Influencer Niche

Having a strong niche as an influencer is critical to your success. It is a mix of niche, like travel or fashion, as well as your personal brand. Your personal brand is how you deliver your content. For instance, there are a lot of fashion influencers on Instagram, but certain groups of followers have their favorites because they like the influencers personal brand more than others.

This could be why micro-influencers are far more successful at landing paid promotion gigs via top brands and agencies. They have a cult-like following.

“Micro-influencers have built-in followers already interested in businesses, products, and/or services like yours,” Stephen Seifert explained in Forbes. “Their followers also hang on every word and recommendation made with cult-like loyalty. This makes micro-influencers in your industry or niche ROI positive.”

Whatever your niche and personal brand is, you will need to stick to it. Doing so will help you increase your follower count and build trust among all your followers. And when this happens, engagement goes way up for each post.

Always Grow Your Follower Count

It is important not to wait to become an Instagram influencer until you have hundreds of thousands of followers. Even if you have a few thousand, you can begin influencing. In fact, you may even be more enticing to brands and agencies with a lower follower count, but more engagement per post.

Did you know that 81 percent of Instagram influencers sit between 15,000 and 100,000 followers? 

But this doesn’t mean you should stop actively trying to grow your follower count. You should always aim to grow, even if you need to employ a few follower growth tactics like holding a giveaway, utilizing user-generated content, or simply asking IG users to follow you and share your content with friends and family.

Staying consistent is also important when it comes to growing your followers and influence. You should definitely have a posting schedule and stick to it.

Here’s a great example of posting consistently from Instagram influencer @itslivb . . . 

Partner With Brands And Agencies To Get Paid

This is the main point here. To get paid for promotional posts, you will need to partner with brands and agencies. This is actually easier than you might think in 2020. There are two main ways to go about doing this.

First way, you reach out to brands and agencies directly with your sizzle reel and pitch them. Now before you do this, you need to have a plan. For instance, make a list of the

brands you love, as well as brands your followers love too. Then begin posting about them as if it were already your job.

 

Here’s a great example from micro-influencer _mynameismama_ . . .

By tagging the brand in your IG post, you are sending out a little nudge, because you can be sure that the brand’s social media manager is monitoring mentions. Once you have a few posted, right your pitch letter to the social media manager, director, and the brand’s director of marketing. You can find their information on LinkedIn.

The second way to partner with brands and agencies is to join an influencer marketing platform like Scalefluence.

Here you can create a profile and get introduced to their network of top brands and agencies looking for influencers like you.

Working with an influencer marketing platform also allows you to collaborate with brands and agencies in a way that helps you keep your creative process intact. This is because influencer marketing platforms like Scalefluence know how important and valuable your personal brand and followers are.

Strategy #2 — Become An Affiliate Marketer Via Instagram

This is another great strategy to make easy money on Instagram in 2020. Unlike paid promotions, you don’t really need to partner with brands and agencies directly. You can be a go-between for brands and customers in a different, yet lucrative way.

Affiliate marketing was initially setup for bloggers (learn how travel bloggers make money). They would sign up to be an advertiser affiliate via the many affiliate marketing platforms, such as Rakuten, Commission Junction (CJ), FlexOffers, Impact, ShareASale, and others. 

The bloggers would right articles and then insert their unique product and/or service links and get a percentage of the sale.

Here’s an example from Olay via cj.com . . . 

For every product purchased via these Olay links equates to an 8 percent commission for the affiliate marketer. 

And affiliate marketing is no longer just for bloggers. It has crossed-over to social media influencers on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and even Twitter. This is how you can make money as an IG influencer using affiliate marketing.

You can even set up your own Instagram store to increase your affiliate marketing earnings . . . 

IG users are also shopping in Instagram Stories. This is where you can really capitalize without creating your own store using affiliate links. By simply posting stories and tagging what you’re wearing, you can redirect your followers to buy the same products online. It really is that easy to make money via IG in 2020.

Is 2022 Your Breakout Year For Instagram Influencer Cash Money?

The above two strategies can help you turn your IG profile into a money making machine. If you combine the two, you have even more potential for Instagram influencer profitability. Take your influence to the next level in 2020 and partner with an influencer marketing platform that has a network of top brands and agencies across multiple niches, ability to increase your followers, and above all — gets you paid. 

Sign up to Scalefluence today!