Your How To Earn Money From Instagram Guide With Under 10,000 Followers

If it is time for you to learn how to earn money from Instagram and gain more followers on Instagram, you’re in the right place. And the time to make money as a social media influencer has never been better.

Instagram is still the top social media platform for influencers to earn money. This is because Instagram has a ton of features influencers can leverage.

According to an eMarketer study, over 55 percent of influencers use Instagram Stories for sponsored campaigns.

Which makes sense, since Stories highlights an influencer’s interests via interactive images and videos. This makes it a great path to promote brand sponsored products.

Like this Stories post from micro-influencer @livelikeitsthewknd . . .

Key Instagram statistics to know are:

• 60 percent of users said they find new products on instagram
• Location posts get 79 percent more engagement
• Posts with one hashtag get 12 percent more engagement
• Users spend 28 minutes per day on the app
• Stories has 500 million active daily users
• There are 1 billion active monthly users on Instagram

Understanding how to earn money from Instagram involves a number of factors. Determination, growing your influence, and willingness to gain more followers on Instagram are all essentials to influencer revenue.

This is where follower count gets kind of confusing for social media influencers.

Many influencers, or budding influencers think they need tens of thousands of followers to make money from Instagram. But the reality is that you can make decent cash with under 10,000 followers.

Listen up nano-influencers. Utilizing influencer tactics like affiliate marketing, Amazon partners program, sponsored posts, and more, can make you serious influencer profits.

The following step-by-step how to earn money from Instagram guide with under 10,000 followers may be just what you were waiting for.

Let’s dive in!

Instagram Influencer Step 1: Begin With Boosting Engagement

When it comes to knowing how to start making money on Instagram, like serious money, you need to look at your engagement rate.

Why? Engagement is the top metric brands use to decide if you will be a good fit for sponsored posts. And affiliate marketing platforms (which we will get into later) also look at engagement before approving an influencer to their platform.

What does this all mean? Focus on ENGAGEMENT!

And not the above type of engagement.

We are talking about the engagement rate of each post. This is calculated using a simple equation.

Engagement Rate = (Post Likes + Comments) / Followers x 100

Here’s an example from nano-influencer @athomewithlandy_

Here’s the engagement breakdown:

(799 likes + 15 comments) / 5,549 followers x 100 = 14.6

This home renovation post had an amazing engagement rate of 14.6 percent. This nano-influencer is certainly growing the influence in a big way.

How do you begin boosting engagement rate per post? Video content posts and videos via Instagram Stories.

Videos are the most wanted type of content, and videos generally get far better engagement, like the example timelapse video post example above. From regular video posts to Instagram Live, start growing engagement to make money on Instagram with under 10,000 followers.

Instagram Influencer Step 2: Earn Money From Instagram Via Affiliate Marketing

If you want to know how to start making money on Instagram, look into affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is a cash cow for influencers across multiple social media networks like Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and of course, Instagram.

But many influencers with under 10,000 followers don’t think affiliate marketing is worthwhile.

If you think you need 100,000 followers or more to capitalize on affiliate marketing, think again. In fact, you can make more money via affiliate links with less followers. How? Your followers are very niche specific and more loyal.

Here’s what affiliate marketing looks like from nano-influencer @chelsss.rose . . .

She first adds a link to the fashion post to entice users to click through. Then users land on the LiketoKnow.it page for the entire outfit . . .

When a user clicks on an image they like, they are redirected to the product page of the brand to make a purchase . . .

With the nano-influencer’s unique affiliate link, when a user makes a purchase, the influencer gets a cut of the sale.

It is that easy to make money as an affiliate marketer. The above example is an Amazon partner program affiliate link. There are also affiliate marketing platforms like Rakuten Affiliate and CJ.com affiliate program, among others to check out.

Instagram Influencer Step 3: Create And Sell Your Own Brand Merchandise

Once you have steps one and two out of the way, it is time to learn more about how to earn money from Instagram by leveraging your personal brand. That’s right, your personal brand.

Influencers with under 10,000 followers can make a sizable monthly revenue off of personal brand merchandise. And since it is your own merchandise, you keep more of the profits on each sale.

This is similar to the affiliate marketing path, only you need to set up a bit more online infrastructure to sell your own products. Here’s what you need:

• Product ideas that fit your personal brand and marketable to your audience
• Website to showcase products and process payments (Shopify works here)
• Set up your Instagram Shopping account

With products and an online presence, start posting about your personal brand merchandise on instagram. Link your online store in your Instagram profile. And don’t forget to set up an Instagram Highlights for your products as well.

Instagram Influencer Step 4: Land Brand Sponsorships

Brand sponsorships can net you a ton of money as an Instagram influencer. Even if you have under 10,000 followers. In fact, brands would rather partner with nano-influencers these days.

Why? Nano-influencers get better engagement per post. This is why step one in this how to earn money from Instagram guide with under 10,000 followers was so important to do first.

Nano-influencers generally have the best average for engagement over any other type of social media influencer . . .

Here’s what brand sponsorships look like from nano-influencer @ariane_yoga . . .

This influencer teamed up with Skechers to promote the You by Skechers campaign. Naturally it was an Instagram Stories post, increasing engagement potential.

However, landing sponsored posts from brands can be tricky. And negotiating price per post and building a long term relationship with brands can also prove challenging. There are a lot of gatekeepers to get through.

The good news is that influencer marketing platforms can help you get more than your foot in the door for those profitable brand sponsorships.

Instagram Influencer Step 5: Partner With An Influencer Marketing Platform

To make the above steps and really get the most on your how to start making money on Instagram journey, you should consider partnering with an influencer marketing platform.

Influencer marketing platforms, like Scalefluence, have a team of influencer marketing pros ready to help take your influence to the next level. And next level influence means next level money.

Scalefluence Instagram influencers get:

• Access to a robust network of brands for sponsored posts
• Ability to keep your creative control, protecting your personal brand
• Top dollar for brand and agency sponsored posts
• Fast and easy payments made via a secure payment portal
• Matched to the right brands via data-driven analytics
• Expert influencer marketing team support

Is it time to take your influence to the next level? Scale fluence is a premiere influencer marketing platform that can help. Sign up to learn more today.