Many businesses, from athleisure brands like Lululemon to e-commerce giants like Amazon, use influencer marketing to boost audience engagement, sales, and brand visibility. As an influencer, this is your moment to grow your income, with the $250 billion creator economy forecasted to hit $480 billion by 2027. (Business Insider, 2023)
Instagram offers one of the best platforms to focus on, given that 47% of marketers use it for influencer campaigns. (Influencer Marketing Hub, 2024) But how can you make money on Instagram from this opportunity?
With over 2 billion people and 200 million businesses on the platform, Instagram helps you facilitate remarkable connections between brands and new audiences, boosting their sales. (Backlinko, 2024; SocialPilot, 2024) Of course, these promotional efforts earn a fee—depending on a user’s follower count, influencers can charge clients up to $10,000 per post. (Influencer Marketing Hub, 2024)
In this guide, learn how to make money on Instagram and discover how Name.com can enhance your personal brand and increase your earning potential.
Why 2025 is the perfect year to start making money on Instagram
As brands seek long-term partnerships with influencers, experts predict the market is likely to be worth $26.4 billion by 2025, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 30.6%. (KBV Research, 2019) They’re looking for representatives who align with their values while paying attention to niche and micro-niche influencers to enhance brand credibility and visibility.
Instagram is one of the platforms brands prefer, and for good reason. The platform is popular among youth, with most scrollers aged between 18 and 34. (Statista, 2024) Its hyper-visual nature appeals to this age group and supports diverse, engaging content formats like text, images, and videos.
For instance, up to 62.2% of marketers anticipate using Instagram Reels for influencer marketing by 2025. (Statista, 2022) Additionally, a HypeAuditor report projects global spending on Instagram influencer marketing to reach $22 billion by the same year. (CMOtech, 2024). These insights hint at potential opportunities for Instagram influencers, and those looking to capitalize should start refining their strategies now.
How to make money on Instagram: setting up your account for success
As an influencer, you need to set up an Instagram business account or creator account, depending on your needs. For instance, if you need to run social ads or an online shop, pick a business account for the ability to add your contact details, like email and phone.
Regardless, your success as an Instagram influencer hinges on your account setup—a complete and well-optimized profile is key:
- Optimize your profile – Picking a clear and memorable name and handle helps current and future followers identify and remember your brand. Add hashtags and keywords to your bio to improve visibility. For instance, if you’re a beauty influencer, use hashtags like:
- #beauty
- #makeup
- #beautiful
- #fashion
- Develop a unique digital identity – Select the right niche that followers will easily associate with you, such as music, travel, DIY, politics, or other topics. Create original content that inspires and informs your audience, such as personal experiences and stories. Ensure consistent branding across all your platforms to affirm authenticity.
Your Instagram account acts as a conduit for new followers and opportunities. While hundreds of profiles may exist in your preferred niche, finding your style and developing a strategy that drives engagement helps your account stand out. You don’t need to aim big—nano- and micro-influencers on Instagram with less than 100,000 followers can make a full-time income on the platform.
Boosting your Instagram brand with a custom domain from Name.com
As noted, credibility is crucial to your brand, and securing a domain name through Name.com is a great way to build that trust with your audience. Think of a domain as proof that you’re real, which is essential in today’s bot-infested digital landscape where people prefer relatable and genuine experiences.
With Name.com, you can get a custom domain that showcases your niche and identity. Examples of new top-level domains (TLDs) that suit influencers include:
Simply enter your desired site name in the search bar to see if it’s available. If yes, then add it to the shopping cart and proceed to checkout.
Once you’ve registered your domain and set up your website, be sure to add it to your Instagram profile to boost visibility and drive traffic. Instagram also allows you to link up to five websites, giving you even more flexibility to share your content with followers. Additionally, leveraging tools like Hopp can streamline influencer-brand collaborations by offering direct access to monetization opportunities, helping you grow your presence and maximize engagement on Instagram.
Leveraging sponsored posts and brand collaborations to earn more
Instagram influencers partner with brands to make money, and it can be big bucks for some. The platform offers a marketplace to help creators and influencers connect with brands and partner on branded content and partnership ads. Of course, you can collaborate with brands outside Instagram, too.
Once you add your profile to the marketplace, brands can approach you for paid partnerships. You can also list your preferred brands to draw in new opportunities. Add your content interests like food, sports, and skincare to help brands find you, and showcase your work with a creator portfolio to stand out for deals.
With sponsored posts and brand collaborations, influencers can earn anywhere from $10 to $10,000 per post, depending on their follower count and engagement levels. (Influencer Marketing Hub, 2024) While top-tier celebrities like Cristiano Ronaldo and Kylie Jenner may make over $1 million per post, the majority of influencers fall within this more attainable earning range. (Visual Capitalist, 2023).
How to make money on Instagram through affiliate marketing links
Besides sponsored posts and brand collaborations, you can make money on Instagram with affiliate marketing links in posts, stories, reels, and IGTV. This involves making recommendations to your followers and getting paid a commission when they follow up on the links to them. You can add these affiliate marketing links to your bio, stories, and posts to generate traffic and sales.
As of September 2024, Instagram runs an affiliate program to connect influencers with brands, but it’s still in testing. You can also join other programs for different platforms, like:
- Etsy Creator
- Walmart Creator
- YesStyle Influencer
- CJ Affiliate
- Amazon Associates
- MagicLinks
Ensure you have at least 10,000 followers to negotiate favorable commission rates—you’ll want to earn at least 10% of your total sales value. And remember that promotional content requires a balancing act; avoid swamping your followers with affiliate links. A good guideline to follow is ensuring only 5% of your content is affiliate posts.
Creating and selling your products: use your Name.com domain for sales
Instagram allows you to sell products through the platform using tags and Shops. You can set up a virtual store within the app or build your online shop using a unique domain name, but building your own online shop with a unique domain name offers the flexibility of targeting customers on multiple platforms.
With Name.com, you can register a unique domain name and set up your shop using Wix. Name.com has new TLDs for online shops like .watches, .toys, .wine, .store, .shop, .flowers, and .parts. This lets you pick a domain extension that best suits your industry or products.
Name.com also partners with best-in-class tools like Titan and Google Workspace to provide not only professional email for your store but also seamless collaboration across platforms, helping you stay connected and efficient. Additionally, you get access to other tools and services like Hosting, SSL certificates, Hopp by Wix, URL shortener, and SiteLock security.
Using Instagram shopping features with your custom website link
When your online store is ready, set up a catalog through Meta Commerce Manager and connect it to your shop. Instagram and Facebook share integrated shopping features, allowing you to streamline your e-commerce efforts across both platforms.
By linking your custom website to these features, you can drive customers directly to your store and increase conversions. Using tools like URL shorteners can also help create easy-to-share links for posts and ads, making it simple for customers to check out seamlessly on your site.
Avoid common mistakes when trying to monetize Instagram and your website
While it can be exciting to earn money on Instagram, here are the pitfalls you should avoid to ensure consistent income:
- Buying followers – It’s true that revenues on Instagram are directly tied to your number of followers. When getting started, avoid buying followers, as it’s likely to result in poor engagement.
- Oversharing links – Flooding your followers with affiliate and product links to boost sales doesn’t work. Only 5% of your content should be affiliate links, as too many links can result in an impassive audience. To avoid overwhelming your Instagram profile, consider creating a Hopp page to house all your important links. This keeps your IG feed clean while still giving your followers easy access to your content and affiliate products.
- Misusing hashtags – Hashtags offer one way of growing your reach on Instagram, but some influencers misuse them by adding too many to a post. As a general rule, aim for five to 10 hashtags and ensure they’re relevant to your content. Before using hashtags, research them to make sure they have enough search volume. Tools like Hashtagify can help you get more granular with hashtag performance and find the ones that will have the greatest impact.
- Sharing poor quality content – Some influencers post low-quality, repetitive posts and images, mostly due to not setting aside time to create content. If you intend to grow your income, high-quality content counts on Instagram.
As you strive to increase your influencer income on Instagram, set a clear goal—something as simple as hitting 5,000 followers or earning $500 in monthly income. Establishing reasonable goals keeps you motivated and focused. Also, ensure authenticity and adhere to all guidelines by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), such as making disclosures on paid partnerships and content.
Grow your Instagram’s earning potential with Name.com
Can you make money on Instagram? Yes, you can make between $20 and $1,000 per sponsored post you share on Instagram, depending on the number of followers you have (Influencer Marketing Hub, 2024). There are even more ways of making money on the platform—like ads, selling products, and affiliate marketing.
But success hinges on developing a unique digital identity and sharing relatable experiences with your followers. To build your digital identity, you need a website to connect with brands and partners for Instagram campaigns. A website adds credibility and authenticity to your brand and can also double as your portfolio for all your work, including blog posts, videos, and photos.
Name.com is the best platform for building your online presence as an Instagram influencer. With Name, you can register a unique website domain name using your preferred TLD. Name.com also partners with Wix, making it easy for you to create a professional website for your domain.
You also get best-in-class tools to support your influencer career, including professional email through Google Workspace and a URL shortener. Finally, add SSL solutions from Comodo to ensure advanced endpoint protection for your Name.com website.
Buy your domain on Name.com today to establish a unique digital identity that boosts your Instagram’s earning potential.
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