How Much Do Instagram Influencers Make + 4 Best Ways

A place where you can earn a living from your passions? It certainly sounds appealing, but how does it all work?

Instagram ranks as the leading platform for influencer marketing, enabling you to build a following, expand it, and monetize it. Consequently, it offers a seemingly limitless opportunity for financial gain.

In this article, I will clarify what happens behind the scenes and demonstrate how the most successful creators earn up to a million dollars per post.

How Much Do Instagram Influencers Earn?

The amount of money an Instagram influencer can earn ranges from $50 per post to as much as $2 million, as we will come to learn.

The income of Instagram influencers depends on various factors. I will discuss these factors and provide some real-life examples to better illustrate my points.

1. How Much Do Influencers Earn from Sponsored Posts?

Sponsored posts are arguably the most prevalent method of monetization for Instagram influencers. They are a fundamental way to earn money on the platform, and there are several compelling reasons for this. They offer a low entry barrier and demand minimal effort.

Sponsored posts are a type of brand deal in which an influencer shares pictures and stories featuring a product provided by an advertiser. Compelling sponsored posts genuinely reflect the influencer’s preferences and are typically well received by the audience, even though they are labeled as ads. Influencers are usually compensated with a flat rate, although there are exceptions.

Take Liz Eswein, for example. On Instagram, she goes by the name @NewYorkCity. She is one of the platform’s earliest users and has leveraged a unique and recognizable name that generates impressions effortlessly. She earns $1 per like on her sponsored posts featuring her home city, with some posts reaching over 20,000 likes.

When discussing outliers, it would be remiss not to mention top celebrities, their earnings, and the reasons behind such high incomes.

Dwayne Johnson is a true outlier, a superstar movie actor whose film career has propelled his Instagram account to over 200 million followers. Reports indicate that he earns over 1 million dollars per post, making him the highest-paid Instagram influencer.

Naturally, seeing these large numbers can lead a person to wonder, “Wait, can’t they just create unlimited posts and essentially print money?” The short answer is no. The reality is that there are numerous limitations placed on Instagram influencers, primarily concerning the number of suitable advertisers and the frequency of their posts.

As Instagram influencers, they must uphold a specific reputation. Each sponsorship needs to be thoroughly vetted, as collaborating with the wrong brand for a sponsored post can be harmful. No one would feel comfortable supporting a creator who has partnered with companies known for unethical practices or poor-quality products.

Additionally, they are significantly restricted by the frequency of their posts. In theory, they could accept numerous deals and inundate their followers’ feeds daily, but this would cause substantial long-term damage. It would lead to a loss of interest, a decrease in follower count, and a decline in engagement rate.

As we can see, many factors influence how frequently they can create a sponsored post. A careless mistake can affect every subsequent deal they make in the future.

2. How Much Do Influencers Earn Through Instagram Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing has existed since the dawn of internet marketing. It operates on a model where the creator earns rewards for sharing an affiliate link, making it an excellent method for generating passive income. The link is specifically designed for the creator and can track various metrics.

Typically, it rewards the influencer with a percentage of every sale made after Instagram users click their link. However, it may also reward other metrics, such as the number of impressions, new users registered on a platform, and more.

Another alternative that is gaining popularity is discount codes. Influencers receive unique discount codes that they can share with their audience. While their application differs, they possess all the qualities of affiliate links.

There are numerous ways for affiliate marketing influencers to earn money on Instagram.

Traditionally, individuals would create an Instagram post featuring a picture of the promoted product and include the link in the post’s description. Similarly, they would utilize Instagram stories that showcase the product along with a clickable link.

The other common method is placing the affiliate links in their bio. This ensures that the link or links are visible to anyone visiting their profile at all times.

Many Instagram influencer bios are filled with brand partnerships, and if they included each link in their bio, it would become cluttered rapidly. To prevent this, some influencers utilize tools like Instabio.

The tools will offer a clickable link that opens a new window containing all the sponsored content and other pertinent links.

Understanding these tools is essential for excelling in influencer marketing. They enable a creator to generate more revenue and enhance their presence on other social media platforms.

Understanding all this theory is essential, but at this point, you are likely curious about the actual figures being generated.

Instagram influencers earn between 5% and 50% of the sale through affiliate marketing, with some agreements providing a flat rate rather than a percentage.

If an influencer with 10,000 followers promotes a product priced at $100 with a 10% commission, and they successfully make 50 sales, they will earn $500. You can adjust any of these variables to understand how much Instagram influencers can earn.

3. How Much Money Do Influencers Earn from Selling Merch?

In influencer marketing, merch is a broad term that refers to a range of personalized products sold by an influencer. This includes apparel, mugs, notebooks, blankets, patches, magnets, and more.

To understand how much Instagram influencers actually earn, we need to examine some numbers. For instance, to produce a t-shirt, they typically allocate about $4 per shirt, while these t-shirts are usually sold for around $20. Thus, selling 100 shirts would yield $1,600, not accounting for other potential expenses.

There are three factors that determine the manufacturing cost of the item you want to sell: blank t-shirts, supplies, and labor.

Blank t-shirts are surprisingly affordable, with prices starting as low as $1, but they can range up to $4 or more, depending on factors such as materials, craftsmanship, colors, and more.

Supplies refer to the materials used on the t-shirt. These materials are what create designs, logos, and text. I will use opaque vinyl material as an example. A yard of this material costs approximately $11. This quantity is enough to produce 20 designs, resulting in a cost of $0.55 per design.

Now, if the influencer does not intend to do the work themselves to save money, they must pay someone else to handle it. Those assembling all the materials manually and producing the final product can typically create just over 15 t-shirts per hour. If they are compensated $10 per hour, this amounts to approximately $0.66 per shirt.

This summary outlines a method that frequently generates significant income for Instagram influencers. It illustrates the process using t-shirts as an example, but the approach is quite similar for other types of products mentioned earlier.

Although it can be a lucrative way to earn money, some Instagram influencers may find this process quite daunting, and there are valid reasons for this. It demands a significant investment of time and resources, and there is also a risk associated with managing inventory.

To address this, some individuals utilize print-on-demand services. This involves a partnership between the influencer and a white-label product supplier, where the creator incurs no costs until a product is sold. They only need to provide the design, while the supplier handles the rest, including manufacturing, billing, shipping, and more.

4. How Much Money Do Influencers Earn through Instagram Reels?

Reels are short-form videos inspired by TikTok, averaging about $1,000 for every ten million views. They may represent the least effective monetization strategy in the entire influencer marketing landscape. If the pay-to-view ratio isn’t discouraging enough, consider that some creators receive no payment at all!

To earn money through Instagram reels, you must participate in Reels Play Bonuses. Reels Play Bonuses is a payment program directly funded by Instagram. For an influencer to join, they need to have at least 1,000 views within a 30-day period.

Meeting the above-mentioned requirements does not automatically qualify you. You still need to be accepted by Instagram.

Although reels are not an effective means of directly generating income, they remain a valuable tool for most influencers. Short-form videos are well-known for quickly achieving high view counts. A skilled creator understands how to transform some of this attention into a growing following, ultimately enhancing their earnings.

Other Ways to Make Money on Instagram

So far, I have discussed several of the most common ways to earn money on Instagram, but there are also many that do not fit into any specific category. In this section, I will highlight some additional methods that numerous influencers have employed to establish their influencer careers.

Selling a Variety of Products

I have already mentioned one category of products, which is merch. While every merch item is a product, not every product qualifies as merch.

Merch is typically directly linked to an individual’s personal image, whereas regular products tend to have their own distinct brand.

An excellent example of this is Connor McGregor’s whiskey, Proper Twelve, which has generated over 600 million dollars for its owner. It is a product that embodies the personal touch of its creator, yet it could also be marketed as a standalone item.

Products like this attract a broader audience and can be marketed to individuals beyond a specific community or fandom.

Most Instagram influencers would struggle to make this type of enterprise successful, as it involves more than simply selling memorabilia to those who are already invested in them.

OnlyFans Modeling

OnlyFans is a platform that has enabled influencers such as Blac Chyna to earn over $20 million in a year, making them some of the top OnlyFans earners.

It was initially designed to enhance the relationship between influencers and their audience. The audience would pay a monthly fee to access bonus content and receive direct messages from the influencer.

It was not confined to any specific category; however, over time, it has evolved to primarily feature sexual content, which is how it is recognized.

Many leading influencers have utilized their Instagram following to generate additional income on OnlyFans. The strategy is straightforward. They frequently share suggestive images that direct followers to their OnlyFans account, which features more explicit content.

Selling Courses and Programs

Selling courses and programs is an excellent way to earn money on Instagram, even for “micro-influencers.” These creators have a smaller follower count (1,000 – 100,000), consisting of highly engaged individuals. Despite not having a million followers, they can often generate a substantial income.

A highly sought-after professional in a specific niche may not be well-known to the general audience but can be very popular within a small circle. An example of this is Coach Curtis, a highly competitive gaming professional. Curtis has been selling his improvement programs for $30 per person long before reaching 100k followers.

Wrapping It Up

In this article, I discussed how much Instagram influencers earn and the intricacies of the craft. I covered both mega influencers and smaller ones, examining the impact of niches, follower count, and engagement levels.

Hopefully, this reading has provided you with a more nuanced understanding of how influencer marketing functions and the various factors that contribute to it.

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