How To Earn Money From Instagram in India?

There are two types of people on Instagram: those who know how to earn money from Instagram and those who have no inclination to do so.

We are going to talk about the people who fall in the first category – also known as social media influencers. People commonly use the terms content creator and social media influencers interchangeably, but there is a slight difference between the two.

All social media influencers are content creators, but vice-versa is not true.

So if you are a content creator and feel that you have the potential to become a social media influencer so that you start making money on Instagram, this article is for you.

Before learning how to earn money on Instagram as an influencer, let’s talk about the initial few steps you will have to take.

Find a niche

This goes without saying, but the first step towards earning money on Instagram as a content creator is to be regular with posting content.

It will be ideal if you can find a niche for your content. Your followers should know what they can expect from your content.

Having said that, it’s advisable that you don’t get hung up on choosing a niche or a format for your content. As long as your content has a specific focus and a unique voice, it doesn’t matter what your niche is. Be it health, food, literature, or comedy, there is demand for almost everything on Instagram.

Once you have decided on your niche focus area and are ready to create and post content, ensure that your videos or photos have either one or a mix of these characteristics:

Informative
Entertaining
Innovative
Original

Your content should be meaningful and add value to the life of your followers. It could be a new product or idea that solves a large-scale common problem. For example, a technique or a hack to make a particular dish, an innovative way to put on make-up, etc.

Once your followers recognise you for these specific types of content and start coming to your page regularly, there are high chances Instagram will suggest your posts and your account to people who are neither your followers nor friends.

Slowly, your posts would start showing in the search tab and you will be discovered by unknown people on Instagram. This is the time when you need to take specific actions to increase your number of followers.

How to gain followers on Instagram?

One of the biggest challenges of earning money on Instagram is not having enough followers on your Instagram page. Before you start taking steps to earn money from your content, you need to have a strong base of followers. This will ensure that brands come to you for partnerships and other exclusive campaigns.

You can follow some of these tips to increase your follower count:

Revisit your description page and re-write it so that people who come to your page understand what your account is about. Optimise the language in a way that visitors connect with your account.
Make your account into a professional account. This will give you access to analytics about your followers, account performance, reach more people through Instagram promotions, and you can add contact options on your profile page for businesses to reach you.
Get your account verified
Create content on recent trends to gain followers
Run quizzes or free give-aways on your page and ask people to follow you to participate
Host more and more Instagram live events and talk to your followers. These events are quite meaningful for your followers as they can ask you questions and get answers live.
Regularly post Instagram stories – save the ones that can be helpful as ‘Highlights’. Remember to organise these Highlights by giving them meaningful names
Use appropriate hashtags every time you post videos or photos on Instagram
Use geotags on Instagram posts so that people can visit the places you went to – this is an excellent way to add value to your followers’ life
Reply to people’s comments on your posts – make them interactive
Like and comment on your competitors’ posts – chances are their followers will come to your page and if they like your posts, they will start following you as well
Make use of the Instagram Promotions feature and promote some of your posts that didn’t get enough likes and comments

How to earn money from Instagram in India?

If you follow the above-mentioned tips, there are high chances that you will start seeing the effect in some time. Once you have a few thousand followers, you can actively start monetising your Instagram account.

There are various ways to make money on Instagram. Here are a few tools to start earning money on Instagram in India:

Brand endorsements

In today’s digital age, people’s buying decisions are highly affected by what social media influencers are endorsing. The influencer marketing industry is set to reach $16.4 billion by 2022.

This gives social media influencers a huge scope of earning via brand endorsements on their Instagram page. Brand endorsements are one of the most straight-forward ways to earn money from Instagram in India.

As a content creator who has slowly become an influencer on Instagram, you might be a bit apprehensive about endorsing a brand. It might feel like you are cheating your followers by telling them to use a particular brand’s product when you yourself are not sure of it.

But since you are explicitly telling your followers that this particular post is a paid brand endorsement, they are well aware that it’s an advertisement.

Product placements

One of the ways to earn money from Instagram is by plugging different products into your posts without explicitly talking about them. For example, if you are a food influencer and you are making a post about how to grill vegetables and meat, you are going to use a barbeque grill and other accessories.

Instead of diluting your content with brand endorsements, you can simply put the products’ details in the description. Depending on your partnership with brands, you can put the details of where to buy these products from.

It is a very good way for you to hit two birds with one stone – make quality videos and earn money from brands on Instagram. This way you need not make content just to promote a brand or product.

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is a very good way to earn money from Instagram by promoting brands’ links or promotional codes.

You will have to find brands that pay Instagram creators such as yourself for affiliate marketing. With affiliate marketing, you can put up a coupon code in the description of your post, which will give your followers an exclusive discount. Every time someone uses that link or code to purchase a product, you will receive a commission from the brand.

However, you should ideally partner with brands that fit well with the kind of content you are known for among your followers.

Sell your own product

While you can earn money from Instagram being an influencer, the platform can also be used to sell your product. Whether you have a small line of physical products or a digital product like an e-course or software, you can leverage Instagram to sell your products.

However, this requires a lot more effort and patience on your part than earning money as an influencer.

To be able to sell your products on Instagram, your followers should have a strong trust in your domain expertise. This requires you to regularly post informative and novel content before you pitch your product to followers.

For example, if you are a yoga teacher, you should put up short clips of your yoga practice, and write detailed captions on each asana, their benefits, etc. In this case, you should also put up posts that talk about maintaining work-life balance, keeping your mind healthy and active, what kind of food will help to maintain this, and other tips.

Once you have done this enough and you have got a good number of followers, you can start pitching your yoga course – maybe online or in person.

Conclusion

Social media has not only given people a way to entertain themselves and kill time, but also earn money. Among all the social media platforms, Instagram specifically has created an ecosystem that allows content creators to earn money in more than one way.

If you think you have it in you to create engaging content regularly, follow the above tips to start making money on Instagram.