How to make money on Instagram: real schemes for making money without investment

Elena Zaglyadkina EXPERT

I've been doing marketing for the last few years. I help agencies with content and SEO promotion, manage 4 niche communities on social networks, ...

Article last updated: 07/02/2020

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Making money on Instagram is much easier than on other social networks, since you are not tied to your workplace and can manage the process from anywhere in the world where there is access to the Internet, using only a mobile phone.

In this article, we will share with you the most effective ways to make money on the Instagram social network and tell you in detail about the advantages and disadvantages of each of them.

Earning money from likes and subscriptions

By tradition, let's start with the simplest and most understandable way for any beginner to make money on Instagram - receiving a monetary reward for active actions on the social network.

As a rule, customers on special exchanges pay performers for writing about, subscribing to accounts and publishing comments. Such work does not require special knowledge from the performer and even a junior school student can perform it.

Therefore, the number of such services has increased greatly. However, you won’t be able to earn even small but stable money with any exchange. You need to choose only from proven services that honestly pay users what they earn.

We invite you to familiarize yourself with the most stable, in our opinion, services for earning money from likes on Instagram.

Qcomment . In this exchange, the average price tag for tasks is 5 rubles. True, the minimum wage for withdrawal is higher - 100 rubles. With the same time expenditure, you can earn about 500 rubles per day. There are a lot of tasks, just like there are advertisers in the system in general. Payments arrive quickly, within 24 hours after ordering withdrawal on weekdays.
Bosslike . The minimum withdrawal amount is 100 rubles. Points earned in the system can be exchanged for electronic currency or spent on promoting your accounts. There are many tasks for every taste, including for watching videos and polls. You can earn up to 300 rubles per day with 2-3 hours of active surfing.
You can also choose to make money by performing actions such services as CashBox, Prospero, SocialTools, LikesRock, ForumOk, V-Like.

Rice. 1. Exchange of tasks for performers in the automated promotion service Bosslike.

To make money on the services described above, we recommend using accounts other than your main ones. It’s better to create a separate profile for these purposes and work through it. We have already written in detail about all these exchanges in our special section, so you can start earning money now by simply reading our guides.

How to start earning money: 4 tips

Let's talk about where to start making money on Instagram:

Choose your favorite monetization method. For example, promoting other people's accounts or selling advertising.
Learn useful skills. Unfortunately, to earn good money, you need special skills: advertising setup, promotion without a budget, design and copywriting. For example, master the profession of a targetologist or Instagram marketer.
Experiment. Try different earning schemes. So you will find the method of receiving money that you like.
Keep your finger on the pulse. Constantly follow the latest trends on Instagram: every year new ways and schemes of earning money appear.

Account Administrator

This way of earning money is not suitable for everyone. If you have never encountered moderating and administering accounts on social networks before, you will first have to practice on your communities so as not to accidentally harm the customer and not be left without payment.

The advantage of this way of earning money is that you can administer several accounts at once and receive stable money from remote work.

To show yourself as a good administrator and get recommendations from clients, be sure to manage accounts in those niches in which you are well versed and can bring something useful and interesting to the content.

What tasks does an administrator have to face?

creating new posts or editing existing publications,
photo and video processing,
communication with profile subscribers,
creating a content plan,
generating interesting ideas to attract and engage the target audience,
searching for advertising platforms and working closely with advertisers,
account statistics analysis,
search for new promotion strategies.

An obvious conclusion follows from this - the account administrator must ensure that only high-quality content is published on the Instagram account, which will help to interact fruitfully with the target audience.

To search for Instagram administrator vacancies, use freelance exchanges such as fl.ru or Kwork, for example. Or write to the blogger directly if the topic of his blog on Instagram is close to you and you can improve the quality of such an account.

Brief overview of popular exchanges

On the Internet there are a huge number of exchanges for advertising on social networks. Some specialize only in Instagram, others work with all popular platforms and web resources. Let's look at the most famous of them:

Pibber - works with all popular social networks. Favorable conditions for cooperation (you must have at least 250 subscribers), many large advertisers. The minimum amount for withdrawal is 100 rubles.
Dealway - specializes in Instagram posting. You can send requests for placement to advertisers directly, rather than waiting for their offer. Convenient tools for income analysis.
Instach is an exchange specializing in working with Instagram profiles. More than 95 million active users, ample opportunities to find the right audience. Several types for monetization (placing advertising photos, affiliate links).
Sociate - you can search for advertisers yourself. Minimum requirements to get started (profiles with 500 or more followers are invited to cooperate). Tools for audience search and targeting.
Blogun is an online platform for finding advertisers and posting paid publications. Payment for the publication of advertisements and other user activity. The cost of a post is calculated for each site individually and will depend on the activity of subscribers.

Earning money from advertising on Instagram through special exchanges is practically no different from individual promotion. Their main advantage is that you do not need to monitor groups yourself or contact administrators of other communities. You just need to register on the exchange and wait for the offer. If the profile has 1,000 or more subscribers, they will arrive within a few days (depending on the topic of the page).

Blogging and advertising

This type of income is the most interesting, especially for those bloggers who have something to say to the world. Interesting and useful content is always rewarded, sooner or later.

At the very beginning, it is important to choose a topic in which you understand best and where you can easily create in-demand content.

Rice. 2. Advertising of the Helvetia Hotel on Dima Bilan’s Instagram account.

You can make good money on your blog on Instagram only when the number of subscribers exceeds 10,000 people. A small blog can be profitable in rare cases, usually when the niche is very narrow and there are interested advertisers.

The main condition for this type of earnings on Instagram is a live, active audience. With an inflated subscription base, you won’t be able to make money from advertising, since before posting, any normal advertiser checks the platform’s statistics and audience involvement.

They usually make money from advertising in the following way:

the blogger creates an advertising post or receives a ready-made publication from an advertiser (it is better to write it yourself so as not to scare off subscribers with blatant advertising),
inserts the desired hashtag or brand mention into it,
publishes at the specified time and receives payment.

Everything is quite simple, but there are a number of nuances. For example, if you want advertisers to contact you and not have to look for them, more often mention the service they provide or the product they sell. The main thing is to do this carefully and not too often, otherwise you may lose a large part of your subscribers.

To search for advertisers, we recommend using services such as Sociate, Epicstars or Plibber. They help bloggers and advertisers find each other and collaborate profitably. For one advertising post, the owner of a blog on Instagram can receive from 500 rubles and more, it all depends on the level of promotion of the account.

Some instabloggers on the RuNet receive tens and hundreds of thousands of rubles from advertisers for their posts, and there is a considerable queue for them. Of course, to earn that much, you need to devote all your time to blogging on Instagram and make it your main job.

Typically, the price for an advertising post is determined based on the number of subscribers of a particular account, but most often bloggers set their own price. If we take the average market price, the advertiser pays 1 ruble for every 10 subscribers.

That is, if your Instagram profile has 5,000 followers, an advertising post will cost 500 rubles, 50,000 subscribers - 5,000 rubles per post. Most often, bloggers and advertisers on Instagram work exactly according to this formula.

In the foreign segment of Instagram, bloggers are paid for likes and comments, that is, the price of advertising is formed directly from the activity of the audience. There, advertisers pay up to 50 cents per like and an average of $1 per comment. Therefore, if you speak English well, you can earn many times more in Burzhunet than in RuNet.

Photo bloggers, designers or illustrators can earn money in the foreign segment even if they speak English at an intermediate level, since the main content in this case is visual and not textual.

All Instagram bloggers make money differently. If we focus on the average value, then a high-quality, frequently updated blog with an audience of 15,000 subscribers will bring the owner approximately 8,000 to 12,000 rubles per month.

Make money on Instagram from advertising - yours or someone else's

Instagram is a platform that is rapidly gaining momentum and is an ideal place for business and effective advertising. Moreover, earnings are available even to beginners in this field. Such high advertising ratings are justified, since on Instagram the main medium of information is an image with minimal text content, and this is exactly what is needed for successful advertising publications. And when you, as a businessman, offer goods or services to consumers, you do not have direct contact with them. But at the same time, you need to inspire trust from the outside. Let's see how to do this:

All goods that you present for review must be real and their description truthful;
Agreements with the buyer must be strictly observed;
Perform daily actions on your profile so that your customers see that you are working and are not going to hide anywhere when receiving money;
From time to time, comment, like (increase Instagram likes) and subscribe to other people’s accounts. Instagram subscribers will see that you are a real person;
Provide, if possible, all available information: price, delivery time, description, so that buyers can immediately find it when needed and do not have to write to you in direct message and wait for an answer;
Respond promptly to customer requests, don’t put it off until tomorrow.

Account promotion

Receiving money for providing services to promote client accounts is one of the most popular and sought-after ways to make money on Instagram. In recent years, the need for targetologists, copywriters, photographers, and designers for Instagram has increased significantly.

On freelance exchanges like Quork, good specialists are sold like hot cakes. And the demand in this niche is crazy, especially considering the rapid growth of users accessing the network using mobile devices. In some areas, mobile traffic has long outpaced desktop audiences.

Rice. 3. Look at how popular quorks are, offering quick and effective promotion of Instagram accounts.

To promote someone else’s account and work with new clients, you simply need experience in maintaining profiles on Instagram, since entrepreneurs who are poorly versed in the issues of promotion on social networks often expect a quick return on their investments, and if they do not receive it, then your task is to , in order to competently explain to them all the nuances and convince them of the effectiveness of the current campaign.

This is where the work you have already completed from your portfolio and the cases you have written will come in handy.

Is it possible for a beginner to earn money by promoting client accounts on Instagram?

Yes, you just have to spend time learning the basics of social media marketing (SMM), attending special online courses (many of which are free), reading literature on SMM and constantly educating yourself on this issue.

Do not under any circumstances engage in boosting subscribers if you have chosen promoting accounts on Instagram as your main focus. The effectiveness of this method tends to zero, and it is extremely difficult to restore a damaged reputation.

Here are the main reasons why cheating is ineffective

Almost all business on Instagram depends on the actions of subscribers: clicks on links, purchases, registrations, and so on.
Any cheat costs money, but there is no return on the “dogs”.
Fraudulent accounts today are recognized at first glance even by inexperienced users.

An Instagram account promotion specialist usually performs the following work:

Increasing activity among subscribers. Receiving likes, comments, replies, encouraging discussions.
Search account optimization (SEO).
Developing partnerships with other bloggers.
Creating a detailed content plan and content that will attract the target audience, converting them into clients and customers.
Design of a profile in the corporate style of the company.
Setting up targeted advertising and running advertising campaigns.
Buying advertising in other ways on similar sites.

All this work can be distributed among several specialists if the client is a medium or large company. One good specialist can handle managing the account of a small company.

You can learn all the intricacies of promoting an Instagram account in a couple of months; the rest of the knowledge will come with practice. You can speed up the learning process by taking special courses, which are usually paid - from 5,000 to 15,000 rubles.

Such expenses usually pay off quickly, because on average you can earn from 10,000 rubles by promoting one client account.

To get more clients, start a blog (offline or on social networks), declare yourself online. Publish cases and useful observations on your blog, and offer to read the price list. The presence of such a platform allows you to receive more expensive orders.

Earning money from consultations

If you have expertise in some area that is difficult to sell as goods online, you can give paid consultations. Psychologists, dentists, lawyers and even plumbers can earn good extra money. Or even switch to paid consultations as the main source of income.

To earn money in this way, you must have excellent knowledge of the topic and be able to interact with the target audience. To gain more trust, provide free consultations more often in the form of useful posts with clear examples.

Study your target audience in detail, enlist the support of bloggers in similar topics, create a portfolio with good reviews (this is where useful free consultations will be very helpful).

Where does money come from on Instagram?

Instagram was originally intended for instant sharing of photos and videos with friends. Previously, it was impossible to even publish a photo older than 24 hours in history, but now we remember this with a smile. The huge audience put pressure on the administration and it had to soften the requirements, and the great interest of business in this social network contributed to the emergence of functions: contact, shopping tags, statistics, “Promote” buttons, etc.

Here, in fact, is the answer to the question. Great popularity among ordinary users attracted business to Insta, and the business brought money in the form of targeted advertising, paid advertising posts, sales of promoted accounts, etc.

Selling photos

If you travel often, then this type of income will definitely suit you. Take high-quality photographs with your smartphones (or cameras), divide them into topics, and then sell them on photo stocks, such as Shutterstock, for example. Such a product is very popular there, and you can easily not only recoup all travel costs, but also earn something extra.

Rice. 4. Incredible photos of Instagram blogger Kristina Makeeva, taken while traveling.

You can publish some of your work on your Instagram account, and sell some on photo stocks, and thus earn more.

How does this earning scheme work?

You find a client directly or through a special service,
Agree on the price and discuss the technical specifications,
You take high-quality photos upon request and get paid for them.

To sell your photos, we recommend using foreign services like Foap, because they buy more expensively there than on the RuNet. The big plus is that you can sell the same photo many times without restrictions. For each sale you receive 5-15 dollars.

To get started, create a profile and upload your best photos to your portfolio for which you want to get paid. In such services, in order to earn more money, it is very important to set hashtags correctly. Also try to shoot what is least on stock, but at the same time focus on demand.

You can sell some works directly to the owners of other sites, the same news portals, and receive significantly more money for this than for what was sold on photo stocks. Try to avoid staged photos, since most brands today are looking for live shots and are willing to pay good money for them. Plus, try to use portrait shots more often with an aspect ratio of 4 by 5, they look more professional than the square format.

Income from this method depends on how many photos you put up for sale. Naturally, the more photos on popular topics, the higher the profit.

Selling a digital product

Package your skills and experience into a digital product and sell it through Instagram. The disadvantage of this method is that first you need to attract the target audience from scratch to your account, establish a trusting relationship with them, demonstrate to them the level of your skills, and only then sell digital goods.

However, if you already have a promoted account, you can safely start creating such a product so that in the future you can sell it almost automatically. In this way, a specialist in almost any niche can earn money.

The most popular are information products from designers (for example, “How to master Photoshop in 30 days”), copywriters, marketers, and programmers. The buyer downloads an e-book filled with your knowledge, experience and practical advice, paying its cost with electronic currency or a bank card.

If you are a specialist in several areas and cannot decide on the topic of an information product, study the sections of business literature in electronic libraries, bookstores or on sites like Amazon. Look at the advertising your colleagues/competitors are ordering and create something unique.

If you want to learn more about how to sell on Instagram, watch the webinar video from Skillbox and learn how to sell on Instagram if you’ve never done it before.

To understand what your audience needs and what they are willing to pay money for, find out their needs, listen to their pain. Then it will be easier for you to choose a niche for an information product.

On Instagram, you can earn from 1,000 to 100,000 rubles in this way. It all depends on the quality of your product and how exactly it will meet the needs of the audience. It is impossible to do without advertising an information product on thematic blogs and social networks. Here you will need the skills of a marketer, but the advertising campaign can always be outsourced to more experienced specialists.

Earning money by printing photos

Despite the fact that Internet users are accustomed to storing all information in digital format, including photos from Instagram, photo printing services are still very popular.

Anyone can print photos from Instagram in special machines and get high-quality Polaroids with greetings from the past.

Rice. 5. Automatic machine for printing photos from Instagram.

In addition to individual photo printing, you can print entire photo albums in the form of books. Such photo books are in great demand today. The buyer receives a selection of pre-selected photographs in the form of a hard cover book with an interesting design.

Such photo books are especially often ordered as gifts for the holidays. On March 8th, Valentine's Day and New Year's, you can hit the jackpot in this niche. Just conduct a high-quality advertising campaign on the eve of these holidays.

Rice. 6. And this is what a mini-machine for printing photos from Instagram InstaCentr looks like.

To simplify the task as much as possible for yourself and your clients, create a separate website with a photo book designer, and users themselves will send you ready-made orders, and all you have to do is print them.

Earning money from affiliate programs

This is one of the easiest ways to make money on Instagram. The profit scheme looks like this:

Register on the partner’s website, in the affiliate program service and receive an affiliate link.
Select a product or service you want to offer to your Instagram followers.
Publish a post with an affiliate link in it as unobtrusively as possible.
Receive money into your account after the user follows this link and orders a service or buys a product, and sometimes partners pay simply for registering in the service.

If you want to save on purchases, you can buy goods using your own affiliate link, and part of the money you spent will return to you in the form of a kind of cashback to your affiliate account.

In this article, we have listed the most basic ways to make money on Instagram, but you can make money using other methods - it all depends on your resourcefulness and desire to make the social network your main source of income.

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Ways to make money on Instagram for a beginner

The uniqueness of Instagram is an opportunity to earn money for everyone, but it will be more difficult for beginners.

Important: to make money, create a business account - it has subscriber analytics.

A business blogger acts as an intermediary between the advertiser and the subscriber, but the former will only contact the account that has a large audience. The more subscribers, the more advertisers, and therefore better earnings.

Those who have talent in any field can apply it, but it is also possible to blog without showing yourself, for example, on the topic of humor, music or cinema. You just need to actively publish content on the topic and regularly communicate with the public.

You can also earn money on Instagram passively by accepting tasks from resources. This mainly involves liking and commenting. The work is simple, low paid. For experienced users, there is another job on Instagram. The vacancies of account manager, administrator and targetologist require certain skills, but are well paid.