There is no doubt that affiliate marketing is becoming prevalent worldwide where online marketing is advancing at the exponential rate. Only in 2019, more than 1 billion people over the world used Instagram on a day-to-day basis. Hence, the platform is considered one of the best platforms for promoting products. This is a storehouse of mobile traffic that can be monetized. You can make money from mass following and mass liking, creating and marketing profiles, advertising affiliate product lines and services, etc.
In addition to personal Instagram accounts, there are numerous business accounts which market their own products using numerous types of marketing techniques, including affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is becoming popular among Instagram users. It appears that affiliate marketing and Instagram go hand-in-hand.
In this article, we are going to reveal how to earn money on Instagram, and before digging deeper, let's first get acquainted with some of the definitions.
Do you have a business Instagram profile?
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What Is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a system that allows influencers to promote various goods, services, or products and earn commissions from each action (clicks, likes, sales) their promotions produce.
Generally, there are 4 major participants: the marketers, the affiliate network, affiliates, and the client.
Affiliates (aka Publishers) join an affiliate program (or affiliate network) and receive a unique promotional code that they use to promote products. However, if you dig in you will understand that these unique codes are trackable links from affiliate networks. These links enable you to track the precise number of clicks and sales made.
Affiliate links can be added in your bio or in-post captions. Although, you’d better have a decent number of followers on Instagram in order to attach a web link to your stories and IGTV descriptions. Well, the more followers you have the better.
How Much Money Can You Make?
I doubt that Google search will help you learn the average earnings of Instagram business profiles. The major reason is that the potential income varies significantly: daily income may be from $5 to $1000, and even more.
Although, there is a massive variety of cases of how much marketers and influencers earn with affiliate marketing on Instagram. For example, Ryan Hildreth shared his story on how he used to make over $12 000 in 30 days (around $400 per day). His audience is around 59k. If you give a look at his Instagram Bio with the affiliate link, you realize who you are dealing with. He is focused on the cooperation with the popular influencers on Instagram in certain niches. With more than 3 years of experience in this field, he switched from active strategy to passive and started delegating his work in order to have passive income.
Nick Daniele's, who makes at least $300 daily, is another example. There is also Katie Steckly who believes that Instagram is one of the most profitable platforms even if you have fewer than 1000 followers. According to Katie, the most important aspect you should focus on is the affiliate program you are engaged with. She used to earn more than $200 per day with Amazon Associates.
So, the point is not whether you can make money on Instagram via affiliate marketing, but the question is how much you can earn. The earnings usually depend on your marketing strategy.
Now we will discuss 2 types of marketing models to monetize your Instagram activity. They are cost-per-click (CPC) and cost-per-acquisition (CPA). Considering that these terms will be used regularly, let’s dive into the details of each one and see what they stand for. The cost-per-click (CPC) model indicates that you get paid for every single click that you drive to the site, while cost-per-acquisition (CPA) means that you earn commissions only from sales (not clicks).
Since you are now familiar with the key terms, here is a detailed guideline to successful affiliate marketing campaigns via Instagram.
Step 1: Pick an Affiliate Network.
If you're proactively looking for affiliate programs to promote for the very first time, the easiest way is to join an affiliate network. Affiliate networks provide a vast number of affiliate offers to promote, as well as ad materials, tracking and reporting tools, analytical instruments, and payment handling.
The tracking tools are particularly crucial, as affiliate networks offer trackable links that marketers/influencers can utilize to track clicks and sales.
Speaking of sales, affiliate networks can also help you determine the amount of commissions and what sort of payment structure works best.
Below you can find several major affiliate programs and networks to monetize Instagram traffic.
1. Amazon Associates
This is the Amazon affiliate program, which is considered one of the largest and well-known networks. Although, there are some requirements to join the program:
- The profile should be public with at least 500 subscribers.
- The profile should be verified in the system, and at least one purchase should be settled by the customer coming from the referred Instagram account during the application process.
If this condition is not met, the account will be blocked in the network system.
Verticals: e-commerce and applications.
Commission: a certain percentage from the sales. The commission is up to 10% of total sales depending on the product category and the number of transactions per month.
Benefits: millions of products to promote; automatic payments once in a month; simple registration process; special offers upon registration. The most important advantage is that the platform has a wide array of useful tools and instruments for affiliates, including data trackers and analytics.
2. ShopStyle Collective
The network helps bloggers and vloggers monetize their accounts. The network brings together several thousand influencers.
Verticals: fashion and lifestyle.
Commission: the payment method is based on the CPA model, thus, affiliates receive income only when users make purchases. The amount of commission varies depending on the seller.
Benefits: 18+ million products from 1 400 retailers, real-time analytics, in-house mobile application, and tools that allow monetizing traffic across all channels.
3. Rakuten
Registering in Rakuten gives you access to 150k publishers and brands. The network has been operating for more than 20 years. It was announced as #1 Affiliate Marketing Network for 9 years in a row.
Verticals: Ecosystem services, e-commerce, marketing platforms, digital and data science.
Commission: according to the CPA model. Payments depend on the brands you promote. Rakuten also offers Super Bonuses (additional bonuses to the CPA rate as 1% of the sale made).
Benefits: real-time tracking; merchant and affiliate quality control; timely payments. Moreover, the network offers the possibility to deep-link, which means as an affiliate, you can drive potential customers to a registration page on the merchant's website, bypassing the home page. Deep linking ensures earning commissions for your referrals.
4. ClickBank
The affiliate network brings together multiple online stores that sell digital products and services, such as cooking, programming or language courses.
Verticals: art, entertainment, business and investments, education, health and fitness, games, food, sports, travel, etc.
Commission: a certain percentage from the sales up to 75% depending on products.
Benefits: high commission rates; profitable referral program; the minimum amount for withdrawal can be settled from $ 5 to $ 500 000. The platform provides reports that allow tracking data on the impressions (clicks, sales, etc.). Support service is highly qualified.
5. Admitad
This is an affiliate network that permits webmasters to make money by driving traffic to various online platforms (online shops, gaming platforms, banks, etc). Let’s say, the network allows monetizing any kind of traffic. It receives website traffic from all over the world. There are a lot of banners, discount codes, deep-links, SubID, and a collection of analytical instruments. Besides, the system has over 140 marketers with more than 1 300 offers that are not promoted anywhere else. Therefore, affiliates are supplied with a wide range of products and services for advertising.
Verticals: multiple.
Commission: the CPA model; the minimum amount for withdrawal is $10.
Benefits: the diverse network of advertisers and affiliates; 75+ active GEOs; favorable and flexible terms of cooperation; one-click API; regular payments; qualified support service.
Step 2: Create a Compelling Money Making Strategy.
Instagram is a powerful platform with an impressive audience. However, competition is quite strong. To stand out from competitors, you need to have a good strategy. The strategy allows planning your budget and capacity, as well as expenses for a month, quarter, or year.
Strategy 1: Regularly share shoppable feed posts and stories
Shoppable posts and stories enable your target market to go from product ideas to product line acquisition in just a few clicks. Streamlining the route to the store is a significant benefit for anybody looking to drive sales and make money on Instagram, as it makes the purchasing experience easier and faster.
If you're an e-commerce company marketing products, you can connect your supply or shopping system to your Instagram account, and tag up to 5 products in your posts (or up to 20 items in carousel posts).
On Instagram Stories, you can add a shoppable product sticker label to your images as well as videos that visitors can click to see the item details on the web page. To make your shoppable posts even more useful, pair them with strong calls-to-action in your descriptions, such as: "Make the room in your wardrobe for new summer outfits to come #MOHITOwoman"
Strategy 2: Launch an IGTV Series
If you haven't started an IGTV channel yet, you could be missing a large opportunity to earn money on Instagram. Unlike Instagram feed posts, IGTV posts can include clickable links that simplify the process of purchasing services or products. Note that video is one of the most effective tools to influence purchasing behaviors as it permits audiences to connect on a deeper, more personal level with your brand.
Hint: Encourage audiences to take a look at your video summary (and links) by including a call-to-action in your IGTV video title, such as: "Shop all of these true Y2K treasures on site with #asos."
Strategy 3: Host a Flash Sale on Instagram Stories
One of the most reliable ways to make money on Instagram is adding exclusivity and urgency to your offering. You can hold a flash sale.
As a result of Instagram stories' shortened lifespan and straight linking mechanisms, they make an excellent platform for sharing limited-time deals. You can even utilize Instagram Stories ads to ensure they reach the widest possible relevant audience. Once you've developed an Instagram Stories ad, a "sponsored" tag will be received in the left corner of your material. You can produce gorgeous advertising Instagram Stories free of charge using various design apps. There is a good example below from Mohito Fashion store:
Strategy 4: Optimize your link in Bio
To drive traffic via the link in your Bio is one of working strategies to make sales from Instagram. Furthermore, this is the only way to affix the active link because it is impossible to place the link in the posts unless you run costly targeted ads via Facebook Ads. So, it is not as simple as it seems. You cannot just put the affiliate URL into your Bio and expect tons of traffic. To make money from your Instagram profile, you need clear calls-to-action in your subtitles. However, Instagram has its downsides too. The platform is constantly changing its algorithms and bans web pages using "gray" promo techniques.
Make sure that the affiliate website is optimized for mobile traffic.
Strategy 5: Host virtual events on Instagram Live
Instagram Live broadcasts allow getting in touch with your followers in a straight and transparent manner. Instagram offers an alternative that Lives can be seen on a laptop, and can be saved to IGTV promptly when your broadcast is finished! Hosting a virtual event is a great way to offer services or products to your audience. Live broadcasting can work wonders in terms of developing brand commitment and trust.
You can purposefully utilize your Instagram Live to promote paid products and services. You can also use Instagram Live's integrated functions to drive Instagram traffic to your site. Ask a participant of your group to send a "question" containing a link during the broadcast, so that you can share it on the screen.
Hint: The shared feedback sticker label isn't clickable, so keep your links as short as possible.
Step 3: Analyze and Adjust
As soon as your affiliate program is on and running, it is important to keep track of what's benefiting your target market. If you work with an affiliate network, the network provides you with reports that reveal how many affiliate links have been clicked for the promoted products, the number of clicks they've driven together, and the total sales worth. At this stage, you have all the information you need to thoroughly evaluate the features of potential clients to develop and fine-tune the advertising strategy.
Below there are several services and instruments for data analysis:
Publer is a popular service for monitoring competitors' activity.
Popsters is designed for analyzing the statistics from various channels. It helps to evaluate the efficiency of your posts.
Keitaro is a great tracking service. It can be used for any affiliate program.
Conclusion
Nowadays, Instagram is a powerful tool. In terms of income the sky is the only limit. It doesn’t matter whether you’re looking to earn $10 000+ per month, or you’re just trying to save up some extra cash for a rainy day. As long as you take this business seriously, develop a well-thought strategy and follow it, you’ll be able to reach whatever financial goals you’ve set.
