Instagram has only been around for nine years but has perfectly championed original content for its own set of creators/creatives. While advocating the power of photos over long-form text, the social media application has turned into a mogul. It had proved its worth over the years, now competing and standing beside the social media giants such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.

It now stands as the 4th most popular social networking website, with over 275 million unique visitors and 1 billion active users every month. With such a vast amount of people exchanging content and engaging on each other’s profiles, the users had figured out and decided to put a number on some critical things within the application for the benefit of everyone.

Looking further into the situation, Instagram does not directly pay you money for being successful in their application. The context of “success” in this situation includes having a large following and a high engagement over your content. Despite this, it is highly possible to gain money while using Instagram. This would require you to generate and amass your own clout and maximize the amount of engagement you are getting on the platform. The process requires certain growth, tenure, and branding to ensure success in the endeavor.

The most sensible way to make the most of earning Instagram is through partnering with brands through cross-promotion and sponsorships. There is a rise of the so-called “influencers” that rely on their following and engagement for strength. Along with this, brands tend to keep in contact and synergize with these types of people. This is done so the brand would have the influencer help them move their name forward while the influencer gets free samples of products or money in return. The influencers excel in putting out eye-catching content for the brand to be recognized more, maximizing hashtags, witty captions, and highly aesthetic photographs. This serves as a bait and hook for consumers to support both the brand and influencer alike, ending up in a win-win situation for both parties involved.

Key metrics brands look into when partnering for a promotion or sponsorship are the follower count and engagement rate. The follower count shows how many people are subscribed to a certain profile, ensuring a wide reach into the network once something is put up for advertising. The current rates for influencers that relate to their follower count can be seen below:

5-10k = $100 – $500

10-25k = $500 – $800

25-50k = $800 – $1500

50-100k = $1500 – $2000

100-250k = $2000 – $6000

250k-1m = $6000 – $10000

1m+ = $10000+

With these numbers in mind, it is enough to see how much the platform can change lives in an instant. Moving up the social ladder makes sure of success and financial stability for most of the influencers. From having the “content creator” life as a part-time job, hitting a certain amount of followers may push some people to quit their day jobs and focus more on their content. The numbers inside the platform become more promising and largely outweighs that of what’s outside of it. If you ever feel like you’re in a rush to move up the ranks, you may subscribe for help by clicking here.

Moving forward, the follower counts don’t really matter if no one stops to see, check, and go through the material or content you are putting up. This attribute can be measured by monitoring the engagement rate, making the follower count more valid and compelling. This can be figured out by adding up all the likes and comments on the profile. Then divide it by the number of posted content and divide it again by the number of followers and multiplying it to a hundred. In verifying the strength of your profile, an engagement rate of 2-3% is standard, while around 4-6% is considered high already. Once you reach double digits on this, the content you’re putting out is already considered to be viral.

To add, people can quickly look over and flock to your profile once you get the hang of content creation towards a particular niche. Always remember to maximize the hashtags relevant to the content you are posting. Annoying as it may seem, the tags help a lot when users of the platform randomly go about the site to look for something new to ponder on. The search tab of Instagram makes excellent use of this feature, offering a separate mini-tab to go about popular and niche hashtags within the network.

Also, always double-check if you are getting the point of your content across the way you want it and have planned it. Wit and humor may sometimes fall short, and on a worst-case scenario be interpreted as something offensive. Know your audience and what tickles their fancy. In a world where you need clout to run your money engine, a brutal compromise must always be taken into consideration. Selling your soul is one thing, but knowing what your audience wants while still doing what you love is another.

There are a lot of tricks up one’s sleeve scattered online to ensure your relevance stays around for a long time in this business. It is indeed a lot of work to get involved with, but then again, if you’re earning money in it might as well you start treating it like one. The overall goal can be narrowed down solely to 3 things:

1. Always put out the best-looking content (it’s a network for photos after all)

2. Always provide full information for things you are promoting (links and prices are very crucial)

3. Always engage with your followers through comments or contests (giveaways)

At the end of the day, earning inside the Instagram platform would only end up on how you would strategize into putting out content. If you go over the basics hard enough, making money out of this platform would not be much of a hassle to go over. You just then have to pick out the right brands to partner with and the right content to share and sell. Luck would always be in the picture, but your success would always end up in your hands.