10 Steps to monetise Instagram for affiliates.

10 Steps to monetise Instagram for affiliates.

Monetise Instagram

 

Instagram has over 1 billion monthly active users and more than 500 million daily active users. You’ve taken shots from the perfectly right angles, editing your photos to bring forth just the right impression on viewers with the unique subtitles. You’ve pottered in emoji’s and hashtags, meaningfully engaged with followers, curated a unique IG feed and seen the results of your investment in time.
You’re finally getting likes and mentions for which you have worked for. So, now it’s the right time to monetise your Instagram account or traffic. You must be thinking, how do I make money by monetising instagram account?

 

Let’s explore the 10 steps to monetise Instagram, which includes:

1.  Sell Affiliate products or services.
2.  Incorporate Instagram shop into your online store.
3.  Incorporate links effectively.
4.  Use a content-first approach.
5.  Nail the targeting.
6.  Ensure your incorporated product information.
7.  Use relevant hashtags.
8.  Transparency that this is paid partnership.
9.  Monetise Instagram video
10. Use swipe-up to sponsor deals through Instagram stories.

 

1. Sell Affiliate products or services.

Becoming an affiliate marketer on Instagram is the one of the easiest way to monetise your instagram account. You work as a brand representative for products or services that you use and believe in. Some of the ways you can do this is sharing a link, coupon or a discount code with them which will appeal and be helpful for your audience. In return for the sales you’ve influenced, you get a certain percentage of revenue.

 

2.  Incorporate an Instagram shop into your online store.

One way of including affiliate products are to promote with shopping features. Rather than directing Instagram traffic to your site, Instagram shopping feature allows you to purchase or select directly from Instagram app. Almost over 130 million users tap on Instagram shopping posts monthly. With new Instagram shopping features make it easy to see it, like it, buy it, just only in few clicks.  

 

3.  Incorporate links effectively

The challenge is that Instagram permits each account with only one organic link to be mentioned on the bio. However, there are other creative ways to use incorporate links to your Instagram account and posts. Here’s how you can add your affiliate links to attract leads.

• Instagram Bio:    Display the incorporate link of your best earning affiliate product or service on your Instagram bio. Then make it stand out with Call to Actions (CTA’s) in the form of emoji or words asking your viewers to check out the link. You should change your link in the bio to promote your top paying, most recent or most popular product.
• Text Overlay in stories. This is one of the popular aspects of Instagram and can also include interactive features such as GIFs, questions and polls and so on, whilst these can help nurture interest towards your affiliate product, it is great to add a link as a text overlay in the story. Otherwise include in the swipe up, at the bottom of the screen, where users can click to your affiliate brand’s website to buy. Whether it’s your personalised link or your personalised discount, ensure they are visible to attract clicks.
• Description: Make sure to take advantage of the description by including your affiliate, ensure it has #Ad or #Sponsored or #Sponsorship for visibility and surround it with compelling reasons why it’s great for your audience. Don’t forget to add a CTA and motivate your potential audience to act.
• Pay to promote a Post: If you want, you can sponsor your Instagram post to increase your reach to your target audience, a quick way to get the attention of people who are not already following you. This will help attract more clicks towards the affiliate product page, which will in turn help increase your commissions. Just remember, the cost of sponsoring your posts is generating returns.
 

4.  Use a content-first approach.

Next up is content. one of the most significant things you need to do to monetise Instagram is to improve your content quality. Instagram is about more than just posting selfies. It is among the most popular social media platforms. If you want to make a significant amount of money from this app, you need to know how much value and informative your content is for your audience.

Without quality, you can’t have the buy in or trust you need to promote purchases. Buyers will only buy products from people they follow if they trust them. Whilst it’s important to produce valuable content, it’s equally important to have visually appealing photographs to advertise effectively or to garner desire for acquiring the affiliate product.

 

5.  Nail the targeting

To generate interest, engagement and followers, you would have a very good understanding of your audience’s like and dislikes, their motivations, their desires. With this knowledge, you are able to play to that, by advertising your affiliate product in a positive manner that resonates with them, their values, their lifestyles or even their demographic or interests. This positions the product so it is highly relevant to the audience. Ensure, it’s not just a one-way thing, but interactive and personal too. Ask them questions, give the affiliate product as a recommendation, so it will be useful in deepening your relationship with your audience, whilst increasing your authenticity.

 

6.    Don’t forget product information

It can be easy to forget to include important product details, to show your audience whether this product is suitable or not for them, to facilitate a quick decision on whether to click the affiliate link or not. The rule of thumb, as you know with all social media channels, is to keep it concise and high impact. What’s more, if you a knack for words, why not use this skill to produce appealing phrases or sentences, to generate a stronger desire towards learning more about the product you are advertising.

 

7.  Use relevant hashtags

If you search for a hashtag on Instagram, you can see a popularity of a hashtag by seeing number of posts per hashtag, which also includes synonyms or related popular hashtags that are being used. By incorporating popular hashtags, you gain more exposure and visibility outside your audience. Remember, the hashtag should reflect the product or service you are promoting to attract the right interest, to help increase leads. If you’re paying attention to your Instagram feed, you will get to know about trending hashtags pretty quickly. The last thing you want to do is to adopt those trending hashtags which are not specifically relevant to your content, neither make sense for your business.

There are different categories of hashtags, such as:
• Product or service hashtags: Such hashtags are regular keywords used to describe your product or services, like #leathershoes or #handbags, an objective way to show exactly what it is you are advertising. This is great for people who are following or searching for this product specifically. Usually the higher the popularity of the hashtag the more on trend it is.  
• Niche hashtags: These hashtags are specific tags, showing where you fit in the framework of your industry, such as #makeupblogger or #foodblogger. This is a good way to introduce authority for what you are selling, which develops trust in what you are recommending to your audiences.  
• Community hashtags: These hashtags help you to find and join Instagram communities, like #gardenersofinstagram or #bloggersofinstagram. By posting your ad there or even your account, will increase exposure to similar audiences from other networks.
• Distinctive event or seasonal hashtags: These can point out holidays, National day holidays or seasons, like #nationaldayofincouragement or #nationalnailpolishday. They tend to spike during the specific event and is a good way to be creative and tie it with the product you are promoting, so jump on the bandwagon and post with these hashtags.
• Everyday hashtags: A great one for each day of the week from #Mondayblues, #Fridaymotivation to #Sundayfunday. Now that’s another idea of how to gain increased exposure. Only use only if relevant of course!
• Germane Phrase hashtags: These hashtags are the blend of niche, product and community hashtags. People use phrases on Instagram to connect with the existing communities, like as #amwritingfantasy or #shewhobakes
• Acronym hashtags: Well-known acronym hashtags on Instagram are #TBT(Throwback Thursday), OOTD(Outfit of the day),#FBF(Flashback Friday) and #YOLO (You only live once.  
• Emoji hashtags: These hashtags can include emoji’s, such as #sunset(Emoji), #redroses(Emoji) or #(emoji). This is a good way of making your posts standing out whilst increasing reach.  

 

8.  Transparency that this is paid partnership

In order to Increase transparency, Instagram has introduced a number of features that will allow affiliates to clearly mention paid content and share promotions. When an affiliate or brand shares a post or a story on the platform and tags in a business account as a business partner, it is called a paid partnership. Right under the user name, the followers can see a paid partnership with a business partner. This feature gives an enormous figure of potential customers when affiliates advertise the brand's sponsored content.

In Paid partnership, brands can directly access the affiliate's insight and engagement they are driving. With this function, brands can assemble the statistics on how their content campaign is performing. For affiliates, this function helps to build a more transparent relationship with your audience by mentioning that a post is sponsored. Furthermore, it informs other brands that this affiliate takes part in the paid partnership. This can increase the promotion opportunity the affiliate receives.

 

9.    Monetise Instagram videos

You create a video that features you using a product and then earns money from advertising it. DIYs, Reviews, quirk shorts and explainer videos are good ways to create such videos. You can do this by Instagram stories, standard videos or IGTV. Some techniques of how you can monetise your videos are by mentioning the sponsored brand in your video, review the product, show how to use the product and run video ads to attract more traffic to your website or Instagram page to generate more sales.

 

10.  Use swipe-up to sponsor deals through Instagram stories.

As an affiliate, story ads are the best option to approach potential customers and the target market. Instagram story ads are easily skippable. In order to catch the viewers' attention, you'll need to create an attention-grabbing ad. While creating Instagram story ads, make sure to use high-quality media to immediately grab the viewer's attention, whether you are creating a video or photo ad.

 

Almost 500 million people use Instagram stories every day. Anything that is posted lasts for 24 hours. Use different strategies to use pique audience’s curiosity and generate more conversation. Don’t forget to add some CTA’s, like swipe up or join a chat, to grab even more attention.

How can you use swipe-up to sponsor deal through Instagram stories? If you have a business account and 10,000 followers, you should see to add a swipe-up link to your Instagram story. By using this link, your potential customers can visit the website on the other side of your affiliate link. As an affiliate, use swipe up CTA to your story to direct users to your sponsor deals. Swipe up page presents the brand’s product or service options to your audience. Stories can be a place to get more views, but if you get thousands of views, then your conversation rate will be meagre. The swipe up product page encourages high-intent customers and helps maintain your conversation rate.

 

Take Away

Ultimately, promoting affiliate products on Instagram is by no means an easy feat. It requires patience and hard work. The trick of the trade is to differentiate your content and connect on a personal level, to generate high interest. You will see how rewarding it is, when you’ve mastered the marketing techniques explored above and are seeing sales as a result of your effort.

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