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There are literally a million ways to make money on social media, some of them are already known and widely used methods and some of them are still being uncovered and yet to be introduced.
If you are not new to the world of blogging, then you already know how much impact social media can have on your ability to earn money from your blog,
Today we will be looking at 23 ways that you can use social media as a stand-alone method of making money online, not just with your blog
So if you are ready, let’s get started!
How many followers do you need to make money on Social Media?
While you need to have a certain amount of followers to be able to make money with social media, the amount to be earned depends on the number of followers you have and their engagement with your posts.
Let’s take Instagram for example…
- Influencers or bloggers with less than 10,000 followers (micro-influencers) can charge up to $8 per post.
- More prominent influencers with over 10,000 followers (mid-tier influencers) can charge up to $200 per post.
- Top-level influencers with greater than 100,000 and up to 1 million followers can charge up to $600 or more per social media post.
What determines the amount of money you make on social media?
Two significant factors that determine how much money you can make on social media are your niche and the amount of engagement you get on your account regardless of what level of influencer you are, the higher the engagement, the more money you can make on social media.
- Niche: One of the most important things that determine the amount of money that you make on social media is usually your niche, The more competitive your niche is, the more money you can make, the most popular competitive niches include fitness, beauty health, business, and travel.
- Engagement: Many influencers and bloggers have a good number of social media followers, that goes without saying since you can easily buy followers, however, the amount of money you can make from social media really depends on how engaged your followers are with your content.
How much money can you make on social media?
In recent years, studies have shown that marketers are willing to pay anywhere from 1 cent per follower and an average of $150 dollars per social media post.
This amount or pricing of course varies depending on the following;
- Creative Mandates: How are you willing to promote products and services? through videos in which you will appear? photos? etc.
- Timeline: For example, how many minutes, seconds, or hours does a sponsored story or reel stay active on your Instagram or Facebook social media account?
- Production Costs: How much are you willing to spend on creating a social media post that will attract a lot of likes and clicks to the product page?
- Usage rights: Can these social media posts, reels, or stories be reposted or repurposed by the company in any way on their personal social media platforms or website?
How can you make money on Instagram?
Just like any other social media platform out there, Instagram is massive and has seen a considerable amount of growth over recent years.
As an influencer or blogger on Instagram, you can make money through any of the following ways;
- Sponsored posts: Bloggers and influencers can make money writing sponsored posts for different brands, advertising their products in these posts to their audience, and even offering them a discount on the purchase.
- Affiliate marketing: Bloggers can make significant money on social media by adding affiliate links to their post descriptions or link in bio to the products featured in the posts.
- Selling items on your online store: Social media platforms like Instagram now have a feature where influencers and bloggers can create an online store and sell products to their audience.
How do you find brands to work with on social media?
The best way to find brands that are willing to collaborate with you or work with you is to find brands that share similar beliefs to you and your audience.
Become a part of their community and start networking with them to build relationships,
Alternatively, you can also list yourself on influencer marketplaces or reach out to brands directly, some viral social media influencing platforms to sign up for include, Crowdtop and Indahash.
How can you make money on social media?
1. Creating branded content for different brands on social media
Bloggers can make money by simply making an effort to understand a brand’s message and creating posts that identify with their brand voice and identity for their audience, this helps other bloggers save time and focus on more important tasks for their business.
This helps other bloggers save time and are further able to channel their efforts into promoting their content or focusing on what is really important to their business and their audience.
2. Repurposing content that is already viral
Content doesn’t have to be used just once on only one channel or website, you can help people by converting their already existing content into other forms that make it easier and simpler to share such as infographics, images, or even ebooks that can be distributed easily on other social media accounts or websites.
This way you are circulating the same information but in a different way that makes it even more available to the target audience.
3. Managing someone else’s social media account in exchange for money
If you are looking to make some money on social media, then you can look into helping other people or bloggers such as yourself manage their social media accounts and get paid to do it.
You can assist them with publishing interest pins on their Pinterest account, creating Instagram reels or stories for their business that resonate with their audience and result in a good number of engagements, or even just replying to messages from customers and their follower’s social media accounts on a daily basis.
4. Assist people in creating feature accounts on Instagram
A feature account is mainly an Instagram account where the content being posted or promoted is gotten from the Instagram platform itself, the owners of these feature accounts do not have to create content but search far and wide on the platform to find content on a particular niche and share it with an audience interested in that niche.
The posts are featured on the account by using the hashtag feature and giving credit to the original creator of the photo or image.
Creating these kinds of accounts helps to grow an audience in a specific niche quickly as the content being shared varies and isn’t produced only by a single individual.
5. Becoming a social media community manager
The next best way to make money on social media is to become a social media community manager, you can do this by creating a Facebook page, group, or even a Pinterest board and helping share tips and tricks on a specific topic.
You can use all kinds of social media management tools that make managing all kinds of social media accounts from one single dashboard a walk in the park.
As the community grows, you can then proceed to monetize by promoting products that will be useful to that particular community.
6. Make money by promoting affiliate products
Promoting affiliate products is one of the biggest ways that people make money on social media, the reason is that it is really as easy as sharing a link to your audience on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or even in the description of your Youtube video so that interested consumers can simply click on the link and purchase the product being promoted in the post or video.
This way, you get a commission on every single sale or purchase made using your affiliate links, and depending on what exactly you are promoting, the percentage commission can sometimes go as high as 40% per sale.
I wrote a full blog post on how to make money with affiliate marketing that can help you get started on your affiliate marketing journey.
7. Host an event or workshop
Hosting paid events and workshops on your social media account can be very beneficial to your business, not only do you get to reach your target audience, but you are also able to showcase your expertise in your niche and make money while doing it.
The best part about hosting a workshop is that you get to meet so many people in your industry, learn a lot from other influencers or like-minded people such as yourself, and build meaningful relationships just from a single interaction.
You can use platforms like Lifestorm, WebinarJam, or GoToWebinar to create webinars for your business.
8. Help companies through Skype consultations
Gone are the days when you have to actually see people face to face to be able to become a consultant for their business or even share your knowledge based on your experience, these days, you can do so through Skype consultations.
The amount you charge for your consultations can vary depending on the amount of experience you have in the niche or area, the time being spent, or even extra resources, ideas, or material provided during the session per hour.
In the case that you do not like Skype, you can also use other platforms like Zoom or Microsoft Teams to connect with your clients and customers.
9. Audit people’s social media pages
If you have a lot of experience with social media and have a good idea of how the algorithm works on different platforms, then you can use this to your advantage and assist people by auditing their social media pages and telling them what they are doing wrong on the page and what they need to correct to see a positive change in their social media growth.
You can provide them with ebooks, video tutorials, and proposed solutions on what to do and what not to do on their social media pages and get paid to do this.
10. Video editing, content transcription, writing titles and descriptions for people
With social media being on the rise and over a zillion active social media accounts online at the moment, skills such as video editing, editing, and copywriting have become absolute gold.
If you have these skills, you can make reasonable money by simply providing your services to other people on social media by simply offering to edit their photos or videos before they post or even write descriptions for their existing videos so that it ranks well on the platform.
11. Create link trees for people to link all their social media accounts and websites
So many people who use social media actually have no idea of the proper way to use it that maximizes their efforts or time spent.
Little things like creating a web page where links to all other social media pages, websites, or even an email newsletter signup page can be a good way to make some extra income from social media and also help your clients get more visitors to their website or other social media pages that they own.
12. Get paid to review products
Product review is a really big way to earn money online on social media, the good thing about this is that you do not necessarily have to have to be so technical about the product being reviewed.
You can simply give your honest opinion on a product and get paid to do it, just make sure your followers know that you are getting paid to review that particular product.
Make sure to share ideas with very authentic and honest opinions to avoid losing the trust of your audience.
13. Run paid sponsorships for companies
Running paid sponsorships for companies to your audience on social media can be a really great way to monetize your existing traffic and engagement and help your sponsors reach their target audience.
Companies interested in the audience will usually reach out to you with a proposal to do a post, story, etc showcasing or talking about their product to your audience.
This way they get more customers to their website and you earn per post,
Check out this full blog post on how to get started with sponsored posts and how to go about writing one or pricing your posts.
14. Promote or build a network marketing business
If you are good with social media or have extensive knowledge of different social media tactics that work in the current year, then you should consider starting an online social media network marketing business.
You can get paid to help people build relationships with other people in their niche or even create a platform where people can connect with each other in their industry to help each other grow in their respective businesses.
15. Promote your own social media product
Another way to make money on social media is to create and promote your own products, regardless of what industry or niche you are in, there will always be someone out there who is interested in the same thing as you and will spend money on a product that you have created.
You simply need to build out your audience by positioning yourself as an authority in your industry or niche and most importantly, make yourself the go-to person for everything related to that niche.
This way you build a loyal following of like-minded people who trust you and are willing to listen to what you have to say or buy what you are selling.
16. Market your services
Asides from creating products, you can also promote and market your services so they appear in front of people who actually need them.
Sign up for platforms or websites like Upwork, Fiverr, or Freelancer and list out your social media skills so that people looking for these skills can find you for job opportunities.
17. Offer Physically paid consultations
Another really great way to be a consultant is to approach companies in your local area directly with a proposal to train their team in your niche or industry.
Because they can physically see you it makes it a lot easier for them to trust what you have to say especially when you can prove that you are indeed an authority in your niche.
You can also find clients on platforms like Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook by simply searching business names or hashtags related to your niche or area of expertise.
18. Selling video and image presets
This is one way to make money that has recently become very popular, with social media making rounds in the world and becoming even more popular,
The need to create even better pictures and video content that is Aesthetic and appealing to people has never been more important, the introduction of Instagram presets made this job a lot easier and faster to achieve.
Learning to create these Instagram presets and selling them on marketplaces like Pinterest and Etsy is a really good way to make money from social media.
19. Marketing your channel like a TV station
If you have a YouTube channel then this option is great for you, imagine that your channel was a Tv station on its own and treat it as such, always make sure that there’s content for people to see by publishing consistently.
Link out to all your social media accounts and promote your content on other channels so more people can see your videos
This makes the monetization process a lot easier.
20. Build your email list
Another way to make money through social media is to use your social media account to build up an email list of loyal subscribers to your business,
You can create social media posts for Instagram, Facebook, or even Twitter and ask people to click on the link in your bio or social media profile to sign up and receive more tips, tricks, or even a freebie in the niche or industry that you are an authority in.
The good thing about building an email list is that it is purely yours and you can promote or market your services to your own email list since they are interested in you and what you have to say, this way, when you create a new product or service, they will be more willing to buy from you since they already know you.
21. Launch a sponsored video series
Another really good way to make money from social media is to create and launch a sponsored video series.
This can be for any number of reasons, you may want people to sign up for your email list, buy your video series as a course on its own, etc, the opportunities are endless,
You can also use your video series to reach your target audience, get your users to trust and remember you more, and most importantly build and position yourself as an authority in your niche.
22. Sell your own educational products or services
If you are looking for a platform where you can make money by selling your own products and services online, then social media is for you.
The best thing about social media is that you are able to reach not only your target audience but also potential customers and clients online, there are always people looking for knowledge in the area or field that you are knowledgeable in.
They are also willing to buy products and educational materials that help them gain more knowledge in that field, creating and making educational products or services that people are searching for can be a really good source of income from social media.
23. Sell your own merchandise
If you have a good number of followers on your social media accounts like Instagram or even Youtube, you can create and sell merchandise that is specific to your brand to your followers or audience.
Youtubers like Mr. Beast and That Was Epic have generated millions just from selling merch on their websites and advertising them through their Youtube, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook accounts.
The most important thing to grasp for this to work is to make sure to build up an audience of loyal following who like your content and are willing to buy your merch whenever you create something new.
Conclusion
There you have it, my full list of the top 23 ways anyone (including yourself) can start making money online today, and the best part, is you don’t need to own a website or even invest thousands of dollars into creating an item or a product that appeals to your target audience.
All you have to do is build up a loyal follower and subscriber base and you are good to go!
Did you enjoy this post? do you make money using any of the methods mentioned above?
Let me know, leave a comment below
