Start making money with your small Instagram following! Learn the exact strategies to Make Money On Instagram With 500 Followers. Please read our guide now and get started!

When you get a lot of followers on Instagram, you can start making money in many different ways. But what if you want to be an influencer but are still building up your following?

If I Have 500 Followers On Instagram, Can I Earn Money?

Even if you only have 500 followers, there are still many ways to make money with Instagram.

In this article, we’ll talk about some of the easiest ways to make money on Instagram, like using affiliate links and becoming a brand ambassador.

You’ve probably heard about Instagram users who make money from the pictures they take and post daily. How to Make Money With 500 Followers on Instagram You may have even looked at your large following and thought, “Maybe I can do that too.”

Instagrammers have reach and influence, just like bloggers, YouTubers, and anyone else whose content has gained a following. These are two things that many businesses try to achieve.

Together, reach and influence give Instagram developers a chance to try many different ways to make money, whether they want to build an empire or make some extra money and get free stuff.

Make Money From Instagram

If you have 500 followers on Instagram, you might be able to make money, but it’s not a fair assumption.  With an Instagram account, you can sell products or services or write sponsored posts, among other things.

But the best way to make money on Instagram is to have a loyal audience interested in your content.

Brands might want to work with you and pay you to promote their products or services if you have a large following.

Also, if you have a niche account or a specific area of expertise, you might be able to make money from it by offering to coach, consult, or other services.

How Many Followers Must You Have To Make Money On Instagram?

It depends; that is the Answer. If you think this answer is disappointing, please hear me out.

When brands look for influencers to work with, they want to know that their marketing budget is being used well. Brands care about how engaged your audience is, not how many followers you have because that means more people will know about their products and maybe buy them. Brands also look at how your number of followers, engagement rate, and post quality fit your niche.

The Engagement Rate is “GOLD”

To make money on Instagram, you can have anywhere from 1,000 to 1 million followers, but high engagement rates are always significant. If your followers don’t see or interact with what you post on Instagram, there’s no point in doing so.

Say you had $100 and wanted to make more money with it. You could put it in the hands of someone who had access to hundreds of thousands of potential buyers, but you noticed that only about a hundred were paying attention to what they said. The best place to put that $100 would be with someone who only has a few thousand possible buyers, but all of them are always listening to what they say.

The number of people who follow you is not the key to making money on Instagram. It has a reasonable rate of engagement. Your engagement rate is the total number of likes and comments on a certain number of posts divided by the number of posts, divided by the number of followers, and multiplied by 100. (You can use many online tools if you don’t want to do the math.)

Later, a platform for marketing on Instagram and setting up posts says that engagement rates between 2% and 3% are average and rates between 4% and 6% are high. “Viral” means that the engagement rate is more than 10 percent.

When your engagement rate is high, brands know that your followers hear and, even better, pay attention to what you have to say. They will give you their money because they know your followers will buy their products.

Your Niche is Very Important.

Did you know that almost half of the people who use social media to decide what to buy do so based on the opinions of influencers? People are looking for suggestions to follow, and yours is one of them, whether you know it or not. If you are interested in a specific niche and know much about it, you could make money by promoting brands and products you love.

Health, wellness, fitness, travel, fashion, beauty, business, wealth and finance, luxury, and lifestyle are some of the most profitable niches on Instagram. People in these niches work with a wide range of brands, make a lot of different content, and make a lot of money from their Instagram accounts.

Look at Huda Kattan as an example. She started as a beauty influencer on Instagram. She has over 2 million followers and has just released a famous makeup line. Kayla Itsines is another successful Instagram influencer. She started as a personal trainer, but now she has 7 million followers and a huge following for her series of bikini body guides.

Some niches are so specific that you don’t need many followers to get sponsored posts. For example, if your niche is “hamburgers” instead of “food” or “acne skin care” instead of “beauty,” you don’t need a lot of followers to get sponsored posts.

More and more brands are working with micro-influencers in these niches to promote their products because they have a more engaged, targeted following.

Professionals have different ideas about a micro-influencer, but in general, it’s someone with more than 1,000 but less than 100,000 highly engaged followers. That’s excellent news for accounts still growing but ready to start getting sponsored posts.

Can You Make Money on Instagram?

Yes, you can make money with Instagram. You can reach Instagram’s millions of users as long as the service can be shown in a way that looks good and is creative for marketing purposes.

You may think, “Okay, I get that it’s possible, but how can I make money on Instagram?”

Make Money On Instagram With 500 Followers

Below are merely a few ways to make money on Instagram With 500 Followers:

1. Start Selling Physical and Digital Products

Over the past few years, Instagram has become a great way to sell things. People use this network to find and buy things, so Instagram has business-specific features like in-app checkout, the store button, item tags, and shoppable stickers to make shopping much more accessible.

Big brands like Zara and Michael Kors use Instagram and platforms like Shopify to boost online sales. Instagram is also an excellent place for anyone who wants to sell something to do so. You can make the most of your Instagram bio whether you want to sell physical or digital goods.

2. Start Publishing Sponsored Post

Sponsored posts are ads for a product or service that are paid for. This is like becoming a brand ambassador, but you don’t have to stay with one brand for as long.

Reach out to companies that sell products or services that match your interests and the content you usually post on Instagram. Ask them if they’d like to pay you to advertise for them.

You can also find potential sponsors through services like The Mobile Media Lab or Influicity.

To get a sponsorship, you don’t need a lot of followers. Many small businesses are happy to sponsor niche content creators with a small but loyal fan base.

For example, if you mostly post about exotic pets, a company that sells pet supplies might sponsor you even if you don’t have a lot of followers.

Most sponsored posts, like #ad or #sponsoredpost, have hashtags that clarify that they are paid ads.

Ask your sponsor if they want you to use any other specific hashtags.

3. Promote Affiliate Link

Affiliate programs let you get a cut of every sale you help make. This is one of the new ways to make money on Instagram.

Sign up for an affiliate program on a website that sells products or services related to the theme of your Instagram account.

Add an affiliate link to your bio and draw attention to it in your posts, stories, and reels. You can also put a relevant link in the description below each post.

For example, if you are a musician, you could join an affiliate program with Guitar Center or Sam Ash.

You can only put one link in your Instagram bio at a time, which is a shame. You can use a service like Linktree, Linkfolio, or Shorby to add links to multiple affiliate programs or products to your bio.

With these services, you can make a landing page with multiple links.
Instagram is testing its affiliate program, but few people can use it yet.

You’ll need a business Instagram account to use it. Check your professional dashboard to see if you can access the Set up affiliate link to get started.

4. Offer Social Media Service

Instagram has a strong sales potential, so more and more big brands want to use it to promote their products, connect with their target market, and increase sales.

Business Instagram says more than 25 million businesses and 2 million marketers are on the site. How to Make Money With 500 Followers on Instagram

More and more brands are out there, so if they want to be heard, they need help from experts.

Simply put, there is a massive demand for social media marketing services.

5. Create Free Marketing Content for Big Brands

Creating free marketing content might land your first Brand ambassador’s deal. Don’t think about the cast first, but the connection, professionalism, and recognition.

6. Offer Freelancing Services for Brands

Big brands used to be the only ones who could afford to market on Instagram, but those days are long gone.

Today, brands of all sizes want to use this platform to promote their products and services, and 92% of small businesses plan to put more time and effort into social media marketing.

Big brands have great in-house teams that create content, but small businesses hire freelancers to keep their social media marketing costs down.

So, they often look for creative professionals who can write captions for their services without charging too much.

7. Create Free Marketing Tips for Startups

Share digital marketing tips on your page daily for startups and create engagement. This will help you build trust within your niche as a brand.

8. Instagram Stories Masks and Filters

When Instagram copied Snapchat’s short-term content and started Instagram Stories in 2016, no one could have known how popular this type of content would become.

More than 500 million people use or make Instagram Stories daily. People are very interested in this kind of content because it is only available briefly. It also gives brands more chances to hook their target audience. How to Make Money With 500 Followers on Instagram

Also, companies make Instagram Stories masks and filters to show how good they are at their niche and to promote their products. Some companies have designers on staff who make filters for their brands, but other companies want to work with people who are good at making Instagram masks and filters.

9. Setup Instagram Store

You can sell things right on Instagram if you have a business account. Set up a business account if you don’t already have one by going to your account’s Settings and tapping Account.

Tap Change to Professional Account, and then tap Business.

If you already have a business page on Facebook, you can connect it to your Instagram account and add information about your business by following the on-screen instructions.

Then, you’ll need to use Facebook’s Commerce Manager to set up a store and link it to your Instagram account.

If you don’t have a store on Facebook, you can also use Shopify or BigCommerce, which are also supported.

You can also advertise your business on another platform with Instagram, even if it isn’t set up to work directly with Instagram.

For example, you could put a link to your online store in your bio or a page about a product in the description of each post.

Once you have some products to sell, make exciting content to get your customers’ attention. For example, you could post about how you make your products or share photos and videos of happy customers with your products.

10. Drive Traffic To Your Monetized Blog

Use Instagram to get people to visit your website. For example, if you have a blog and get paid to run ads, you can use Instagram to promote your new posts.

Make sure to put a link in the description or your bio.

If you have other money-making accounts, like a YouTube channel, you can also promote those on Instagram.

When you put links in the captions of your posts, you might want to use a service like Bitly or TinyURL to make the links easier to handle.

11. Promote Your Skills

This is a good choice if you have the skills that people want. For example, if you are a graphic designer, video editor, or consultant, you can use Instagram to build your business.

Make posts showing some of your work and ask interested people to send you a private message or an email.

Put a link to your business page in your profile if you have one.

Here are some tips and tricks to remember if you want to promote your business on Instagram:

Keep a regular schedule for posting so that your followers always have something new to look forward to.

Show customers your best work so they can see what you can do.

Make content that is both interesting and relevant to your business. Customers will be more likely to stick around if you post things that are useful to them as well as ads for your services.

Find ways to interact with your followers, even just by responding to a few comments on every post.

12. Promote Local Businesses

Ask businesses near you if they will pay you to advertise for them.

This is a great way to help your community and make money at the same time.

Look for creative ways to help business owners bring customers to their stores by working with them.

For example, the business might discount any customer who says they heard about it from your Instagram account.

13. Become a Brand Ambassador For Big Brands

Get in touch with a business you want to promote.

As a brand ambassador, you help show the public what the brand is about. You will have to promote their products and interact with potential customers, answer questions about the brand, and develop engaging content related to the brand.

In return, the company might pay you or give you other benefits.

Ping the company you want to work with on social media or email them to find brand ambassador jobs. Brand ambassador jobs are sometimes posted on job boards or the company’s website.

Choose a brand that fits your interests and your post on Instagram. For example, if you’re a photographer, you could contact companies that sell cameras or other supplies for photographers.

Many companies will consider how many people follow you when deciding whether to hire you as a brand ambassador.

But smaller and local companies might be willing to work with you even if you don’t have a considerable following.