In 2022, Instagram Reels are the best way to grow your account by expanding your audience and increasing your engagement. I covered the basics of marketing on Instagram a while back. However, the question remained for newcomers, how do I get paid for reels on Instagram?
More importantly, Meta has made a concerted effort to encourage content creators by offering multiple incentives to earn money on the platform. So without further ado, here’s how you make money on Instagram.
1. Livestream Badges
Viewers can purchase Badges to support thier favorite creators during tier live videos. Badges are similar to super chats on YouTube without the messaging, so it is up to the content creator to acknowledge those who show thier support.
2. Content Monetization
Instagram offered in-stream video ads as a monetization method until February 2022, allowing brands to serve ads before, during, and after videos on Instagram through the deprecated IGTV posts and ads.
Sort of like T.V. commercials for Instagram, creators receive a portion of the ad revenue from publishers eager to serve ads wrapped around relevant content.
Now that Instagram Reels have become the primary video focus for Meta, the platform announced discontinuing the video post monetization option, replacing it with a new ad revenue share program for Reels sometime in 2022.
3. Reel Play Bonus Program
To drive content creators to Instagram and compete with TikTok, Meta has invested over $1 Billion into content creator programs. Meta’s Reels Play Bonus Program, announced last July, offers financial rewards to creators who post on Reels, with payouts ranging from $600 to as much as $35,000 if thier reels hit a target view count.
As of the writing, there are three bonuses content creators can earn video ads, live video badges, and the reels summer bonuses.
- The video ads bonus is a one-time payment for select U.S. creators who previously signed up for the feature. The program is no longer enrolling. However, Meta hopes to replace it soon with an ad monetization option for Reels.
- Live video badges bonus rewards hitting certain milestones, such as going live with a secondary account.
- Reels summer bonus rewards the most popular Reels with cash bonuses.
4. Brands Partnerships
Branding Partnerships are the most prevalent ways to make money on Instagram. Usually, influencer deals involve influencers creating content such as Instagram ads, reels, and stories centered around the brand’s products and services.
The key to drawing in a great brand partnership is creating a significant amount of focused, consistent, relevant content over time.
How much you can make creating sponsored content depends on your scope of work. In a survey by Shopify, 42% of influencers surveyed said they charged between $200 to $400 per post.
Instagram also allows you to tag partners in your posts with a paid partnership label.
5. Affiliate Marketing
Another great tactic for making money on Instagram is becoming an affiliate. Affiliate marketing is similar to influencer marketing. However, your relationship with the brand you’re marketing is more impersonal, and you dont get paid unless you drive sales.
Because affiliate marketing is sales-driven, the barrier to entry is nearly non-existent. You’re more in advertising, sales, and direct response than marketing, brand awareness, and engagement.
Usually, with affiliate marketing, you’re responsible for finding a brand partner. Once you find that partner, they’ll give you a trackable link or a unique promo code to track the sales you generate.
Some popular affiliate networks include Amazon Associate, Click Bank, and C.J. Affiliates. Now Instagram hopes to add Instagram Affiliate to the mix by launch testing the program in early 2022.
Through Instagram Affiliate, users can discover products on the app, share a link with them, and earn a sales commission whenever someone makes a purchase.
6. Sell Products
Many small businesses have found significant success selling products directly to thier followers on Instagram using one of Instagram’s ecommerce features, including Instagram shopping, dynamic ads, and shopping bags.
If you have your products, you can use your time and influence to make money by selling them on Instagram instead of promoting other businesses’ brands and products.
Instagram Shopping is amazingly robust, including the following features:
- Your shop on Instagram is where users can browse, explore and shop your products and collections.
- Collections let you customize your shop by curating products into themes, like new arrivals, gifts, seasonal trends, and more.
- Product Detail Pages provide relevant product information from your catalogs, such as prices and product descriptions. PDPs also pull in content where the product is tagged on Instagram and drive users to your website to complete a transaction.
- Instagram Checkouts allow users to checkout directly from the Instagram app. As of now, Instagram Checkout is only available to eligible U.S. business and creator accounts.
- Product Tags allow creators to highlight items from your product catalog directly in your images and videos, so people can easily tap, arriving at the product detail page.
- Ads + Product Tags increase your shopping posts’ reach by using Ads and product tags.
- Product Launches Businesses with checkout on Instagram can announce an upcoming exclusive merch drop, allowing people to preview product details and set reminders to buy as soon as it’s available. Currently available to eligible U.S. businesses only.
7. Instagram Subscriptions
In 2022, Instagram announced the launch of another new feature, subscriptions. Available on sister platform Facebook since 2020, subscriptions on Instagram enable your followers to pay a monthly price to support your work and access exclusive content directly inside Instagram. This is currently in testing and is not open for public enrolment, but expect it to open soon.
Hopefully, these seven steps help you to get paid for reels on Instagram in 2022 and beyond!
