How To Make Money On Instagram With Under 2000 Followers in 2022 - Generation Nomads (2024)

You don’t have to be a celebrity to make money on Instagram.It’s possible to earn money on Instagram with under 2000 followers. We have done it!

In this post we explain how to make money on Instagram when you don’t have 10K followers or more. We walk you through the most important things you need to know and share examples of the ways we earned money from Instagram with our account @generationnomads.

In a nutshell

Here’s what we’ll cover in this post

• You can be an influencer on IG with less than 2000 follower – it’s called a nano-influencer
• What you see on IG is not the full pic – there is a lot of work behind running and maintaining an IG profile
• Two ways to make money on Instagram:
  • Sell your own offer – here’s a free training for how to create your own offer
  • Collaborate with brand – here’s how to get brands to collaborate with you

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Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. If you use them to make a purchase, we will earn a small commission. There are no additional costs to you, but it helps us keep this blog alive. The products and services we recommend are based on our own opinions. Enjoy!

Other posts you might want to read:

• 5 Steps to create a premium service offer
• Digital Nomad Guide to Make Money Online
• How To Get Hotels And Brands To Collaborate On Instagram

What it takes to be a professional Instagram content creator

It’s no secret that there are people who make a living from being Instagram influencers. Their everyday job is to “create content”, meaning produce beautiful anduseful pictures, reels, and videosfor the grid. Additionally they work on building a community a.k.a. an audience that trusts them and is willing to buy from them. Those two ingredients help them to attract brands for sales collaborations and monetize their content.

We say “everyday job” because while pictures and videos of Instagram influencers may look effort-less, remember this:

Growing your Instagram account is a full time job.

If you’re curious to know more about what it takes to grow your Instagram presence, read about the misconceptions of being “successful” on Instagram in our post How Much Time You Need to Invest to Grow On Instagram.

The Instagram lifestyle looks like the dream life for many and that’s why many travellers are setting up a travel profile and doing everything they can to grow their number of followers. If you are thinking of taking it seriously and are willing to invest a bit, there are services that can help you schedule posts on Instagram. We personally use Tailwind for this. It allows you to concentrate your efforts to Instagram, and not be glued to the app all day.

You might be thinking that the market for making money as Instagram influencer is saturated. Or that it’s too difficult to stand out if you don’t have thousands of followers.

Well… You’ll be happy to hear the good news.

Making money on Instagram is still possible – even as a beginner on the platform

You don’t need to have 100K followers to monetize your Instagram account. In fact, you don’t even need 10K. People secure collaborations on Instagram with as little as 1500 followers.

There is even a term for it – “nano influencers”.

A nano influencer is someone with a following of about 1000 to 10k followers. While a micro influencer, the next level, is somewhere between 10k to 100k followers on Instagram. Although definitions of the exact numbers might differ, and there is no official statement from Meta Platforms (owner of Instagram), the ranges mentioned before are largely agreed on. For our case in this post we look at under 2000 followers on Instagram, which is certainly a nano influencer.

We know that it’s possible to make money on Instagram with under 2000 followers because we have done it. We have opened our Instagram accountas a travel couple in late 2018, we have grown our following to about 1500 travel enthusiasts in 8 months, and have secured 5 collaborations by August of 2019, with many other small offers we decided not to accept.

So here comes our experience of how you can make money from Instagram as a beginner.

Before you continue reading, we want you to make an important mindset shift.

To understand how to make money on Instagram as a nano-influencer, you need to start seeing Instagram influencers for who they actually are: Instagram marketers.

To make money on Instagram, Instagram marketers promote their own or affiliate products to an online audience. Their sales success depends on two key variables: the quality of their marketing strategies and the attractiveness of the promoted products.

Improve your Instagram content creation skills

Becoming an Instagram marketer and attracting brands to work with you as an affiliate means to look professional in what you do. This means to have at least some basic photography, videography and both photo and video editing skills.

On top of that there are Instagram specific photography skills you should familiarize yourself with. These include using formats and content ideas that resonate with your audience, keeping a recognizable theme throughout your photos, and creating a consistent grid on your profile.

When we decided to take our Instagram account seriously, we usedSkillShare to upgrade our photography and photo editing skills. There are 4 specific courses that we recommend you take onSkillShare.

Withour linkyou get a 1month FREE trialto SkillShare, which is sufficient time to go through the e-learnings:

• Fundamentals of DSLR Photography
• Becoming an Instagram Influencer: Creating Authentic Content and Monetizing Your Following
• Instagram-Worthy Photography:Shoot, Edit & Share with Brandon Woelfel
• How to Create a Cohesive Instagram Feed | Using Adobe Lightroom

How to make money on Instagram?

It’s important to note that although Instagram is one of the most popular social networks in the world, the platform does not have a clear business model for making money on Instagram. Recently, they came up with a way to sell items through Instagram, however that is directed more at stores, rather than influencers.

We have met Instagram stars with almost 100K followers that didn’t monetize their account at all. This means that unless someone decides to actively work on becoming an Instagram marketer, they won’t make a cent on the platform – regardless of their number of followers.

Nevertheless, there are models that have emerged over time of how people can earn an income indirectly via Instagram by using the platform as a marketing and sales channel.

This means that you create (or curate) content directed at a particular audience. The content should be entertaining and useful for your audience (Instagram followers). If you create content that is being liked by an audience and you do so in a genuine and honest way, your audience will begin to trust you.

Once your audience trusts you, they will trust your opinion about specific product or service recommendations. They will also trust the quality of your own products and services.

Types of income you can expect to make via Instagram

Ok, so if you have read this far, you start to get an idea of what it means to make money on Instagram. It is a full time job, that requires effort and patients. And if you stick to it, the rewards will come and you will be making an income using Instagram as your marketing platform.

Here we break down the basic ways of making money on Instagram.

The two basic ways to make money on Instagram:

1. Selling your own product or service through Instagram
2. Working with brands to sell their products or service or get paid for showing it on Instagram

Choosing the best way for you to make money on Instagram really depends on what you prefer and where you are heading with your Insta biz. These are not mutually exclusive, so you can start with one and then do the other (like we have done) or you can do both at the same time.

The most important things is to be transparent and send a clear message to your community of Instagram followers.

In the past four years, we have made money through Instagram, both through working with other brands and through selling our own services. We started with collaborating with other brands and then moved to selling our own services. We would not recommend starting both at the same time, but rather roaster one and then move or add the other to your mix.

Below is a quick breakdown of the benefits and drawbacks of both options.

Selling your own product or service through Instagram

Benefits of own offer:

• You earn more per sale (depending on what you are selling, but a general rule of thumb)
• You are in full control of the quality of the products and services
• You can design your offer to fit your Instagram followers’ exact needs
• You are in full control of your biz!

Drawbacks of own offer:

• You need to create an offer before you can start selling
• You need to manage inventory – inventory for physical product or your time for a service
• Takes some more time to set up in the very beginning (depending on what you are going to sell)

Working with brands to sell their products or service on Instagram

Benefits of collaborations:

• No need to create your own offer
• Have a variety of products or services to offer
• No need to have an inventory of any product (you are the middleman)

Drawbacks of collaborations:

• You earn significantly less per sale
• You don’t control the quality of products and services you sell
• You depend on other brands for your biz
• Not all brands are equal – you need to pay good attention to your contract with brands to avoid being taken advantage of.

How to sell your own products or services through Instagram

When it comes to selling your won products through Instagram, you need to put things into perspective. You are using Instagram as a marketing platform for your business. Your business goes beyond Instagram alone, but is not exclusively dependent on Instagram.

The first thing you need to consider is, what are you going to sell.

When thinking of products and services, the products have a bigger hurdle. That is something you need to create, build, or produce, hold an inventory of. Breaking it down further, physical products have a bigger hurdle than digital products.

With services, the cost of starting can be minimal because mostly you will offer your time to create value for someone in exchange for a fee.

When we transitioned from earning our income from brand collaboration on Instagram, we decided to focus on selling our services. The reason being that selling a high ticket offer does not require so much of your time, while at the same time earns much more than we could with brand collaborations.

The key is understanding your audience and what they need. Once you figure that out, your marketing efforts will be so much smoother. Everything you post will align to what you are selling and you will not need to figure out how you can place a product ad (link to an offer) inside a post. It will all be naturally integrated.

Check out this post on how to use what you already have to create an offer.

If you are serious about creating an offer to sell through Instagram, then the Freedom Framework free training is a great starting point.

In the training you will learn the 5Steps to create a premium service offer, so you canland your first clients without waiting for more followers.

How to collaborate with brands on Instagram

There are in essence two types of deals you can make with brands via Instagram:

1. You get paid for your services to the brand (showing their products on your IG) or
2. You can save money through collaborations

It’s safe to say that it’s easier to save money than to make money on Instagram.

That is the case for big Instagram content creators and even more so for nano influencers and micro influencers.We have interviewed 16 Instagram travel influencers and have seen it with hundreds of other accounts on the platform: You most likely won’t make a fortune from Instagram alone as a nano influencer or micro influencer.

This is something you should know before you decide to put all your efforts into generating content for Instagram. But it’s definitely some nice extra cash.

So how can you expect to make money from Instagram as a beginner?

1. Get discounts or free products for advertising on Instagram

One of the most common types of deals you can secure as a small account is to receive discounted or free products in exchange for mentioning the products in your Instagram feed or Instagram Stories.

If brands trust that you are addressing their ideal target audience and you have shown active engagement within your community, they will send you products to a discounted rate or free of charge to promote on your account. This is typically a one-off collaboration and is finalized once you have received the product and have posted the agreed content on the platform.

Brands know that the expected return of their investment is relatively low for a small Instagram account. That’s why this deal works best for products or services of small value (under USD 50).

For this type of collaborations you often get approached by brands via Instagram direct messages. However, make sure that you switch to email communication for agreeing on the terms of the deal. This shows professionalism on both sides and is more convenient.

Check our Instagram for an example of such collaboration we had for promoting Australian beach towels.

2. Earn free hotel stays in exchange for marketing materials

When looking to secure collaborations of higher value such as hotel stays or more expensive products or services, you’ll need more than Instagram. Promoting the company on your nano or micro Instagram account alone won’t suffice as a return on the brand’s investment.

This is where we found that it works well to offer photos or videos that the hotel or company can use as marketing materials in their campaigns or social media marketing. This means you take pictures that show you in and around the accommodation or using the product or service of the brand and provide an agreed amount of edited pictures to the marketing manager.

You should keep in mind that with this type of collaboration you agree to transferring the rights on the pictures to the party you’re collaborating with.

For such type of collaboration your Instagram feed serves as your business card. You can convince the company of your skills by showing a portfolio of high quality photography or videography directly on your Instagram profile.

Check out our Instagram foran example collaboration we did with a hotel chain in Malaysia.

3. Sales from affiliate partnerships

One type of collaboration we love is becoming a sales affiliate of a company for a product or service. You agree with the brand that you will earn a percentage or fixed amount of money for each sale that the company makes through you.

The returns are more attractive for high value products or services. This is why you should aim to find companies that offer affiliate partnerships for promoting their products or services with attractive affiliate commissions. These are mostly companies that are still growing and invest a lot into gaining exposure and acquiring new customers.

Before you are able to collect the returns from the affiliate program you will need to create content to promote the brand on your Instagram feed or stories first. After that you’ll earn money passively without any additional effort from your side. Each time your audience is purchasing the product via your affiliate link or discount code, you’ll get paid. This means you earn money on the long-run with zero effort from your side!

An example we did was collaborating with a TukTuk rental company in Sri Lanka.

4. Discounts or free products in exchange for product reviews

Another option to earn money from Instagram is to write product reviews. We have to say that this option works best if you publish the review in combination with an online blog.

The reason is that people usually do targeted research about a product, service, or experience via online search engines like Google rather than on Instagram alone.

The idea is that you offer the company you plan to work with that you will write a comprehensive review or recommendation of their offering. Of course your review should be as honest and genuine as possible not to mislead your readers.Make sure to agree on that prior to the collaboration, so both parties are clear on the intentions.

Make sure to ask for an affiliate link or code for your followers if you like the product and think that your followers will love it too.

An example of such collaboration is our blog review of a co-working space in Bali.

Best brand collaboration ways to make money on Instagram

In our experience, companies are most interested in collaborations that yield them marketing materials and product reviews. This is no surprise because from these type of collaborations brands can benefit long term.

Once you send them your edited photos or publish a product review on your blog, they can make repeated use of the photos. They have the chance that people will click through from your blog in the future. On the other hand, Instagram feed post or stories have ashorter life span.

Important! Be selective with the companies you work with

One important piece of advice is this: Don’t accept blindly every potential deal that is coming your way. Instead, be selective and only work with brands and companies that you truly like and don’t mind your followers to associate you with.

Don’t spam your audience with tens of deals. Focus on products or services that you think will give your community the biggest value. This will help you to build credibility with your online community and the brands you work with.

Next: How to make money on Instagram through collaborations

One essential topic we didn’t cover in this post is How To Get Brands And Hotels To Collaborate With You. In that post we share e-mail templates we used to approach brands. We also mention important things to watch out for when closing deals with brands. So make sure to have a read at it.