In our latest post, Castle’s Head of Affiliates, Ash Bage discusses a misunderstood concept when it comes to affiliate marketing on Instagram – how to monetise Instagram.

Affiliate marketing is a commonly misunderstood tool for marketing agencies. If done right, it can generate a lot of revenue for a company but as it remains a fairly new concept – this can put people off. Below I will explain how Instagram is used for affiliate marketing as well as showing you how to monetise Instagram for affiliates.

Can you use Instagram for affiliate marketing?

Instagram is one of the main platforms for affiliate marketers to use in terms of an influencer perspective. The other social media platforms can be used; however, you will not see the same ROI as you would with Instagram.

YouTube has become a massive platform since its inception with the likes of extremely popular personalities and entertainers providing content for their audiences – sometimes on a daily basis.

Twitter is still a fairly popular social media platform for influencers and TikTok is only growing in popularity by the day at this point. Pinterest is only based on affiliates as when you’re on there you always see to swipe up on somebody’s blog for example.

According to the 2020 Influencer Marketing Outlook Report – these are the top 5 social media platforms to find influencers with:

  1. Instagram (82%)
  2. YouTube (41%)
  3. TikTok (23%)
  4. Twitter (23%)
  5. Facebook (5%)

Instagram is at the forefront for affiliates because not only is it atheistically pleasing – it’s the largest platform when it comes to finding influencers and their content. Affiliates and affiliate marketing has been able to thrive because of the sheer scale and size of influencers on this platform.

An influencer filming a video to review a product provided by affiliate marketers.

Can profits be made from Instagram through Affiliate Marketing

Profits can absolutely be made through affiliate marketing using Instagram. To put this into perspective, we have some affiliates who have paid for houses and brand-new cars. The revenue that can be made through Instagram and affiliate marketing is astronomical.

Affiliate marketing is often under-looked or misunderstood as some people view it as just promoting something online. The reason some of these influencers are multimillionaires is that they’re leveraging the platform that they’ve got. Some of these Instagram influencers have millions of followers, so you can imagine with one promotional post – that post will be reaching a lot of people. Cristiano Ronaldo can charge upwards of about 1.5 million pounds for one promotional post alone.

A large incentive for affiliate marketing comes through commission alone. Should you engage with a well-known influencer who has a sizable follower base. The money you can both generate together through a promotional post can be staggeringly high. And from the affiliate side, if you say a 10% cut of what’s earned, that can be a lot of money generated.

Regarding prices for influencers per post – it all depends on how large their following is. Here is a breakdown of how much influencers charge per post, depending on their follower base:

  • 5 – 10K followers – $100 – $500
  • 10 – 25k followers – $500 – $800
  • 25 – 50k followers – $800 – $1500
  • 100 – 250k followers – $2000 – $6000
  • 250k – 1m followers – $6000 – $10,000
  • 1m+ followers – $10,000+

Our approach to affiliate marketing at Castle is that once we get an influencer on board, we first ask what their financial goals are. Some influencers mention that they are getting married next year and want to pay off the wedding, others want to make a payment on their car which can be £300-£400 – very easily done. Once we hit this goal, we make sure to keep a good relationship with all the influencers we have in our system. This is because, as they grow in followers, we can attract even more people – thus generating even more revenue.

How to monetise Instagram?

The most important thing to think about when you are wondering “how to monetise Instagram” is to make sure the content that you are advertising, as well as the influencer you are working with is always clean and clear. Ultimately, if someone doesn’t like what they are seeing, they will be put off and won’t want to engage and follow.

You also want to make sure the influencers you are hoping to advertise with is very engaging. Of course, you have influencers who take photos of themselves that certainly do well for themselves. On the other hand, some of the best people who generate revenue are the people who have something to say and that are engaging by starting discourse with their followers and fans. The people who are genuine on this platform are the ones who make a lot of money.

There are even those who mainly provide reviews. Giving an honest opinion about a particular product, these people are definitely worth reaching out to. That’s what social media is meant to be there for. It’s meant for people to give an honest review and opinion of things. Then if people feel like they’ve been lied to, they will just never buy it. This just hurts the brand and it hurts their own brand as well. So, authenticity is definitely the most important factor when you want to know how to monetise Instagram.