How to Make Money on Social Media

Do you remember those days when we had to physically visit offices and give a ton of interviews in the hopes of landing a stable job? Hard times, but we had to scrape and scramble to make money and earn a living. These days, thanks to the internet, we can make money without much hassle, get a job from the confines of our house, choose our own working hours, and earn a living without having to go anywhere. And one of the best ways online is making money with social media, the entrepreneurship and job hunt hub of millions. It’s a convenient and highly profitable method to either work freelance, part-time, or for the full eight to nine hours.

Did you know that more than 83% of companies recruit via social media platforms? Compare that to the 79% of potential employees who search for jobs on social media. The gap is rapidly closing in, so don’t hesitate to become a part of that remaining 4% and land the job of your dreams.

Not quite interested in working 9 to 5?  Here’s something you’re sure to like. Social media itself is a fantastic business platform for aspiring entrepreneurs and established businesspersons alike. You can start making money from social media with a nominal investment, and at times, without the need to raise any capital whatsoever. It might have got you wondering, can you really earn anything with zero investment?

How Much Money Can You Make on Social Media?

Let’s get straight to the good news: there is no limit to the amount of money you can make through social media. The opportunities are endless, and your income can be limitless.

Freelancers earn anywhere between a meager $5 per hour to a whopping $200 per hour. Social media marketers and managers can make a six-figure income. Affiliates can collect up to 50% in commissions on each sale. Social media customer service representatives usually earn more than telephonic and on-site execs. And experts in their field can make hundreds of thousands of dollars every month just through consulting and sharing their knowledge.

How Much Do Social Media Influencers Make?

Apart from the aforementioned ways, there is another highly competitive yet immensely rewarding designation on social media: influencer. An influencer is any social media user who has amassed a great number of followers on any platform and can be used by businesses to promote their brand to their followers. In short, influencers are the internet’s version of brand ambassadors, social media stars, to put it better.

The amount and the source of income of influencers greatly vary. It depends on their number of followers, social media presence, engagement rate, views or likes per post, industry specialization, and so much more. To help you get an idea, influencers with a few thousand followers (called micro-influencers) may earn around $50 per post. And those with over a million followers can make a minimum of $20,000 per post; the amount is usually way more than that.

Why Small Businesses Should Use Social Media to Increase Income

So far, you have learned the general and passive income range of people and businesses that heavily depend on social media. On the other hand, small businesses already have a few local revenue streams. Social media will help you increase that revenue several times over and more! As a small business, you may be catering to the people in your neighborhood alone. With a social media platform, you can expand that clientele citywide and, with time, even throughout the state or the country. Other benefits include,

• Raise the awareness of your brand and get more potential customers.
• Build a strong series of reviews and testimonials and increase your credibility in the market.
• Start a community around your brand and address the feedback from your customer base on the go.
• Drive social media traffic to your business website and, over time, to your brick-and-mortar location.

In essence, social media helps boost various aspects of your small business to increase your income.

Enroll in Platform-Specific Monetization Programs

Almost every social media platform gives its active users a chance to earn via its official monetization programs. If you wish to make money on social media, you only need to meet certain criteria to unlock its program’s benefits. Let’s take a look at the offerings of the top three social media websites in the market.

Instagram

This platform lets users earn money with Instagram Live. If they like your posts, your viewers can buy subscriber badges during a live feed to support your content creation needs. At the moment, only US-based individual creators with over 10,000 followers are eligible for this program.

Facebook

With over three billion users, Facebook ranks right at the top as a social media platform. Its monetization programs are worth all the craze. You can earn by running ads on your live and on-demand videos, receive subscription funding, and even make money based on the view count of your videos. The only requirement: create a business page.

YouTube

The YouTube Partner Program has been helping avid YouTubers make millions for a while now. You can earn money either through shorts or videos. The main eligibility criterion for the program is that you need to have at least 1000 subscribers. For shorts, you should have over 10 million views in a three-month period. And users should have watched your videos for at least 4000 hours over 12 months.

Keep Up to Date With Current Trends

Since your money-earning capacity on social media accounts is primarily determined by your follower/subscriber count and number of views/likes, you need to make sure that the community appreciates your high-quality content. Either make it unique and interesting or hop on to the current trends. Share the reigning viral content or create your own version of it. Even if you are not looking to create exclusive content, it always helps to keep up to date with current trends for planning your next big post, since every good idea is a springboard for some great ideas.

Partner With Brands

Do you tend to talk a lot about the products you use in your content? You can partner with brands to promote their products and get paid! Let’s say you review digital products and have amassed a healthy, trustworthy following on Instagram. With the platform’s partnership ads program, you can collaborate with your favorite digital company and create ads for brands via reels or posts. The company will pay you for your efforts.

Join an Affiliate or Revenue Share Program

Content creators have an exceptional edge on social media. You don’t need to sell products and services yourself. You can simply sell the seller! You can start making money on social media by becoming an affiliate of a business or a brand. Promote their products through your social media channels via an affiliate link. For every customer that you sell their product or service to, you will get paid a percentage of their profits/price (commissions).

 

The revenue-sharing model is similar to the affiliate program, but in this case, you get a percentage of the total revenue earned. Take YouTube shorts, for instance. If your shorts have become eligible to run ads, YouTube will pay you a percentage of their total revenue earned from those ads. This percentage depends on the view count of your shorts.

Earn Commissions Through Sponsored Posts

You may be creating social media posts for yourself so far and gaining a lot of followers. But to make money, you need to create sponsored posts. Basically, they are posts businesses or brands have paid for to promote their products or services. There are various ways to earn money through sponsored posts. You can choose to get a commission on each sale, a small amount for every visitor redirected to the business website, or get paid upfront for creating each post.

Sell Your Products Using Native Commerce Features

Native commerce is just the social media variant of eCommerce or an online shop. Do you want to start your own retail business online? Are you an established real-world seller who wants to sell on the Internet? Begin your journey with native commerce. You can promote your products and social media and sell them right on the platform. Users don’t need to be redirected to another site to buy your products!

The best examples are Facebook shops and Instagram shops. When a user is browsing through your post, and they wish to buy the product displayed therein, they can simply check out your product catalog in the Shops section and purchase it on the platform itself. There’s also something called Instagram shopping that allows your followers to purchase your posts and videos.

Sell Merch

Creating and selling your own merchandise (physical products) is a great way to establish your brand. Also, it is one of the fastest ways of making money with social media since it benefits your other earning avenues too. A point to note: this should be done only if you have a healthy following on social media. That is because the investment costs for creating merchandise can be quite steep. You don’t want to keep a cartload of products stocked but no one to sell to.

That being said, consider this. You are a stand-up comedian with a decent fan following on YouTube. But people rarely ever recognize you when you go out, even if they have subscribed to your videos. That is where selling merch can help your cause. Create a customized t-shirt with your caricature on it and sell it on various social media platforms (using their native commerce features). Eventually, your view count will grow, and you will get more stand-up gigs!

Create and Sell eBooks or Online Courses

If you are good at writing or storytelling, then eBooks are a great way to earn a decent living on social media. Whenever you think of eBooks, Kindle is the first publishing platform that comes to mind, thanks to its varied and attractive digital artwork offerings. But don’t discount the other greats like Apple Books, Wattpad, or Smashwords. Promote your eBooks on social media and get your royalties rolling. A pro tip: online courses sell like fire on SM, so if you are an expert on a subject, create and sell an online course about it.

Host an Event or Workshop

In the real world, an organized event (something like a seminar or a workshop) helps spread awareness of your business and brand. Similar is the case on social media. Various SM websites have inbuilt or third-party tools that allow you to organize an event on the platform. And since it is entirely conducted online, users can participate in the venture from the comforts of their homes. It also helps you gauge the market to better define your business strategy.

Sell Your Own Products or Services

The benefits of selling your own products and services on social media far outweigh affiliate programs. One major reason is that you get to keep the entire profit. Additionally, you can manage your marketing campaigns based on your production and vice versa. And the best part is that your followers know that it is your own product, you are passionate about your brand, and you won’t just sell it for the sake of it. That mutual trust will prompt them to buy your services.

Conclusion

In summary, there is no limit to how much money you can earn on social media. You may start off small, but with the right marketing strategy and persistence, you can easily get into the big leagues. The most prominent ways of making money from social media are influencer programs, SM monetization, affiliate marketing, brand partnerships, and selling your own products and services. All you need are a good number of followers. And you can subscribe to SimplyGram to get thousands of followers, and this huge audience will be real and organic followers.