How to Make Money on Instagram + 10 Ways (2025)

It’s 2025. And if you’ve read reports of influencers making millions of dollars and thought, “how?,” you’re not alone. Selena Gomez, The Rock and others are making absurd amounts of money, but even if you only have 10k followers, you can demand $50 to $250 per post.

And if you have between 10k and 25k followers, you can raise your rate to $100-$250 per post.

Then there are others who are not even making money through paid posts and still creating multiple revenue streams for themselves.

How?

10 Ways to Make Money on Instagram in 2025

You can and should try to monetize your following on Instagram. What you don’t want to do is start bombarding people with messages like “buy my course,” or try to post multiple times a day with links in your posts.

But if you do it right and are casual with your money-making ventures, you can avoid people reporting you for spam and make some real money. Here’s how.👇

1. Reach Out to Brands for Sponsorships

If you have a following, brands may find your influence a worthwhile investment. You need to judge this on your own because we don’t know your niche. But let’s say that you’re a dog trainer who has amassed a following of 17,000 followers.

Your engagement rate is high and people value what you have to say.

If you use a certain brand of training tools, reach out to the brand and ask them if they would like to be a sponsor. You may receive sponsorships in the form of:

But you want your sponsorships to mean something. A mistake a lot of smaller influencers make is that they follow the money and will recommend products that cause them to lose trust with their followers.

You’re in it for the long-term, so be conscious of the brands you contact and sponsorships you land because trust is hard to regain.

2. Create Your Own Course

Courses make people so much money. I follow a fitness influencer by the name of Coach Mark Carroll. Mark shares his insights into fitness with the world and explains how to perform certain exercises properly, what to eat and so on.

And throughout the years, he has mentioned making millions of dollars.

I can’t remember the exact amount he made, but he’s sold over 200k training programs, and doing a bit of math:

That’s over $25 million in courses (if all of his courses sold for $129). Of course, this figure may be half when accounting for discounts, but it’s still a lot of money. What you can do is find your niche and what it is that you can sell to the world. Create a course on this “thing,” and start selling it to your followers over time.

3. Sell Digital Products

Yes, a digital product can also be a course, but not all digital products are courses. For example, you can sell:

If you have an Instagram that teaches people how to organize their cluttered homes, you can sell a simple guide to help them get started. A dog trainer could sell an eBook on how to start training dogs from a puppy onward.

You’ll need to judge the digital products that your followers would benefit from and then dive in and create one.

It’s that simple.

4. Join the Creator Marketplace

Instagram’s Creator Marketplace is only available to:

You can then open up your app, go to Professional dashboard > Your tools > Branded content.

Instagram is not going to pay you directly through this method, but it is a way for brands to find you. If you want to land brand deals, this is a great outlet to do so. I recommend that you see if your account is eligible to join. Unfortunately, not everyone is able to join the marketplace, but it is available in a lot of countries.

5. Live Badges

Instagram wants you to make money and offers tools that help creators generate revenue when they go live. For example, if you go live and a viewer buys you a badge, you will earn money. Of course, if you’re someone who never plans to actually go live, skip to one of the next ideas.

Badges are available in:

You need to be invited to the platform in all countries outside of the US and will go to Settings > Creator > Badges to see if you got an invite or not.

And don’t forget to turn on direct deposit in your account to receive your money.

6. Subscriptions

Creators also have access to subscriptions, and your account may or may not have this feature enabled just yet. Your subscriptions allow you to charge your followers a monthly fee. In return, you will provide your subs with exclusive content.

Exclusive content can be:

If you have a dedicated following and people are engaged, subscriptions are a great way to make deeper connections and earn money. It’s worth noting that Apple will charge a 30% commission fee, while Android is charging 0% on your earnings.

7. Sell Shoutouts

You can sell shoutouts to brands, but this type of shoutout is different. Imagine that you are a fitness influencer and you have 1 million followers. A smaller creator in the same industry wants to promote their content, and they can do so by selling them a shoutout.

Perhaps you charge $1,000 for a post about the person and a few stories.

Many sites offer the option to sell shoutouts, or you can post the option in a Story and see if any of your followers respond. A few sites selling this service that are worth trying (we’re not affiliated with them) are:

8. Open Your Own Shop

Instagram Shopping helps you reach customers, but you need to sign up through Meta. A lot goes into opening a shop and you’ll need to be sure that you meet all of the eligibility requirements.

You can look through the requirements here.

But if you don’t open a shop through Instagram directly, there’s nothing stopping you from making your own Shopify or Etsy account. Add products that you know your followers will like, promote them on your account and don’t forget to add the link to your bio.

You can even use dropshipping to handle all of the logistics for you.

9. Sell Merchandise

Merch is perfect in some niches and not in others. If you’re a gamer, you can sell:

And you can use third-party suppliers that handle all of the creation, customer support and shipping for you. A few well-known names in the industry are:

You’ll find plenty of other companies that can help you with your merch, too. Even big names on YouTube, such as Yes Theory, sell merch and make tons of money doing so. If you have a fanbase that you think merchandise will work well with, try it out because you have nothing to lose.

10. Try Affiliate Marketing

Finally, you can also try affiliate marketing. Imagine this. You recommend a paintbrush on Amazon that you know your followers will love and you even show them why it’s amazing in your posts.

People want this brush.

Well, Amazon will pay you a commission on each sale as an affiliate.

But this is thinking small because Amazon is known for paying low commissions. You can also do the same with many products and brands. Go to the official site and look for anything related to “affiliates.”

A few affiliate companies to try are:

Who are the Highest Paid Influencers on Instagram?

Unfortunately, the only lists of the highest paid influencers on Instagram that I came across were celebrities. You’re very unlikely to be paid $2.59 million a post like Lionel Messi because he has 500 million followers.

And with this in mind, fellow soccer marvel Cristiano Ronaldo earns the most per post at over $3 million for a single post.

Others on the top of this list include Selena Gomez, Kylie Jenner, The Rock, Ariana Grande and other ultra-famous names.

Do “Regular” People Make Money on Instagram?

Yes. Even with a few thousand followers, people are making real money. Reddit is a good place to see how people earn money on Instagram. For example, if you look at this post, you’ll find people earning:

And there are a lot of cases where regular people – like you and I – are getting paid on Instagram through many of the channels listed above.

How Much Do Mid-Tier Influencers Make?

Mid-tier influencers with 10,000+ followers can earn anywhere from $50 to $250 per sponsored post. Keep in mind that your earnings may be higher or lower, depending on your niche, engagement rate and relationship with brands.

If you break the 1 million follower threshold, you can charge $5,000 to $25,000 a post.

Earnings will vary based on your niche. Influencers in the financial niche can demand higher prices for sponsored posts because finance is an industry with larger marketing budgets.