One of the most tricky parts of being a creator on Instagram is building that large and engaged following. It takes a lot of hard work, perseverance, and skill to gain a large amount of organic followers and keep them interested in your content.
Once you’ve reached this point, you may begin thinking of how to reap from your hard work. Your reels now reach a wide audience and your posts generate likes like clockwork, so there should be a way to get some money from them, right? Well, it’s true.
There are a few ways through which you can earn money through your Instagram reels. Some creators make thousands of dollars from their reels and you can too.
How to Get Paid for Instagram Reels
Creators can earn a lot of money from their Instagram reels through some methods. They include:
Brand Partnerships
By the time your following is big enough, a few brands may want to partner with you. These companies may need you to promote their products on your reels while they pay you a fee.
The rates for this depend on your follower count and your deal with the brand, but it can be anywhere from $10 to $10,000 per reel.
If you feel like your audience is large and active enough to interest a brand, you can also make the first move and reach out to them for a partnership.
Become an Affiliate
In affiliate marketing, you promote products from a brand and make a commission from every purchase your viewers make. This usually involves you posting a unique sign-up link, so the brand can know which new users came from you.
It is best to market a product that your viewers would be interested in. You can’t be a photography content creator marketing a dishwasher. That doesn’t fit, and it probably won’t make you much money because your viewers aren’t interested in that.
Accept Virtual Gifts
Your followers can send gifts to you from the comment section of your reels. These gifts aren’t just meant to be shiny but are purchased with real money by viewers, and can be converted back to real money by you.
Essentially, one star is equal to $0.01, and it can be withdrawn from your account once you get to the minimum payout of $25.
What About the Instagram Reels Play Bonus?
You may have noticed that we didn’t talk about the Instagram Reels Play Bonus. Here’s why.
In 2022, Instagram came up with the Reels Play bonus which rewarded creators with money when the views on their reels reached certain milestones. This method saw a lot of creators going away with a few extra thousand dollars monthly.
However, the program was discontinued in March 2023. According to Instagram head, Adam Mosseri, the company was “putting way more money into the program that was coming out of the program, and we’re a business at the end of the day. That kind of program can’t last forever.”
The Instagram Reels Play Bonus was fun while it lasted, but you can still use the other methods to make money off your reels. Good luck.
