How Much Does Instagram Pay for 1000 Followers

Published on 21.05.2024 by Chizoba T

Instagram has become a popular platform for connecting with family and friends. However, it has also created careers for content creators. If you are trying to make an income on IG, one of the questions you may have is: How much does Instagram pay for 1000 followers? This article will guide you on how Instagram pays followers. It will also provide actionable tips on how to make a significant income on social media.

Does Instagram Pay for followers?

Before we go deep into how much you can earn with 1000 followers on Instagram, it's important to state that Instagram will not pay you per follower. No matter how big your following is on the platform, you will not receive any dime from the social media site for the number of followers.

Instead, if you have 1000 followers, you can earn through other methods on Instagram. However, the number of followers isn’t the only factor affecting your earnings on Instagram. The amount you make will depend on your earning method and other factors discussed in the next section.

Factors Determining Your Earning Potential on Instagram

The amount you can make on Instagram will depend on various factors such as:

Number of followers. Increasing Instagram followers will benefit you as the amount you make will depend on the number of followers. This is because a higher follower count means a bigger reach for your posts. If you are advertising a brand, it means their producers are visible to a bigger audience.
Influencer niche. Instagram users love influencers who niche down on a particular area. With people searching for answers on the internet including social media, if you can position yourself as an expert in a niche, you are likely to be noticed by brands in the niche and they will likely engage you for sponsorship deals.
Engagement rate. Instagram likes and comments are critical. You will earn more from Instagram if your posts receive a higher engagement. You can use various tools to track your Instagram engagement.
Content quality. Everyone loves quality content and your Instagram following is no different. You will likely get more engagement when you post well-crafted posts, resulting in more earnings. When brands see a high engagement on your posts, they will be ready to pay you more. Quality content is also one of the tips to increase your follower count.
Contract deals. Some brands have a bigger reputation than others and are therefore more preferred. You will earn more when you get a contract with big brands. When you get a contract with a local brand, you will not earn as much as an international brand.

How to Make Money on Instagram

We already mentioned earlier that Instagram will not pay you for having 1000 followers. So, how can you make money on Instagram? Here are the options.

Brand Collaboration for Sponsored Content

Sponsored posts are one of the areas where influencers are making some good money. If you have 1000 followers on Instagram, you are already considered a micro-influencer. That means you can also collaborate with small brands to create content on their behalf. Unlike in the past when brands believed that only influence with a big following would give them results on their posts, nowadays, brands are opening up to working with influencers with as few as 1000 followers.

The reason is that they have realized that these micro-influencers have a more engaged audience than the big influencers. An influencer with a small community of engaged audience will likely get better results than a big influencer with a low engagement rate.

Therefore, if you have 1K influencers, you can collaborate with brands to create content on their behalf by advertising their brands in your reels, stories, or infeed ads, and you will be paid for your effort. However, it's advisable to collaborate with brands in your niche. The brand should also share the same values with you so it doesn't harm your brand.

How much should you charge for sponsored content?

In most cases, when you get a deal to work with a brand, this will often include content creation. Therefore, you will be required to post or create stories that will be Instagram ads for the brand. In return, you will be paid a fee for your effort. The compensation may also be in the form of free products or services.

If you are starting, you may wonder how much to charge. Here are a few negotiation tips:

Have your stand. Some brands will try to push you to create content for them, promising you exposure. However, you shouldn't fall for such tricks. Instead, know what you want and make it clear in your negotiations. After all, building your Instagram following has taken a lot of effort. Remember that you are also not getting paid for content creation alone but the exposure to your audience,
Research the market rates. Find out how much other content creators in your category charge per post. This will give you a reasonable amount to charge too.
Understand your audience. Consider who your audience is and what their engagement rate is. To determine the engagement rate, divide the total engagement by the number of followers. This will help you prepare when negotiating.
Get legal advice. Remember that you can always negotiate most of the terms of an influencer deal. You can consult a lawyer specializing in such deals to help you negotiate. This may enable you to earn more money.

Find the right partner brands

Prominent influencers with thousands of followers don't need to put much effort into finding brands to work with. Instead, it's the brands that go after them. But things might be different for you if you only have 1000 followers. You need to find brands to collaborate with in your sponsored posts.

One of the options you should consider is listing your products or services in an influencer marketplace. This will show the brands that you are open to influencer collaboration. One such marketplace is Shopify Collabs which connects creators with brands. You can also reach out to brands directly to request collaboration.

E-commerce Store

Another way you can make money on Instagram with 1000 followers is by opening an e-commerce store. This means that instead of marketing products from other brands, you will be selling your products. The product could be physical, digital, or a service. These may include:

Services such as photography, consultation, or website design. With this option, you can use Instagram to direct traffic to your site.
Sell physical products. You can have a warehouse from where you ship the products.
Dropshipping. This involves selling another company’s products without stocking them. When a customer orders for the product, you pay the supplier and ask them to ship it to the customer.

Brand Merchandise

If you want a simple way of earning without putting in much effort to develop a product or find a partner brand, you can simply market your brand merchandise. This method means you don't have to come up with unique ideas of products to sell. Instead, you only need to design merchandise that aligns with your brand. These could include T-shirts, mugs, pens, etc. Here are a few ways you can make and sell your merchandise:

Use print-on-demand services. Print and sell your design directly to clients.
Product white labeling. If you have products related to your brand, you can white label them.
Personal merchants. You can also create your own merchandise such as T-shirts with your design and sell them on Instagram.

Affiliate Marketing

This involves promoting other sites' products as an affiliate marketer in exchange for a commission. You will be given a unique link with your code. When someone buys using that link, you are paid a commission. While as an influencer you will be paid a flat fee, as an affiliate marketer, you will be paid according to your effort.

When promoting affiliate products on Instagram, the key is to share the affiliate link as much as possible. This could be in places such as bio, stories, etc. However, avoid doing only promotional content as this may make your audience weary.

A creative way of sharing the affiliate link is by adding promo codes to your post captions as you are not allowed to use links. With many people looking for opportunities to save when buying products, this can be a good way of making sales. Some of the top affiliate programs you should consider are:

Amazon affiliate. It is one of the biggest affiliate programs. It is popular because Amazon is a well-known brand from which people buy.
LTK. This is a good invitation-only affiliate for the fashion industry. It offers access to over 5K brands.
Rakuteng advertising. This is another affiliate program that carefully vets its advertisers.

For the best affiliate marketing results, ensure you understand the best Instagram marketing tips.

Instagram Shopping Feature

One of the Instagram trends that is growing in popularity is social shopping. This has been driven by the use of social media to find products and even shop for products. Instagram hasn't been left behind and has a social shopping feature allowing creators to add products to their Instagram shop. You can use the shop for advertising, tagging, and sales.

You can create collections or curate products according to gifting occasions or themes in your Instagram shop. Remember that your Instagram shop will act as a small version of your website complete with product images, pricing, and descriptions just as you would add them.

When promoting your products on Instagram, users can purchase directly from the shop, or you can refer them to the site to complete the purchase. You can even set up your shop to receive payment directly on it. Instagram also has other features that make it easy for users to buy products directly on the app. These include:

Shoppable posts and stories. You can use product tags to showcase the products in your catalog in images and videos.
Live shopping. You can use the feature to go live and tag your product's brands.
Ads with shopping tags. One way you can improve the reach of your shop is by using product tags in your ads. However, you must have a business account to access the Ad Manager.

Online Art Gallery

While there has been a recent increase in the popularity of online videos, Instagram remains an image-focused platform. If you are an artist or a photographer, the platform offers a great opportunity to monetize your work. You can do that by:

Selling your physical or digital images on a marketplace such as 500px. You can then add the link to your shop in the bio.
Use the Instagram shopping feature to sell the pictures on Instagram.
Post your work on stock image sites and use Instagram to drive traffic to the page.
Print pictures of items using print-on-demand services such as TeeLaunch and Printful. You can then promote the pictures on Instagram photos.

Paid Subscriptions

If you are creating great content that your fans will love, you can offer them a chance to get access to your exclusive content in exchange for a subscription fee. Instagram has a subscription program open to creators with over 10,000 followers and over 18.

There are also third-party tools such as Patreon that will enable you to earn money through subscriptions from your followers. You can create a newsletter for your fans using Subtract.

Fan Live Badges

Instagram allows you to earn money from fans by creating preferred content through an Instagram live badge. This works in the same way as the tip features on TikTok or Twitch. The feature enables Instagram viewers to purchase a badge during a live stream while creators earn money for unlocking the viewer's features.

However, not everyone can earn using a live badge. To benefit from this feature, you must be at least 18 years of age and have at least 10k followers. You should also adhere to the Instagram community guidelines and the content monetization policy. There are also parts of the world where the badges are only available by invitation. To enable your badge, follow these steps:

Go to your profile and click on the professional dashboard.
You will see an option to set up the badge if you qualify.

Products Flipping

If you find making money as an influencer hard, consider flipping products. This could involve buying products, refurbishing them, and selling them. Alternatively, you can sell old products that you no longer use. These could be old clothing, refinished furniture, or thrift finds.

Driving Traffic to a Site on YouTube

While this method won't earn you money directly on Instagram, it's one of the most effective ways to make money. Generally, you create an Instagram account that revolves around the subject of your site or YouTube channel. You can then position yourself as an expert in the niche. Once you gain a following, you can start directing traffic to the following:

An e-commerce store where you sell your products or services.
A blog where you can earn through Google ads, affiliate programs, and more.
A YouTube channel where you can earn through views, ads, merch sales, affiliate programs, and more.
Sites such as Subtrack where your followers can subscribe to read your newsletter.

How Much Are Instagram Influencers Paid?

The amount you get paid as an Instagram influencer will depend on several factors such as the niche. If you have fewer followers, like 1000, you can target a more profitable niche, such as financial products. Overall, an influencer's earnings will depend on their number of followers. While the numbers aren't cast in stone, the average earnings of an influencer are as follows:

Mega Influencers: These are influencers with over 1 million followers. They usually charge between $10,000 and $1 million per post.
Macro influencers. Have between 500K and 1 million followers. This category charges $5000 to $10,000 per post.
Mid-tier. These have between 50,000 and 500K followers. They can charge $500 to $5000 per post.
Micro Influencer. Have 10k to 50k followers. Their charges can range from $100 to $500.
Nano Influencer. Have between 1K and 10K followers. They can charge between $10 and $100 per post in this category.

How Much Does Instagram Pay Per View?

Unfortunately, Instagram doesn't pay anything per view. However, as we noted earlier, the engagement rate is one of the factors that determines the amount you earn on Instagram. A higher engagement rate will unlock sponsorship deals with brands.

Final Thoughts

You can see that there is no shortage of ways to earn money on Instagram. If you want to earn as an influencer with 1K followers, you can expect to earn between $10 and $100 per post. However, finding an influencer deal with such a number of followers is not easy. That's why you should consider other earning methods from our list above. We recommend you also check out our guide on how to grow your Instagram followers from zero.