When it comes to being a content creator, there are so many different ways that you can make an income those sometimes you can get paid for just straight up creating content, which we'll talk about in just a minute Instagram can also be a really great way to generate leads for your business a business outside of just creating content. So in this video, I wanted to talk you through several different potential income streams that you could create that you can use your platform your audience on Instagram to really build up. This isn't necessarily a course about online business. It's about growing an authentic community on Instagram. So we're just gonna be dipping our toe in each of these different types of monetization and I encourage you to go out and learn more and research about how you could Implement these for yourself, but hopefully this gives you a starting point or an idea of how you can turn this amazing community that you've built into a sustainable income for yourself.

So the first of the ways to monetize that I wanted to talk about is brand Partnerships one of the most Well known ways for Content creators and influencers to make money is through brand Partnerships AKA brand deals AKA brand collaborations AKA brand Partnerships. Whatever you want to call them. This is when a brand pays you to create content that promotes their product or service or offer in some way and then share that content with your audience. This can have many different forms. But what I've been seeing most lately which seems to be popular is brand Partnerships in the form of stories and of course reals because brands are very aware that reels have this potential for increased reach. But of course is all going to depend on your audience the product the brand is trying to promote and what you think is gonna connect most in terms of your content and you can negotiate all those details with the brand one thing that's really important to the whole brand Partnerships. Ecosystem is something that we talked about back in module one, which is your Niche and your content pillars. In particularly your audience and their demographics most brands when you start talking with them about doing a potential partnership will want to see some information about the demographics of your audience on Instagram. And in addition to just this rate of demographics like age gender location. They're probably also going to want to hear from you about who you see as your audience. This is really essential for a brand to know because obviously they don't want to spend their time or their marketing Budget on creating content with an influencer who doesn't have an audience that's going to want to purchase their products. So this is why it becomes very important for you to have a good understanding of who you're creating content for. So then when you partner with a brand you can make sure that your goals are in alignment another common income stream for Content creators on Instagram is affiliate marketing affiliate marketing is where you promote or mention products or services that you have a customized trackable link for and for each purchase that you influence You get a small commission.

So in this case the brand isn't paying you an upfront fee. Like they might in the case of a brand deal. But instead you just have a link that is constantly being tracked and if someone who uses your link makes a purchase, then you get a little Kickback from that at no extra cost to one of your followers. That's something that the brand does as a way to incentivize Affiliates. This is something that is a little bit more passive and a little more casual often creators like to do affiliate marketing because you can make a small commission without having to jump through all the Hoops of getting your content approved by a brand like you get to share your affiliate links on your own terms. There's so many ways to do this. A lot of companies will have their own custom affiliate program that you can sign up through but there's also kind of Amalgamated options like Amazon Affiliates where you can pretty much promote any product out there that's on Amazon and reward style which is sort of compilation platform, which allows you to create trackable links for All kinds of different common online retailers. I would recommend even if you feel like you're too early in your journey to start making money off your Instagram. It's never too early to sign up for some affiliate programs because the longer you have your links out there available for others to click on the more that commission will build up over time, especially if you're using SEO friendly or Evergreen content as a part of your strategy as well and the nice thing about affiliate marketing is there's no barrier to entry unlike with brand deals where Brands typically expect you to have a certain audience or a certain amount of reach you can sign up for affiliate marketing programs on your own terms. So no one is too small to start another common income stream for Content creators on Instagram is selling merchandise. Once you build up a bit of an audience and you have some ride or die fans this might be the opportunity to release some merch so your fans can purchase it and really feel like a part of a community you could create your merch through a company like spreadshirt so you can avoid some of the upfront There's many services out there online nowadays.

So you don't have to feel like you need to go out and purchase a bunch of inventory and really DIY it like there are companies set up for Content creators to create merch with this is something that might not give you a ton of income just because the profit margins aren't going to be huge but the bigger audience you have of course the more can build up but nonetheless it might be something fun for you to do just so you and your audience have that sense of camaraderie and connection where you can be wearing the same clothes and of course if you're audience members ever meet each other in real life and they can recognize that they both follow the same person and there's lots of benefits to having a physical product like that if that's something that is interesting to you. So that's physical products. Now, let's talk about another potential income stream digital products. There is really an endless list of potential digital products that you could create and sell to your audience on Instagram. This can include templates work books ebooks. Courses like this one and so many more this is going to depend a lot on your Niche and what your audience might be interested in but for the most part and almost any Niche there is some kind of digital product that you might be able to offer that your audience would like even if it's something like a recipe book or a grocery list or like a school planner template in notion. There's so many different things. It just depends on what your audience might want.

Another income stream that I want to pitch to you is actually providing services. This might look like one-on-one coaching or consultations or workshops or other kinds of like monthly package services this really ties into what I was saying at the beginning of the video of using Instagram as a way to generate leads for customers for your business. If you're providing Services, then really you're not just a content creator. You're a full-on business owner and I would say the same applies as well for digital products or merchandise. The point here is though I think A lot of people don't think about the potential to provide services and there's actually a lot that you can do fully remotely. Like it doesn't require that you see anybody in person. You can provide coaching or consultation or other type of creative Services completely online. And I think this is really overlooked quite often, especially by beginner creators, but it's actually the perfect opportunity for beginner creators because it's not necessarily scalable, but that's okay.

If you have a small Die Hard audience, then you can offer services to just a small collection of people and another big benefit of it is there's not a ton of infrastructure needed or a lot of overhead. If you're gonna go ahead and create an entire course or develop all these digital products. That's a lot of work to invest ahead of time. If you're not sure that you're going to have customers whereas you can provide services without doing a ton of prep work or you can wait until you have a customer and then do all the work that's necessary for that one specific customer. So if it makes sense for your Niche and Audience which it might not but if it does connect really consider what kind of services you might be able to offer if that's a road that you want to take for income generation. Another option is creating a membership program. This could be a monthly subscription service where you provide your members with exclusive content or access to you through, you know, coaching or group calls or live streams that the otherwise wouldn't receive through just following you on social media for free. For example, this might look like essentially an exchange of a monthly donation for exclusive content. That's kind of the model that patreon has going or it might be a more in-depth offer that's very structured that requires a monthly fee this again can very a lot and it's really gonna depend on your audience your Niche and what kind of expertise you have to offer. So those are a handful of ways that you can start generating income using just your Instagram. I also did want to mention because throughout the Course, I've brought up the potential of having an additional Evergreen platform. I wanted to mention Google AdSense which might come into play if you have a YouTube channel or a Blog Google AdSense is basically just Google's ad program. So that's integrated into the YouTube Partner program. It's also available for bloggers or website owners to place ads on their blog. Basically the way this works is you receive a small commission or fee for showing ads to people so on YouTube you get money for every monetized playback on your videos.

Once you're eligible for monetization and a similar thing is true for your blog. Of course. This isn't going to be applicable to everyone because you might not necessarily be starting a YouTube channel or a Blog but I did want to mention this is another really great way to generate some passive income if you're also creating Evergreen content, so hopefully this gives you a start a small look at what it might look like to monetize your presence on Instagram each of Is different types of revenue streams have countless variations and approaches that you can take depending on what your audience wants and what you want to offer. I think the best way to approach monetization is to always start thinking of your audience first. It's all well and good to think about what you might want to offer.

But if there isn't market demand for it or if it's not going to drive well with your audience, then it might not be worth pursuing just always think about your audience what works for them how you can provide value for them and that's always going to steer you in the right direction when it comes to business decisions like this.