HOW TO MAKE MONEY AS AN INFLUENCER
WONDERING HOW YOU CAN MAKE FULL TIME REMOTE RESIDUAL INCOME ON SOCIAL MEDIA? YOU ARE IN THE RIGHT PLACE!
WHO AM I?
Hi, my name is Elena!
I am an online marketing expert, 15 year veteran blogger and influencer, owner of 2 online publications, 3 blogs, 20 Instagram accounts, a mom of an 8 year old girl and 3 cats, a traveler, a volleyball player and a business coach. So to say that I understand the industry we are all in is an understatement.
I have been doing this since before the term "influencer" was coined and have done everything online under the sun, I have 10 fully monetized Instagram accounts and 2 income producing blogs ( where I occasionally accept sponsored posts when I am bored and the rate is high enough) and I run 2 online magazines that are funded by advertising. So sponsored posts were my bread and butter for the longest time, but thankfully now that I know the secret to making REAL MONEY with social media, I ONLY pick the highest paid ones and do it for fun.
Trust me though, I have been where you are: enjoying content creation, getting free products, working on deliverables, engaging and growing my audience, wondering if it would take me the places I dreamed of. And it actually did, but totally not in the way I thought it would. My path to where I am, my perfect place in the online world, took 15 years, as the industry evolved and grew. And now I am here to make sure it doesn't take you THAT long.
THE BIGGEST LIE OF INFLUENCING
Everyone wants to be an influencer. The job seems so dreamy: get paid to have a pretty instagram account and write about things you love while companies send you products and host you in hotels.
What they don’t tell you is that in order to make an actual living as an influencer, you have to have hundreds of thousands of followers and they take years to obtain unless you jet around the world, have a rich husband or a beautiful mansion and no job.
Everyone seems like an overnight success but what you don’t see are several years of hard work for free: shooting, styling, buying, reviewing products for free, promoting, engaging. It’s exhausting. And for what? For a free hotel stay or a free tube of foundation?
Once you reach a decent number of followers you can start making money, but the going rate for a post on an Instagram account with 10,000 followers is anywhere from $20-$100 dollars. So you have spent time finding each opportunity, spent time shooting and editing the photos and by the time you’re done you are basically being paid $10/hour. Congratulations!
The most important thing in business is future proofing it. Things might be going great right now, but what if someone hacks into your account and deletes it ( happens a lot), or Instagram changes its algorithm and your engagement drops, or the feeding frenzy on IG marketing subsides and sponsored post rates drop due to saturation of the market. Oh and should I mention that Instagram owns your content and can take it down at any point without explanation? So what you have spent years building can be gone in a flash? No? Okay. There are so many things that can go wrong when you don’t OWN the rights to your business, like in the case of an Instagram-based business. And while all the perks do sound wonderful, the majority of influencers never reach a level where they are afforded those awesome benefits. But it’s alright, do you know why? Because you can still rock your influence without having hundreds of thousands of followers and make better than a full time living off your account. So what’s the biggest lie of Instagram influencing? It’s that the only way to make influencing your full time gig is to grow it to hundreds of thousands of followers and get paid to do sponsored posts.
THE SECRET
WANT THE TRUTH?
THE BEST way to monetize Instagram is to have a product or a service to offer to your audience. One that is yours, your business, your promotions, your customers, your hard work going into setting up the lifestyle you’re longing for.
"That seems difficult and too much work and not fun at all!" - you might say. "I just want to take pretty pictures and talk to my followers and get paid to do it."
YOU CAN!
It took me a 15 year journey but I have found and developed the best way to monetize social media that ANYONE can do. Without thousands of followers, without experience, without working 24/7, without sponsored posts, without working for free products or spending years before you can actually benefit from fruits of your labor. And I would LOVE to share it with you!
But first I will go over all the different types of businesses/money making activities you CAN make a living out of as an instagram influencer, then discuss the ideal business that took me 15 years to arrive at. I want you to take the same path I did exploring these different options and see what I saw, but I will save you the 15 years of trial and error of actually trying it out on your own.
4 OTHER WAYS TO MAKE MONEY ON SOCIAL MEDIA
Let's begin with the bread and butter of influencers:
SPONSORED POSTS
They seem like a fun way to make money, if you forget that the rate for sponsored posts is very low, unless your following is well above 10,000.
Let me paint a picture of it, which looks like this:
◾ You have to SEARCH out available sponsored opportunities on multiple influencer websites that you register for and compete with literally hundreds of thousands of other influencers in hopes that you get picked.
◾ Often companies make you write a lengthy idea pitch during the application process to see if it’s a good fit for them and never end up selecting you.
◾ Then if you're lucky enough to be selected, you have to receive the product to be advertised physically ( which means you cannot be remote or travel all the time), come up with a concept, take photos and stories with it, then edit it.
◾ You submit a draft of your potential post for approval with all the details and wait until they approve
Sometimes you have you make changes/reshoot, then finally post it.
By our calculations, it takes on average 2.5-5 hours for this process and you’d be lucky to secure 10 of them a month at around $20-$100 per post. That also means you have to do double the amount of non-sponsored content at the same time which you don’t get paid for, otherwise your followers will leave you. You see what I mean? It’s not as glamorous as you think unless you can command several thousands per post.
So think then, what happens if you want to take a vacation, or step back for a month or two? Your income goes to zero. If you don't constantly work it, you won't make money. No passive income, no scalability.
So what are our other options? You could offer services.
CLIENT SERVICES
If you have some teachable skills (like editing , photography, online marketing, coaching, etc), you could start offering these services to your following. The problem is with this option is you ALWAYS have to work to make that income as well. If you take a vacation to enjoy that free hotel stay or a break to spend a weekend with your family, you will inadvertently “lose” money because this is not the type of business that can be outsourced or scaled. So if the idea of working for every dollar you make sounds good to you, and you have skills galore, this is a good option.
What's next?
DIGITAL GOODS
What if you have really awesome editing skills and can make presets, or create online courses for people to buy. That’s a great option for people looking to be remote but there are two downsides to it. You have to spend a lot of time beforehand creating the digital products, often using skills you do not yet have ( so there’s a learning curve). Then you hope people consider you enough of an expert to buy it and each purchase is a one time thing. You have to ALWAYS look for new customers or ALWAYS create new products to sell. You can't resell existing customers.
And don’t forget about the constant need to market yourself since the field is saturated with competitors who are spending advertising dollars to get in front of potential customers. While it’s great as a side passion project when you don’t have anything else to do, there are better ways of monetizing your social media.
SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT
A lot of people on Instagram offer social media management services for other brands as a way to make money. That’s a great way to take a skill you learned and make a living on it, if you're willing to rebrand your account. However you have to deal with needy and demanding clients, make sure you can perform and grow their channels consistently ( pressssssssure), it’s getting increasingly hard to find clients and you are the one performing the service which means you are always working and can’t scale it.
This is something I have done, as well, and I found it more pain in the butt than the “dream life” I wanted.
ONLINE STORE
Finally if you are really ambitious and skilled, you can start an ecommerce store, where you sell your own products that you manufacture ( if you know how to) or ones that you drop ship. This is the hardest option of all four, because you need to pay someone to create a functioning e-commerce website or learn to do it yourself, input all the products in detail into it, market, track inventory, deal with shipping and returns, purchase inventory (so you need large capital).
I have personally done this (I started an online clothing boutique) and I can tell you that out of all the businesses I have owned ( brick and mortar or online), this was by far the most work intensive one. After a while, I realized that it won't afford me the freedom to live and travel the way I want and I moved on, adding it to my tool belt of experience.
SO WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO MAKE MONEY ON SOCIAL MEDIA
After 15 years of trying, discovering, learning and ALL that experience, I have finally arrived at a business concept that I am convinced is superior to all others and is a great option for EVERYONE.
The secret sauce for making a ton of money on social media is becoming a product distributor for a REALLY GOOD product with a REALLY GOOD MARGIN/COMPENSATION PLAN that allows you to train sales personnel to do the same for themselves.
Whether you have large or small following, you’re skinny or big, model gorgeous or average, smart or not, creative or analytical, want to spend all your time building an online business or just want a side gig, risk averse or love new opportunities, remote and traveling or staying put, this is the best option for everyone. It checks all the check boxes of the easiest and most profitable business that I was looking for without the hassle. It requires no ramp up time, no capital, no monthly expenses, no skills or knowledge ( though your social media experience will certainly be very helpful). It allows you to step away from it without losing revenue, work from anywhere in the world for as much or little as you want, does not require a big following, provides training and support and is possible to grow into a 7 figure business fast.
This has all been simplified for you and you can sell a product, make a huge margin on it and not have to do any of the set up or back end.
You don't have to take my word and experience for it. See for yourself: I made a table with features for each business so you can see what I discovered by actually trying all these businesses.
WOULDN'T IT BE NICE...?
You might not want to do anything more than what you’re doing right now. You might be happy with your job, or your small gig, or being a stay at home mom. But wouldn’t it be nice to make TWICE the amount of money you make now while putting in half the work, while doing what you actually enjoy? Certainly sounds nice to me and I am already doing it.
You could be completely remote and go travel the world, you could put the extra money into your retirement, you could pay off student loans.
All by doing what you already do: posting fun pictures on Instagram.
And guess what? I am here to guide you every step of the way! Completely free!
SO WHAT DO I NEED TO DO?
All you have to do is EXACTLY what you have been doing with 1 key difference: every time your follower buys your product, YOU get paid, not some other brand and if they buy that product monthly, you STILL get paid! Doesn't that sound like so much fun? To get paid every month for the same customer?
Anyone who has experience in the industry is doing this exact thing, it just hasn't trickled down to the masses yet. And by the time it does, you will be one of millions doing it. Wouldn't it be great to be one of the first to monetize social media in a way that the crowd haven't figured out yet?
You don't have to do ANYTHING different. Your focus would still be on growing your Instagram account, posting what you and your followers enjoy, but now you're actually going to get paid for it, because you're promoting your own product alongside everything else. But Elena, how do I sell a product or service? I don’t have marketable skills and I have NO idea how to manufacture a product.
Scroll down to read about how to select the right product and company to distribute.
NOT ALL COMPANIES ARE THE SAME
There are plenty of companies that allow distributors to make money, but not all companies are the same, though. You have to be very careful in selecting the right ones. When I realized that, I set out to find companies that fit a very specific criteria and asked the following questions:
Is the company paying high commissions? (most companies pay 10-15%)
Do they allow you to onboard other distributors and become a team manager where you can earn commission off your whole team’s sales?
Do they offer a product that is beneficial to people, is clean, natural and does not contain chemicals? ( there are too many of bad things on the market, do you really need to promote more?)
Does the product make people’s lives better? Is there a lot of competition out there in direct sales? Or is the product unique?
Do you have to pay monthly fees and larger start up cost to get started?
I made sure to research all this for you beforehand and find companies that offer THE BEST opportunity that aspiring influencers can jump on and monetize their social media while building their influence, living the life they want, wherever they want, however they want. I have spent years looking for a perfect company that fit our criteria and allowed virtually anyone to start earning comfortable income within a year or sooner from anywhere in the world. We finally found two best ones, after disqualifying hundreds of them.
Making a 6-7 figure income on social media is easy if you know the trick. And that trick is having a product to sell that you make a good margin on and your audience can get behind. For beauty and fashion influencers, we found a beauty brand, for lifestyle, travel and wellness, we found a travel friendly energy & health supplement
Criteria for our search was:
Manufactured in USA
Highest commissions in the industry
Products work phenomenally
Natural non-toxic products without chemicals or artificial ingredients
Low start up cost, and no monthly fees
Available Internationally
New or newer on the market ( room for growth).
If your ambition is solely to get some free products and post cute pictures on Instagram, then you are where you need to be.
However, you are reading this, because your true desire is to spend your days creating content, having fun on social media, sharing what you love with your followers AND making a GOOD living and maybe traveling the world or spending time with your family without spending years and years of building, begging, prospecting and collaborating for free.
Read the specifics and take the quiz below to determine which distribution company is a better fit for you or read some facts below to get an idea of each company.
If you feel you need help and guidance on which is a better fit, feel free to reach out.
PERFECT FOR BEAUTY AND FASHION INFLUENCERS
NON-TOXIC , VEGAN, ANTI-AGING HAIR CARE AND SKIN CARE
PERFECT FOR WELLNESS, FITNESS, LIFESTYLE, TRAVEL, FAMILY AND MOM INFLUENCERS
NATURAL ENERGY, MOOD, WEIGHT LOSS, SLEEP, IMMUNE SYSTEM, DIGESTION, HEALTH SUPPLEMENTS
Get in touch with me!
