Almost every one of us has a social media account these days. Some of you may even have thousands of followers or subscriptions. However, what purpose do they solve if they can’t get you any revenue?
If you have a social media account and want to monetize it, you are at the right place. Know that you don’t need millions of followers or views or even a product to sell. Read this article further to determine a few ways to use the potential of your social media accounts for earning money.
What Does It Mean To Monetize Your Social Media?
Social media monetization means getting revenue from your social media account.
Now, social media is a great place where you can display your brand and sell your work. For example, if you are a photographer, you can promote your prints and presets on social media. The same goes for a baker selling cakes or a variety of bread and an artist selling their art.
Don’t worry! If you are one of those people who doesn’t have a product to sell, we will further cover ways to monetize your accounts too.
Social media monetization is basically earning revenue from where most people spend their time all day.
Why Monetize Your Social Media Account?
As mentioned above, an individual spends a huge part of their time on social media each day. Hence, why not earn from it?.
You can implement simple ways on your accounts to earn money and gain popularity through it.
These are the two most important questions that arise in each person’s mind before beginning their journey of putting in efforts and time into monetizing their accounts.
Question: Is this going to be easy?
Answer: No
Question: Is it achievable?
Answer: Totally!
The answer mentioned above is enough reason to start turning a time pass or a hobby for many into a source of income.
1. Your Marketing Plan
The basic thing needed to start earning from social media is to get engaging followers.
Pay attention and understand the difference here. I am not talking about more followers; I am talking about engaging followers or subscribers.
Engaging followers are the ones who view, like, comment and share your posts or your videos on social media platforms. These are the people who really enjoy your shared content.
Therefore, the important thing to note and analyze is the engagement rate of your social media profile. If your engagement rate is around:
- 2 to 4 percent is considered a good engagement
- 4 to 10 percent shows that your content would be great and valuable to your audience
- More than 10 percent is a case of rarity and indicates excellence
How do you calculate the engagement rate of your profile?
So, if you are using Instagram and you have around 2000 followers, your average likes and comments on each post are 200.
Then by simple percentage method, your engagement is 10% which is again awesome! Of course, you can check your insights on Instagram too. Alternatively, you can use online tools to check the engagement rate of any account.
Now you know what your engagement rate is. Next, you may ask: Why is it important?
An engagement rate is an indication of how many people are your actual potential buyers.
Again, don’t worry if you don’t have a product; we will resolve all of that too.
Having a marketing strategy is really crucial to increase engagement.
Firstly, understand your audience. Whether you are handling a youtube account, an Instagram account, a Facebook page, or a Twitter account, it doesn’t matter what platform you use.
You must understand the kind and type of your followers or subscribers. This will help you create more valuable content. For example, if you are an influencer and follow you for funny videos, you must know it.
Hence, it is crucial to know the reason behind why people are following you. Furthermore, it will help you focus on providing things that they enjoy.
All this may sound very over-talked about and cliche, yet many people don’t know what they are doing. Hence, you get an upper edge if you know what they are here for and what they like about your account.
To remind you again, know that more subscribers or followers are not gonna help you if they are not qualitative.
Imagine you have 50k followers that don’t engage with your post or even see them, then what’s the point of it? However, if you have 1000 followers with an engaging rate of 50%, you will make revenue out of them.
Don’t feel guilty! You are not robbing them. This is a win-win situation for you, your followers, and the social media platform.
2. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate links are the links you see at the bottom of any youtube video or the shopping links you see on any website.
Now, you can do this too. The way it functions is that the more clicks you get on those links, the more money that company pays you.
However, as mentioned earlier, first, you must know why your audience is here. For example, if your content is about photography and your links are about cupcakes, then there is less chance that users will click on that link, and hence your chance of earning revenue is less.
The first point is to understand what the audience likes and include only those things in your videos or posts.
For example, if you wear a cool jacket while filming the video, that might be less relevant to them than putting links about camera accessories and photography stuff.
How much can you earn from affiliate links?
Different platforms have different plans; it depends on how many followers you have and how much engagement you are getting on them. If you are thinking about getting fake or paid followers, let me tell you, it will never work.
Planning to start with affiliate marketing? These are some known sites to collaborate and get paid:
- https://www.clickbank.com/
- https://affiliate-program.amazon.in/
- https://about.rewardstyle.com/company
3. Creating your product
Even if you don’t have your product, you can create one of your own.
For example, if you are an artist, you can sell your art; if you are a photographer, you can sell your prints.
These are some easy examples; now, what if you are not one of those? For example, let’s say you are a model, like to read or an actor.
Well, in this case, there are several things you can do.
Firstly, you can make your teaching platform, where you share your knowledge or teach your skills.
Secondly, you can create your merchandise, like a cap with your logo or t-shirt with your famous saying.
You don’t have to make something extraordinary; create something that people use and give it a customized feel.
If you already have a product, then what will you do to optimize on social media?
To sell your products, you can use Instagram’s store, which is very helpful, or if you have high sales, you can even put your product on amazon.
These points are not important if you have just started but are important steps to consider in advance.
Now, you need to understand if you only sell your product, your audience will be disturbed. Even though you have an amazing product, no one likes to hear about it all the time. You do not want your account to be a sales profile. Hence, ensure that 90% of your content is based on what your audience enjoys and believes in, while only 10% is based on your product.
If you give them a lot for free and just for giving sake, they will understand that if they buy your product, it will not be worth the money, even if it’s a cap, an online course, or your print.
Your audience should not feel bombarded with your marketing; remember to keep some content for their information.
Also, if your audience registers for emails or newsletters from your blog, please don’t spam their emails with an overload of information.
Keep in mind that they are your potential customers; therefore, treat them with care.
4. Sponsors & Collaboration
Getting sponsors and collaborations is another big way of generating revenue. In fact, these days, many people on social media are influencers.
The advantage of being an influencer is that if you can’t make a product or sell your own content, you can get sponsors or even collaborate with those who have products.
Getting sponsors is not so difficult if you have a good number of followers and high engagement. Seeing your reach and power, there are chances of sponsors reaching out to you. However, the efficient way will be not to wait for them to reach out and instead contact them.
Note that there will be terms like keeping their link in your bio or making one post about them each month, or anything beneficial to each party involved in the deal. By making a post or putting a link, you can earn money through commission on the sales done via you.
Many brands out there might have fewer followers than you, or even if you are popular on Facebook, they could be known on Instagram so you could collaborate across platforms and various kinds of brands.
Another way to collaborate is based on location. For example, you can consider one particular city, and if something famous is going on in that city, you could reach out to them for collaboration. Take the step – DM them, send an email, tweet on their Twitter page, and they will listen to you.
5. Ads On YouTube & Facebook
You must stick to one social media account so that your audience is not diverted. For example, you can keep your professional account and your personal account on another platform.
Consider these as suggestions and take advantage of the freedom of mixing and matching by your preference and your target audience. The most important thing here is to keep your audience in the center.
YouTube and Facebook are great places to put your videos and earn money. Infant, these social platforms will only give you money after your videos are eligible according to their criteria.
For example, the criteria on youtube need you to have 1000 followers and 4000 views over the year, which is difficult yet achievable.
Today, most people prefer to learn from videos or consider them for entertainment purposes too. Hence, youtube is a large platform and carries the most potential.
Once you get eligible, you can get paid for ads, which is another easy way to earn money.
Similarly, you can explore the potential of all the other platforms, be it affiliate links or getting sponsors; remember to focus on increasing your engagement rate.
Conclusion
To conclude, you too can earn money like many people are doing every day.
The idea is to create a win-win situation for all the parties involved. The audience will get valuable content; you will earn revenue; the sponsors will get brand awareness, etc.
Just follow these simple steps, as discussed in the article:
- Your marketing plan
- Affiliate marketing
- Creating your product
- Sponsors and collaboration
- Ads on YouTube and Facebook
Be in sync with the ongoing trends. Also, be aware of the algorithms of the platform that you are using. Finally, keep researching about your product and find new ways to optimize the platforms you are using.
It gets easy once you understand it.
Author Bio
Hetvi works as a Product Associate at Refrens.com – India’s most powerful platform for freelancer’s finances and growth. In addition, she has worked for some renowned companies as a Brand and Digital marketing associate. You can follow Refrens.com on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
