Ways To Make Money on Social Media as an Influencer

If you want to learn how to make money on social media, then these are some of the best ways to do so. Use these ways to make money on social media and monetize your influence. And, don’t forget the basics of posting relevant and good-quality content to keep your followers engaged and loyal.

• Become A Brand Ambassador

Lately, ongoing ambassadorships are thought to be the most effective method of influencer marketing for their structural nature. Companies hire brand ambassadors for long-term relationships and pay them on a retainer basis when influencers are naturally a good fit and align well with the brand and the target market. This would normally be an extended contract lasting for at least a couple of months. In some cases, the contract may last for several years as well.

Brand ambassadors can be big-time influencers and celebrities, or they can be more local, micro-influencers, depending on the goals of the campaign and the brand. And it is the responsibility of the influencer to become the supreme expert on the brand or product and broadcast his or her partnership with the brand on all social media channels.

You can look for top brands that offer a brand ambassador program and see if those brands would be suitable for you. Or you can even check out whether or not some of your favorite brands have an ambassador program you could sign up for.

Roberto Malizia is a great example of a brand ambassador. Check out his Instagram to get a visual of his life as a clothing ambassador for the luxury brand, Harrolds.

• Social Media Sponsored Posts

It is one of the most popular and common ways for influencers to make money on social media. And it is familiar to most audiences, brands, and creators by now. A sponsored social media post is when a brand engages an influencer to create content featuring the brand and share it with their followers.

There are many forms of sponsored social media posts, such as review posts, informational posts, or simply feature and tag the products. And with product placement, reviews, event coverage, and more, influencers partner with brands to promote brand awareness as well as specific products and services through social media in exchange for payment or products.

• Affiliate Marketing

Leveraging affiliate marketing is an excellent way for influencers to make money on social media. It generally won’t be an influencer’s only source to income for it is not reliable or steady. However, it is a good way to earn incremental revenue.

Affiliate marketing is typically on a pay-per-sale, pay-per-click or pay-per-lead model. And once you’ve been accepted as an affiliate marketer for the brand, you will be provided with a unique link or code that will be used for tracking your conversions. For every conversion resulting from your link or code, you will earn a commission. And these links or codes give followers and audiences an opportunity to purchase featured products, download apps, visit specific web pages, or sign up for services.

For brands, it’s a good way to objectively measure how much influence an influencer actually has, and for influencers, it’s great to earn an income from the brands and products you generally love, support and naturally endorse.

•  AD Revenue Share

Many influencers also take a sizeable share of their advertising revenues. Some influencers are earning some ad revenue share with the success of native ads on publisher websites.

Services such as Google's AdWords allow bloggers to receive a portion of advertising revenue from sidebar and banner ads. With enough traffic, bloggers can make a lot of money from AdWords.

Similarly, AdSense allows YouTube users to make a portion of their revenue from programmatic advertising, such as scrolling ads, sponsored banners, and sidebars. YouTube users get 55% of their ad revenue from their pages and video.

• Webinars

Webinars can be a cost-effective revenue model for influencers. A webinar is essentially a seminar conducted over the internet and is usually for an educational purpose to provide information in an engaging, tutorial-style format. Webinars can either be live or be pre-recorded and shared across video, blog and social media platforms.

To earn money from webinars, influencers can charge consumers to access the content, collaborate with a brand to produce the content or use the format for lead generation.

• Individual Influencer Business Ventures

Successful influencers might also make money by striking out on their own, forming their own companies, merchandise, apps, and more. Influencers are typically business-savvy creatives who have used their skills to create a personal brand that ultimately drives revenue.

Kayla Itsines leveraged her social media fitness empire to launch her Bikini Body Training Company, along with several ebooks and a fitness app called Sweat With Kayla.

And YouTuber Jack Douglass has set up a merch store in which his followers can get products related to his channel. The store contains products such as t-shirts with catchphrases and quotes from his popular content.