Proven! Here’s How to Make Money As a Social Media Influencer

Nowadays, being an influencer is a dream job for many people. You can earn money as an influencer simply by posting photos or videos on social media. If you are interested in becoming an influencer and want to know how to make money as a social media influencer, this article is for you.

How to Make Money As a Social Media Influencer in 2023

Successful influencers use their social media fan bases to collaborate with companies in their specialized market, providing them with effective promotions that greatly expand their brand’s reach, awareness, and reputation.

Here are some ways that social media influencers usually use to get money through social media.

1. From Sponsored/Featured Post

What is a sponsored post? A sponsored post is content that an influencer creates and shares with their followers on behalf of a brand. It can be one or two posts or a series of posts.

A sponsored social media post can take many forms, such as publishing brand-owned material, creating original photography, advertising a new product, introducing a new brand, or gaining exposure to a new target audience.

Some say it’s the primary source of income for most social media influencers, but it’s still debatable.

But the fact is, people are willing to pay some money to influencers with a large number of targeted followers just for one piece of content in the form of a picture or a short video that they post on social media.

This phenomenon occurs because influencer posts can significantly increase brand reach or product sales.

2. Becoming A Brand Ambassador

Brand ambassadors are partnerships based on agreements made between influencers to promote the products or services of a company. In simple terms, these influencers represent a particular brand.

These partnerships are often exclusive, which means that if an influencer already represents one brand, it is usually prohibited to represent the brand with similar products.

Then influencers will get rewards in some amount of cash, free products, or other benefits. And as an influencer, you can set a cost per post, receive a share of the sales, or even get paid by the brands you represent.

The amount usually varies depending on the level of followers and their engagement.

3. From Joining Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is where the referral partner receives a commission as a percentage of sales. If you are an influencer, the trick is to associate their affiliate products with your posts or content.

This method is suitable for measuring the influencer’s success rate in marketing a product. And as an influencer, you can easily calculate the payment you receive from the product you are promoting.

This affiliate marketing model usually uses a pay-per-sale, pay-per-click, or pay-per-lead model.

4. Appearing at Certain Events

As an influencer, you can also make money by hosting events or appearing on behalf of certain brands. Companies can collaborate with influencers who have a specific audience to draw attention to an event, such as the launch of a new product.

For example, you are a beauty influencer with followers who are concerned about the world of beauty. A company holding a particular brand of beauty product may invite you to appear at an event they are having, whether as a speaker, host, or guest star.

The event could be a regular talk show event, a new product launch, or something else.

This phenomenon occurs because influencers tend to have good engagement with their followers to build additional hype at the event.

5. Merchandising

Merchandising is an activity where an influencer makes a product to sell, especially to their followers on social media.

For example, if you are an influencer on social media with a fashion niche, you can create posts that invite followers to buy your custom-made hoodie.

Usually, this merchandising activity will be optimal if you have targeted followers and an online store so your customers can easily buy it.

However, to keep these merchandise products exclusive, the number of items produced must be limited. People are more likely to purchase merchandise because of its exclusivity in design and the limited number of products.

6. Creating Subscribed Content

Subscribed content is content you can enjoy when you pay a certain amount of money to the influencers you follow. If you are an influencer on YouTube, you can easily do this on your YouTube channel.

Of course, the subscribed content you will share is unique and worth sharing exclusively with your followers. For example, if you are a beauty vlogger who usually appears with stunning makeup, you can show your real face before applying makeup as subscription content.

Try offering discounts or free subscriptions if your followers subscribe for a set period to increase the popularity of your subscribed content.

So, you already understand how a social media influencer makes money. However, do you already know how to become an influencer? Don’t worry; in the next section, you can learn how to become an influencer.

How to Become a Social Media Influencer in 2023?

Becoming a social media influencer is more challenging than people think. There are some specific steps that you must take to become an influencer, and here’s what you should do to become an influencer.

1. Finding the right niche for you to cover consistently. Because your followers will be more targeted if you consistently discuss the same niche, you will also be more skilled and considered an expert by your followers on social media.

2. Try to be more focused on one particular social media channel. Choose the one that is easier to maintain and develops faster.

3. Then, you have to determine a content strategy that suits the followers and niche you are discussing and the quality and exposure. Never do blind posting or spam posting.

4. The most important thing is that you have to post quality content consistently, and you will decrease the quality of your engagement if you are inconsistent or suddenly disappear.

5. Try to see or make friends with other influencers who have already been successful because you can sometimes learn from your competitors as well.

Those are some ways you can learn to make money from social media. Now you know how to make money as a social media influencer. So, do you still want to be an influencer?