How To Make Money on Social Media

With 3.8 billion active users, social media is a goldmine of opportunity. We can’t physically dig for you, but we can show you seven of the best places to bring your pick and shovel. That’s right – with our tailored tips, you can start earning from where you’re sitting right now.

Learning how to make money on social media doesn’t need to be tricky, because our social media strategy tips are for everyone. Whether you’re a social media newbie or tech powerhouse, you’ll find a money-making method to suit your style, along with our very own difficulty metric to help you decide which paths to pursue.

The best ways to make money on social media are:

1. Set up an Instagram Shop
2. Begin Affiliate Marketing
3. Join the Influencer Community
4. Become a Social Media Manager
5. Start a YouTube Channel
6. Promote Your Art on Pinterest
7. Monetize Your Music on SoundCloud

Without further ado, let’s find out how you can make some social media money….

1. Set up an Instagram Shop

Hoarding clothes in your wardrobe? Stuck with leftover stock from your closed brick-and-mortar shop? Either way, you’ve got dollars lying around the house.

In 2019, Instagram launched its Checkout feature. Alongside the Shopping tool (used to direct shoppers to your own online store), Checkout has made it even quicker and easier to make money on social media. With this feature, users can buy your products directly through the platform. Checkout has proven popular, with 130 million Instagram users tapping on shop posts each month.

Opening an Instagram shop is easy, particularly if you already own an ecommerce store. All you have to do is set up an Instagram Business account, then connect your catalogue to Instagram. Don’t just take our word for it – check out the official Instagram shop setup guide to see just how easy it is.

Don’t have an online store already? No problem. You can create one quickly and easily using Shopify, Instagram’s official ecommerce partner. Also, seeing as the Checkout feature keeps the user on Instagram, you don’t even need to build a whole website for your ecommerce store – you just need a catalogue of products to sell.

2. Promote Affiliate Products

No products to sell? No problem. You can use affiliate links to direct social media users to another website, earning commission for each click or sale completed via your link. It’s one of the most popular ways to make money on social media, and one of our favorite online business ideas.

The easiest way to start your affiliate career is through Amazon. You can review Amazon products, then direct your social media followers to that product page via an affiliate link – earning up to 10% for each sale.

To become a successful affiliate marketer, it’s best that you start a blog to review and discuss affiliate products. You can then share your blog post on social media channels to gain maximum exposure.

When writing your review, it’s best to remain transparent with your readers, and not be afraid to mention aspects that you don’t like about the product or service. Building trust is essential for making money on social media, so don’t break it!

3. Join the Influencer Community

Let’s say you’ve been sharing content on social media related to your chosen hobby – golf, for example – for a while now. Thanks to your steady flow of valuable golf content, you’ve built a loyal base of 1,000-20,000 followers who are interested in what you’re sharing.

If you join an influencer community website, golf brands could start paying you to advertise their products to your social media followers. This is called influencer marketing. Or more specifically, ‘micro influencer marketing’, because you have fewer than around 20,000 followers.

There are a number of influencer community websites, such as Stack Influencer, which make it easy to make money online as a micro influencer. However, this method isn’t viable for everyone – you need a relatively large and loyal follower base (i.e. users who engage with what you’re saying) in order to become an influencer.

4. Become a Social Media Manager

91% of retail brands use two or more social media channels, while 81% of small to medium sized businesses use at least one social platform. With social media advertising becoming more popular than ever, the majority of companies will need help managing their social accounts.

That’s where you (could) come in!

Whether a startup needs a pro to help them grow, or a marketing department needs more hands on deck to build an advertising campaign on Twitter, you’ll find countless job roles online related to social media management.

If you understand social trends and you’ve got snappy captions coming out of your ears, then this might be the perfect job for you. Seeing as the majority of us are working from home these days, you’ll first need to ensure your online resume is up to scratch before you start applying for your new job!

5. Start a YouTube Channel

Across the world, people watch 1 billion hours of YouTube videos every day.  With viewership numbers like those, there’s no better place to make money on social media through vlogging than on YouTube. Just ask YouTube’s highest earner, Ryan, who brought in a record $22m in 2018.

We’re not saying you’ll become a multi-millionaire like Ryan, but with YouTube paying $3-$5 per 1,000 video views on average, you could start earning a sizable income on the side. Usually, YouTube will start paying you once your channel has reached 1,000 followers, so get all your friends and family to share, share, share!

To become a paid vlogger or video creator, all you need is a reasonable camera (most of the recent smartphones have killer cameras), a microphone, and an interesting topic to discuss on screen that your followers will love watching, liking, and sharing online.

You can also join the YouTube Partner Program to access a wider range of monetization features, as well as a video creator support team. Here’s a quick snapshot of what you’ll need to do to be eligible for the Partner Program:

• Follow all the YouTube monetization policies
• Live in a country or region where the Partner Program is available
• Have more than 4,000 valid public watch hours in the last 12 months
• Have more than 1,000 subscribers
• Have a linked AdSense account

6. Promote Your Art on Pinterest

What if we told you that you could turn your hobby into a part-time job – or even a full time job? Ambition never hurt anyone, after all.

Anyway, now we’ve piqued your interest, you could start earning money through Pinterest by advertising your arts and crafts.

You could also use any other visual social media channels, such as Instagram (remember the Checkout feature?), Facebook, or Twitter, but Pinterest is designed for showcasing your artistic tastes and talents. As a result, you’ll find the most appropriate customers on this platform.

Whether you want to sell jewelry online through Pinterest, or sell fashionable furniture through Facebook, you’ll need to build an online store for your products in order to accept payments if you don’t have one already. We’d recommend using Shopify for selling on Pinterest, because it offers ‘buyable pins’ which you can simply attach to your photos, taking users directly to your catalogue of crafts. Cool, huh?

7. Monetize Your Music on SoundCloud

Hold your horses. We’re not saying you’ll become the next J Biebz, but you can still earn money through SoundCloud if you sign up to the Premier subscription, with the platform paying artists approximately $35 per 1,000 streams.

Another option is to link your SoundCloud music to your online store, where you can then sell your songs as downloadable products. The majority of ecommerce website builders, like Wix Ecommerce or Shopify, will let you sell these types of products.

Don’t have the time to build an online store? You can earn money directly through SoundCloud, but it’s a lot harder to become successful this way. For SoundCloud to start monetizing your songs, you’ll need to acquire 5,000 plays in the past month from a set list of countries.

Which Method is Right for me?

The money-making method you should choose will depend on a few things. First of all, though, let’s recap our list.

The best ways to make money on social media are:

1. Set up an Instagram Shop
2. Promote Affiliate Products
3. Join the Influencer Community
4. Become a Social Media Manager
5. Join the YouTube Partner Program
6. Promote Your Art on Pinterest
7. Monetize Your Music on SoundCloud

Which should you pick? Well, setting up an Instagram shop, promoting your art on Pinterest, and monetizing your music on SoundCloud will require an ecommerce store to sell products. You may already own one and you’re looking to promote your stock on social media, or you’ll need to create a new ecommerce store from scratch – which, as we’ve shown, can be easily done by using Shopify or Wix.

Affiliate marketing and social media management are best suited to those of you with some writing experience, while vlogging on YouTube and selling your music on SoundCloud will demand hard work alongside heaps of creativity.

However, anyone can make money on social media using any of these methods – you just need to set your mind to it and work hard (cliché, but true!), and you can soon turn your tweets into stone cold cash.

That’s it from us! But, while you’re here, why not check out our 7-step guide to creating a social media strategy? We cover everything from goal-setting and understanding your audience, to creating a content calendar and optimizing your posts. Go check it out!

Written By

Dan Barraclough

Hi, I’m Dan:

As a writer on Website Builder Expert, and with the help of our expert researchers, I became an authority on website builders (more specifically, in ecommerce platforms) by testing and reviewing each of the platforms myself and writing numerous articles. Since leaving Website Builder Expert in 2021, I’ve gone on to write about web design and ecommerce growth for sites like Nerdwallet and Growth Division. 

At the start I had no coding or design experience, but through hardwork and a love of getting people online, I can confidently guide you through how to get the most out of each one.Starting as a writer for Website Builder Expert in late 2018, Dan has since become a pro in the world of website builders. He’s grown to love ecommerce platforms in particular and in his time here focused his energy on researching, testing, and reviewing each platform. 

Although Dan has since left Website Builder Expert, you can still find his helpful advice online. He’s written for big publications like the International Business Times, discussing the rate of ecommerce returns, and has crossed the border into the world of website hosting. By broadening his writing horizons, he helps even more people get online.

Since leaving Website Builder Expert in December 2021, Dan has gone on to freelance writing in order to spread his talents to other online businesses and has written articles for both Nerdwallet and Growth Division. You can see what else he gets up to on his LinkedIn.Linkedin: Dan Barraclough

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