Social Media
How to make money online from social media.
Today, influencers on Social Media are making more than they (or anyone else) thought possible.
From promoting products they’ve created themselves, taking advantage of affiliate marketing, or simply using a new song in their stories or posts, the sky really is the limit for Social Media in the 21st century.
Lets take a deeper look into how you can use social media to build a strong and profitable business (or just use it for a side hustle), and the tools that can help you build and acquire a residual income.
Building a Brand
Content is king.
Yes, we’ve all heard this saying before, but when it comes to making money on social media, content really is everything.
If you already have a pretty large social media following but you’re not getting offers to advertise products, or people pushing you to pursue what you’re doing, then you’re probably not doing enough.
On the contrary, if you are getting pursued and you haven’t taken advantage of it, then now is the time.
Many people have become entrepreneurs primarily on social media alone, and it stems from consistent posting of the same things (their chosen niche).
In this post we are going to talk about a few key things to help you start making an income from social media.
The 6 key ingredients to making money from social media
- Picking a niche
- Deciding what to do with that niche
- Choosing the right tools to help you design your posts/videos
- Setting yourself up for success
- Building your followers/subscribers
- Asking for help
How to pick a niche that will help you start making money online with social media
Pick something you’re passionate about
When it comes to picking a niche, you’re going to want to pick something you’re passionate about; something you could see yourself making a living on.
Are you passionate about painting? Travel? Egyptian culture? Making Twitch emotes? Candles?
Brainstorm and form a list of things you love doing, what you’re passionate about, and what you’re ultimate goals are.
TIP: Focusing on something specific with in your niche is going to help you to build a stronger following.
Focus on something specific
What does this mean?
If you’ve chosen the game niche, you could be all over with the content.
Instead, you’ll want to focus on something more specific within that niche like Fortnight apparel, 10 second headshot video clips, or twitch profile designs, for example.
Focusing on something specific lets your followers know that they are going to continue to consistently get the content they want and expect from you.
Which brings us to the next point.
Choose something that inspires you, that you can create a lot of content about
Whatever you’ve chosen as your niche should inspire you.
Furthermore, it should get you excited.
You’ll be posting about your niche on a constant basis, so you’re going to want to make sure you really love your niche, and therefore, you won’t get tired of posting about it.
If you’re struggling to find a niche there are keyword tools out there to help you.
Best Free and Paid Keyword Research Tools
Where to start once you’ve chosen your niche
Once you’ve chosen your niche you’ll have to decide what to do with it, and where to use it effectively.
Is it going to be something you’ll post videos about? Pictures? Clips? Merch? Skits?
What is the best way to stay consistent and never run out of content with your niche?
Can you incorporate your niche into several different platforms in time?
TIP: Just like starting with one niche, you’re going to want to also start with one social media platform.
If you have a content scheduler, however, you’ll be able to post on multiple social platforms with a single click.
The important thing is to be able to provide your full attention, stay organized, and stay consistent.
Setting yourself up for success simply means coming up with a plan.
You’re going to want to sit down and think about your niche. How can you become profitable with this? What steps can you take? What would make it most enjoyable for you?
Content and consistency need to be your biggest concern. The better your content, the more followers you’ll gain. The more clout you’ll receive, the better your chance of bringing in a consistent income.
Now let’s talk about some of the ways each Social Media platform can work with various niches.
Incorporating pictures and videos
Pictures
When it comes to pictures, you most certainly can add your own pictures you’ve taken based on your niche.
However, sometimes you just don’t have the time to do so.
Thankfully, there are sites you can go to find stunning images that are just right for your niche.
Additionally, it’s actually pretty easy to create your own as well, with sites such as Canva.
A great place to get high-quality images is Vecteezy, they have a lot of great royalty-free images available to use.
Always check to make sure that the images you’re using are available for commercial use (royalty-free) and what their policies are.
For if they are not, this could be a violation of copywriting.
Videos with your niche.
Videos have been trending and climbing for quite some time now, and it’s not stopping any time soon.
In fact, YouTube itself is the 2nd most used search engine in the world, following Google, and reaches more 18-49 year olds in an average week than all cable TV networks combined.
What’s more, 69% of people voted they prefer video over text when learning about a particular service or product.
TikTok is another one for the books, coming in at 2 billion downloads since launching in August of 2018.
This short video platform has helped many users become successful and is a great starting point for beginners.
If you’re looking for idea pins, the Snaptik allows you to save videos from TikTok and post the link into Pinterest for an idea pin.
Find a niche you love that has low competition. Then start to post consistently with videos or posts. Ultimately this will start bringing in a solid income if you do it right.
Better yet, there are tools out there to help you.
Don’t want to show your face on video? No problem.
Hate the sound of your voice? Again, no problem.
There are so many options for video creation, voiceovers, and audio effects now. Creating a video just the way you want it is more than possible.
Part of creating successful videos is investing in a great video editing software program.
Unpaid versions are typically going to have their downside, as enhancements and features can be limited.
However, there are some great free ones out there if you’re just starting out.
Canva is a great place to start, as they have already made videos, GIFs, and animations available for you to use.
Additionally, there are a ton of great video editing software programs out there, you just have to find the one that fits you and your nice best.
Understanding SEO
Understanding SEO (search engine optimization) simply put, means figuring out how to market your videos and help people actually find them.
Just like keyword research (which will also play a vital role when you post your videos), SEO is essential to creating a successful channel.
And also, just like keyword research, there are tools out there to help you.
Let’s take a look at some highly rated SEO tools.
TubeBuddy is the #1 rated YouTube Channel Management toolkit extension and. is practically a must-have for all YouTubers to optimize their channel and increase productivity. There are tons of perks to signing up with TubeBuddy including video embedding, SEO tools, content scheduling, thumbnail creation, keyword research, search rank tracking, and so much more. Basically, everything and anything you could need to create, keep and continue to have a successful YouTube Channel.
VidIQ is a close 2nd (and in some cases first, depending on who you ask) is another management SEO tool that ranks pretty high and offers the same features as TubeBuddy. Some creators use both of these management tools to reach the highest potential in their YouTube channels in regards to SEO, keyword research and search ranking, ultimately leading to more subscribers.
Considering both of these tools are quite affordable, combining them could be an option for you as well, to get the most subscribers to your channel or social media page and subsequently, help you to make money online with social media.
Of course, you don’t HAVE to use videos in your posts to gain the attention of your followers, but we hope with the amount of emphasis we’ve put on creating them, you understand how much it will help you when trying to make money with social media.
Now that you’ve done your keyword research to pick a nice, learned how to design, create, and ultimately optimize them with SEO tools, it’s finally time to talk about how you’re actually going to make money with your channel or page.
Monetizing your Social Media Platform
There are many ways to make your social media stream profitable, and a lot of them are found on this website.
Affiliate Marketing and Digital Products are some of the main and most profitable out there.
However, having multiple streams of income from different sources is going to be what really helps you begin your journey to success.
If you want to sell Digital products on social media, Facebook and Instagram both have the option to open a shop on their platform.
Another way to make money with Instagram is to become a partner for your favorite brands.
If you want to view these in more depth, check out the Affiliate Marketing and Digital Products pages, but for now let’s continue with some other ways to make money with social media.
Ad Sense is a simple and free ad program that allows to show relevant and engaging ads on your site and earn commissions each time someone watches or clicks on them.
You can customize these to your liking or leave them the way they are. Either way, it’s a great way to make a little extra.
ShopYourLikes is another way you can make extra money through your social media channels. Designed specifically for influencers, ShopYourLikes seamlessly tracks how your followers generate traffic for your favorite brands.
They have direct partnerships with leading department stores and retailers, offering you the highest payouts of the industry. With this platform, you’ll earn commission based on the swipes from your stories and clicks from your content.
They also offer a chrome extension that makes it easier to create the links to your favorite products
Sell rights to your photos
If you’re an active social media user, you know that taking a good picture can increase your followers.
Love taking pictures and think they could be sell worthy?
You can upload them onto sites such as Flickr, iStock Photo, Shutterstock, SmugMug, EyeEm, Canva, Photocase, 500px,Vecteezy, and more, or feed your competitive side and check out GuruShots. This site allows you to compete against other users with your photos.
To sell photos directly from your Instagram, check out Instaproofs.
Selling your photos is a great way to start building your brand, and start seeing some pretty easy (and fun) success. To find more ways like this to earn an income online, check out the blog on Freelancing, where we discuss how you can help others while building on online business.
Building your subscribers and followers
To create income from social media, getting a large following certainly makes it easier.
With all of the tools we have today, you’ll have no problem coming up with ways to get more followers AND make more money at the same time.
For example, Social Pilot is one of the best social media marketing platforms on the market today, and for good reason.
Features of Social Pilot
- Post scheduling to all social media accounts including bulk scheduling (multiple platforms quickly)
- Social media post calendar to view all of your upcoming posts in an easy to view interface
- RSS feeds automation of your own blog posts and other relatable posts available within a simple search bar
- Browser extension to retrieve content from a blog post with a single click
- Social inbox to connect and reply easily with your followers
- Access to resources from industry experts and top marketers including blog posts, videos, ebooks, and webinars
- ShareIt tool to easily search and share relevant blog posts within your niche
- Integration with Canva, Dropbox, and Zapier
- Recommended by some of the biggest social media influencers
- And more
Compared to its competitors, Social Pilot has earned a gold star for its usability, integrations, and pricing.
Plus, they offer a 14 day free trial.
View other Social Media Schedulers
Trello is another great one to add to the list.
With Trello, you can create boards with ideas, to do lists, videos, pictures, and many other things. What’s more, you can add other team members to your Trello account to easily track, share, and communicate ideas and stay on track.
Combining both Trello and Social Pilot can insanely benefit you on your way to making money with social media.
Check out this video to get a better understand of what you can accomplish with Trello.
Build your own brand with merch
Creating merchandise that showcases your brand is another way to start earning income with social media.
By offering merch, it shows you want your brand to be recognized, something to be proud of, and more professional.
Websites such as Printify, Teespring, and Redbubble help you to create your own products to sell on whatever platforms you choose.
For more information on creating merchandise, check out our Best Print on Demand Sites.
Ending this post, it’s important to remember that this website has many categories on how you can make money online.
And all of them can be combined.
To become a successful online entrepreneur you should have knowledge in every one of these categories.
A great tip for figuring this out is to always have your niche in mind and continuously be asking yourself how you can enhance it.
You should now have a decent grasp on how you can start making money online with social media.
Make sure to check out our other posts for details on some of the things we discussed in more detail.