How To Make Money on Instagram in 2027

If you have an engaged following, posting on Instagram can become a money-making venture. There are several ways to get started, including in-app monetization features and brand deals.

In 2026, brands are spending more on creators: Sapio Research and social media software provider CreatorIQ found that surveyed organizations spent an average of $4.8 million annually on creators, up 33% from 2025.

Learn how to make money on Instagram, plus platform requirements and factors that affect how much you can earn. You’ll also get insights from creators who have used their followings to start successful businesses.

6 ways to make money on Instagram

• Start affiliate marketing
• Offer paid subscriptions
• Earn Badges and Gifts from fans
• Partner with brands on sponsored content
• Try Instagram’s bonus program
• Sell on Instagram

Start affiliate marketing

With affiliate marketing, creators earn a commission every time someone discovers a product (and makes a purchase) through their content. Businesses track this through unique affiliate links and codes.

In April 2026, Instagram Head Adam Mosseri announced that eligible creators could earn commission by tagging products directly in Instagram Reels, something they hadn’t been able to do since 2022. The program is limited to products already in Meta’s brand catalog and to creators over the age of 18 with more than 1,000 followers.

If you don’t meet the requirements or aren’t able to access the feature yet, you can share affiliate links in your Instagram bio and Instagram Stories. This method also lets you earn money from products that aren’t in Meta’s catalog.

Influencer-turned-founder Pia Mance recommends applying to join an affiliate network like ShopMy, which lets creators curate virtual storefronts with their recommended products. 

“It’s really nice because I’m an influencer on it, my brand’s on it, and then I liked it so much I invested in it,” Pia says on an episode of Shopify Masters. 

Pia says creator partnerships are an important part of Heaven Mayhem’s marketing strategy. “I personally would rather buy something from an influencer talking about it because I associate them with knowing good things, and then I have more attachment to the brand rather than just seeing an ad,” Pia says.

Offer paid subscriptions

Once you have regular fans and followers, you can offer them the chance to engage with exclusive content as paying subscribers. 

Instagram’s subscription program is open to users who are 18 or older, live in an eligible country, and have at least 10,000 followers. Creators must also meet Instagram’s partner monetization and content monetization policies. 

You can also use third-party subscription platforms like Patreon and Substack to promote your subscription content on your Instagram profile. You can even paywall certain content on your own website and direct your followers there. These options help you build multiple revenue streams and establish an audience outside Instagram.

Ally Walsh and Casey Wojtalewicz are Instagram influencers and the cofounders of Canyon Coffee. They use their Instagram travel content to support their business by creating travel guides for their favorite cities and sharing them on Canyon Coffee’s website. 

The guides are email-gated rather than paywalled—a long-term strategy the founders credit with helping drive direct-to-consumer (D2C) sales. 

“That’s how we started our email list,” Casey says on an episode of Shopify Masters. “We’d go to Portugal and make a travel guide with all these beautiful photos.”

Earn Badges and Gifts from fans

Think of Instagram Live Badges like tips you receive from your fans, similar to tip-style tools on Twitch and TikTok. They allow you to engage with your community in real time while earning revenue. 

During an Instagram livestream, viewers can purchase badges that pay the creator directly and highlight their comments. Instagram users can buy badges in increments of 99¢, $1.99, and $4.99, and can spend up to $250 per livestream.

Instagram Gifts work similarly, although you use them to monetize Reels instead of livestreams. Viewers purchase stars to gift creators, who then receive a monthly payout from Instagram at the rate of 1¢ per star.

You need at least 10,000 followers to earn money through badges in the US and 500 followers to earn gifts. You must also follow Instagram’s partner monetization policies and Instagram gifts creator terms. 

Partner with brands on sponsored content

Sponsored content is a win-win for businesses and creators. Brands gain access to creators’ audiences, and influencers get paid to create content.

For sponsored Instagram posts to be successful, however, they need to feel authentic. Jen Yu, cofounder and CEO of skincare brand Jaxon Lane, discusses what she looks for in influencer partners on Shopify Masters.

“When we see an influencer, we think, ‘Does this person really believe in this thing, or are they just doing it for money?’” says Jen. “There has to be authenticity.”

As a creator, you can help ensure authenticity by seeking out brands you genuinely like. When you reach out, think about how you could incorporate the company’s products into your content organically.

“A recurring style or series that brands could then plug into is a really nice way to partner with brands,” says Rachel Karten, a social media consultant and author of the newsletter Link in Bio. 

Series help creators earn from their existing Reels and other types of posts without starting from scratch, and they give brands an established viewership.

For example, influencer Alix Earle is known for her get-ready-with-me (GRWM) content. 

“That’s a very easy place for a makeup brand to plug themselves into,” Rachel says. “Her audience looks forward to those specific videos.” 

Now, Alix uses GRWM Reels to promote her own skincare brand, Reale Actives.

No matter how authentic your collaboration feels, Instagram’s branded content policies require sponsored posts (“content that features or is influenced by a business partner for an exchange of value”) to include a paid partnership label.

Try Instagram’s bonus program

With Instagram’s invite-only bonus program, Meta pays invited creators based on how their Reels, carousels, and single-image posts perform. As with other in-app monetization methods like subscriptions, badges, and gifts, you must follow Instagram’s partner monetization policies and content monetization policies. Invites currently go to creators 18 or older in the US and other eligible countries who meet minimum view counts, such as five million views in the last three months for Reels creators.

There are two types of bonuses: for posts and for Reels. Each program has slightly different requirements. 

To calculate your payout, Meta counts up to 150 pieces of content you’ve shared, from the week you activate your invitation until the end of the bonus period. You get paid based on the number of plays (on Reels) and views (on image posts) you’ve received.

Sell on Instagram

You can monetize your Instagram audience by starting an online store and promoting your products on your profile. 

If you’ve developed a strong personal brand as a creator, consider selling merch through a print-on-demand (POD) model. You create relevant designs and list products on your storefront, a customer places an order, and your POD partner manufactures and ships the product directly to the buyer. 

If you’re on Shopify, you can use a POD app to automate communication between your online store and your POD partner.

A more time-consuming (and potentially lucrative) route is to start a business related to the personal brand you’ve cultivated on Instagram. Pia did it with her jewelry company Heaven Mayhem, Ally and Casey did it with Canyon Coffee, and Alix did it with Reale Actives.

All of these creator-led brands have Instagram Shops, which let viewers browse products on their Instagram pages before being directed to the brands’ online stores to check out. 

If you’re on Shopify, you can add the Facebook & Instagram app to your online store to sync inventory and customer data between your Shopify site and your Instagram Shop. You can then manage product listings, inventory, and fulfillment directly from your Shopify admin.

Factors that affect how much money you make on Instagram

These four factors affect how much money a creator can make on Instagram.

Follower count

One way to categorize Instagram influencers and their earning potential is to sort them into five tiers based on their follower count. As a general reference, influencer pricing tends to correspond with these follower numbers:

• Nano-influencer: 1,000 to 10,000 followers ($25 to $150 per post)

• Micro-influencer: 10,001 to 100,000 followers ($250 to $5,000 per post)

• Mid-tier influencer: 100,001 to 500,000 followers ($1,600 to $10,000 per post)

• Macro-influencer: 500,001 to 1 million followers ($5,000 to $25,000 per post)

• Mega-influencer: 1 million or more followers ($10,000 to more than $50,000 per post)

Pricing varies based on the number of posts requested, the value of an influencer’s audience to a brand, and additional factors such as production expenses or exclusivity rights.

Engagement rate

When evaluating potential influencers for brands, Ben Fingeret, vice president of social at communications agency Full Picture, says he looks at creators’ engagement and the community they’ve built. An engaged follower base can signal to potential brand partners that your audience is paying attention to your content and will therefore be paying attention to your influencer marketing and affiliate content. 

Your engagement rate measures the likes, comments, and shares on your posts. It doesn’t necessarily correspond to follower count.

“Someone with a million followers that they either bought or they just got because they’re that famous is a very differently engaged community than someone that’s really worked and grown with their community,” Ben says.

Affiliate marketing commission rates

The commissions you receive when followers buy through your affiliate links—and your overall earnings—vary depending on the types of products you promote, your performance as an affiliate, and your affiliate partners.

For example, if you sign up for the Amazon Associates program, you’ll earn up to a 10% commission. Lizzy Masotta, a senior product lead at Shopify who works on the affiliate program Shopify Collabs, says you might start at a higher commission rate (like 15%) if you work with a smaller brand. Lizzy says you might be able to earn even higher rates once you show good performance and earn your brand partner’s trust.

Number of income streams

How much money you make on Instagram depends on how many monetization streams you pursue. Alongside brand partnerships, affiliate marketing, and in-app monetization tools, consider selling your own products to maximize your Instagram earnings and drive traffic to your online store.