One of my Instagram accounts, which I’ve been growing since 30k, has finally grown to 100k. It’s been a long while but I’m satisfied with the progress now. My question is: how do I start making money from paid promotions? Account: Dessert/Baking niche
I first got into the Instagram game from a Reddit post. The Reddit post was basically this: grow your account to 80k followers through organic methods and people will start messaging you for shout outs. Well great. I was really happy when my account hit 80k but I was not receiving the paid shout out DMs as guided. This upset me but I have a lot of real-life employment opportunities so it wasn’t too concerning. I continued to grow the account.
Now I’m at 100k followers. This is amazing!! But I still have no paid promo DMs… no one is reaching out to me for paid shout outs. Why? How can I get this started?
Some people will want to comment “put your account on Shoutcart” etc. well that would be great except this: on Shoutcart and other “put your Instagram account here for shout out messages” sites, my account is constantly getting rejected. Either for spammy reasons(doesn’t make a lot of sense, as the account has good engagement and doesn’t look spammy) or because, for some reason, someone has already registered the account for shout outs(but I am the owner?). In either case, customer service hasn’t been helpful for getting the account on one of these sites. It’s a silly mess. A few months ago I tried working with some of these sites to get my account listed. I wasted a lot of time communicating back and forth(when I could - some of these sites don’t even have a email department, so my account was listed by someone else who doesn’t have access to it, and I can’t get it taken down - it’s really stupid).
Edited in - The engagement is good. Most pictures are getting 30+ real comments(I am not involved in any engagement groups) from different languages and sections of the world. Engagement does fluctuate on some pictures but it is grown with automation - no purchases of followers, likes, or any services. It’s a solid deal.
So, how would you get a 100k Instagram account to take off with paid promotions?
It has a bunch of links to multiple platforms you could try.
Why not approach brands directly? Even with 3k followers I managed to get 5 deals from brands, all sending me their product for free in exchange for a shoutout. Never had the s to ask for paid shoutout but who knows, maybe someone would go for it too? If I had 100k I would DM the brands I would like to work with directly. What’s stopping you?
I should have mentioned: I tried the method of messaging other businesses first but it resulted in nothing. That was around the 80k mark though. People either read my shout out pricing message and didn’t respond or were from another country and asked how they could transfer money(in different languages) through an unsupported money institution.
Edit Great guide! I’m going down the list of sites on it and will report back what results I get. Thanks!!
Well, if they don’t do Paypal you can always suggest Transferwise or Revolut. First one is less tricky, you just register and send money directly form a card or through bank transfer. Commissions are very low too.
Maybe you could also try not sending them your pricing in the first message, building a conversation instead?
No worries, I’ve learned some cool stuff here and just want to provide some value to the community.
Often big accounts get seeked to buy is because of good ER, they have already checked out your account and want a piece of the action. You want to sell shoutouts you must provide decent or excellent activiry. Just being in a related niche is not good enough. .
Else you must hunt and get em as any other type of business.
I have excellent activity. I’m looking through some of my most recent posts and a lot of them are at 30-50 comments, no engagement group activity, real comments saying the food is delicious/tagging friends/asking for recipes etc. so it’s not difficult to see, as a business, how this can convert into real sales(for them). I’m just not getting many DMs.
My bio is currently full but I’ll be adjusting a bunch of stuff today, currently I have “business below business@email.com” but no one has gotten in my inbox with shout outs yet. Good idea though.
May I know what your EG is like? I know that you said that you got a lot of comments but you haven’t said anything about the amount of likes you get yet. Which I think can be more important to businesses than comments
Hmm strange that companies don’t want anything to do with you then, is the page by any chance very viral oriented? Because those kind of pages can look kind of spammy and that is not something some companies want to tie their name to or think it is worth advertising on.
Maybe the page content doesn’t appeal to brands in your niche.
When I find influencers to work with for client companies. Besides engagement rate. It needs to align with the brands image. Those viral type of pages turn me off. I just skip them. Not saying thats what you have. Just offering some insight.
Have you tried looking for the instagram hashtag #ad#sponsored - then for images that match your page?
By doing that you can build a list of companies that might be open to an offer from you.
s to ask for paid shoutout but who knows, maybe someone would go for it too? If I had 100k I would DM the brands I would like to work with directly. What’s stopping you?