Hey, what's up Jeff Lerner here and in this video we are taking
a look at making money with Instagram. First of all, is it
something that really can be done for the average person, the
average person who is not like an influencer with millions of
followers. Can the average person make money on Instagram
without having to become an influencer or already be an
influencer? And if so, how would you actually do it?
Okay, so first of all, let's tackle the first question. Can
the average person actually make money on Instagram? And in
particular the average person who doesn't want to try to
become a big influencer or have to be personally responsible for
creating lots of personally branded content, shooting lots
of videos, taking lots of pictures, putting themselves out
there. Basically, is Instagram a real viable economic opportunity
for the average person or is it only something that is really
lucrative for people that are big public, highly visible
influence or Instagram personalities? Um, the answer is
yes. Instagram is actually shockingly powerful in terms of
ways to monetize that don't involve putting yourself out
there at all. And the key is to understand that many of the
biggest accounts on Instagram are actually what we call theme
accounts or niche accounts, which means they don't send
around an individual person.
And in fact it's a lot easier to grow theme or another term is
also interest based accounts. You know, accounts based on
people's love of professional soccer or people's love of rock
music or people's love of collecting old baseball cards. I
mean it's any interest or niche that you can think of. It's
actually a lot easier to grow an Instagram channel around those
types of topics than it is to grow around a person. And I'm
saying that as somebody who, you know, I've, built a following on
Facebook, I've built a following on YouTube and I've built a
following on Instagram. And I can actually say in terms of
being a personal brand, Instagram is probably the
toughest of those three platforms to get traction on as
an individual to try to become an influencer. In that sense,
there's some upside to doing it.
It's a lot of work, but like many things, there are a lot of
work. It's worth it, but it's, it would be, frankly, even for
what I'm doing, it'd be way easier if I would just say, ah,
forget Jeff Lerner. I'm not going to try to be a personal
brand. I'm just going to focus on motivational quotes or I'm
just going to try to focus on, you know, luxury lifestyle
images of, you know, fast cars and nice houses or I'm going to
focus on travel and I'm going to focus on the entrepreneurial
grind. If I would go change the handle on my Instagram profile
from Jeff Lerner official to, you know, entrepreneur grind or,
or you know, mega hustle or something that was just more
theme-based, it would grow way faster and yes, that is totally
a plug. You should go check out my Instagram channel anyways.
Yeah. Developing these theme or interest based or niche channels
is a really, really lucrative and valuable way to approach
Instagram. And it can be done by anyone anywhere. I mean, I
sometimes see these channels that have millions of followers
and I think what really is this business? It's somewhere.
There's somebody that's curating images and they might be
attaching, you know, clever memes or quotes or, or just
writing little comment notes and or sometimes they don't even
have words at all. It's just an image and they post it and you
know, they're probably using some basic automation software
to to follow unfollow. They're probably using hashtags to get
shown in the Explorer feed and through hashtag searches and
they've grown because, because they've tapped into, you know,
niches that have not only a lot of people looking up that type
of content, but also it's very low resistance.
Here's the problem with building a personal brand is people are
resistant to giving their time to a personal brand because
they're like, what's this person trying to sell me? Or what's the
agenda here? They have to really, really like and decide
that they connect with that person. It's kind of like making
a new friend. You decide to follow somebody on Instagram.
That's a person that's like, it's almost like allowing a new
friend into your circle, but to follow a theme or an interest
based account that's like, Oh, I love hockey. Why wouldn't I
follow the hockey channel or, or I love birdwatching, I'll
totally follow, you know, @Gobirdwatcher or whatever. Like
that's an easy decision for people to make if they liked the
content. Again, I kind of laugh sometimes when I see these
channels. I'm like, what's really going on here? There's,
there's like some kid sitting in a, you know in his parents'
basement somewhere doing this channel that's got 7 million
followers or 200,000 followers or, and you have an account,
it's theme-based with 200,000 followers.
Somebody can make a lot of money with that. If that's some kid in
his parents' basement somewhere, if he does that for a couple
years, he's going to walk upstairs one day and tell his
parents, say, Hey, how'd you like to pay off the house? I'm
going to pay off your mortgage, but now you pay me rent because
this is my house now. I mean it's like that level of income
that you can generate from, from growing these theme accounts.
What I want to do in this video is give you five different ways
that you can actually make money by growing theme accounts, not
personal accounts, not ever really having to put yourself
out there personally. Now the last two ways, and I'm gonna
talk about do involve you having to be personally present and
kind of get involved, but not in terms of actually putting your
face out there on Instagram.
The first way that you can make money with Instagram is actually
to grow a theme account, like I said, and monetize it with shout
outs. Now shout outs basically is just a, an Instagram jargon
way of saying I'm going to promote other people's stuff on
my theme account. So if you grow an account that say related to
let's say startups. Okay. And this is one that like I, I
potentially would do as a good idea is grow a themed account
that's related to startups, entrepreneurship, you know,
founders, being a business owner. And then I would shout
out, let's say Jeff Lerner, like here's our, here's five CEOs
that we respect and admire @JeffLernerofficial and
@fourotherpeople. I could do that on my own theme to count
just to, just to drive traffic to my personal account. And that
would actually be a lot easier way to grow than just trying to
get people to go to my personal account.
But to the four other people in that comment, I could actually
sell the shout out. I could go to founders of four other
companies or four other brands that are trying to get attention
and say, Hey, I'm going to do a post on my, my startups themed
channel that let's say has a hundred thousand followers and
we're gonna acknowledge five CEOs of new brands that we
respect and admire. We'll put you in that post for $50 or
$100. Right? And so you make 500 bucks for literally making an
Instagram post. In that scenario, there's brands that
would totally pay that. In fact, as I'm saying this, I would pay
that. I do pay for this kind of stuff. To build my personal
following for my business. There's marketplaces that
actually make that kind of standardize and so that you're
not having to go to a bunch of different channels and try to DM
them and try to hustle.
You know these deals independently. There's two
platforms in particular. One is called shout cart, one is called
plug cart where you can basically buy, shout out and
there's others too. But those are the two that I've really
investigated. You can buy shout outs or on the flip side you can
sell shout outs. So if you grow a theme channel, you go list it
on shout cart. You say, Hey for $20 we'll shout out your brand.
And there's people, there are like thousands of people. If you
have a relevant niche that'll, that'll hit you up through shout
cart and say, Hey, we want to pay you $20 for a shoutout. The
key is, you just got to deliver. You can't agree to do it and
then not do it or else you'll get blacklisted. Don't never get
to do it again. But if you do it, then it's a way that
essentially you've built an asset that can keep producing
again and again and again.
And really what did it take? You didn't, that's one of the
coolest things about making money through Instagram is it's
not like, it's not like real estate where you got, and I love
real estate, don't get me wrong, but you know, you've got to have
some money to get into real estate. You got to buy the
property so that you can turn around and lease it out. You
don't have to buy anything. You just grow an Instagram channel.
And we have other, there's other trainings on how to actually
grow the channel. But you know, I'm saying once you've grown a
theme channel, selling shout-outs is the first way that
you can make money with it. The second thing you can do is you
can actually flip the account or flip accounts. So there's
platforms you can go on to. Um, and I'll, I'll share two of
them.
One is called Fame Swap, one is called Social Tradia and these
are platforms that you'll use for this tip. And the next tip
that I'm going to give you, you can go on there and you can
basically buy themed Instagram accounts. Like what I'm talking
about, where people have already done the work that I'm talking
about. So you could go say, Hey, I want to go buy, an account
that's in the travel niche and you know, go find an account
that has 50,000 followers. And the prices totally vary. It's
not just about how many followers they have, it's about
what the average number of likes, the engagement rate, what
percentage of the followers are actually tuned in and commenting
and engaging. But you know, let's say you go buy a travel
account with 50,000 followers for, you know, $5,000 and that
certainly that's a lot of money, but this is an investment.
Remember, you're going to flip it. It's a lot cheaper than
buying a house for $100,000. Try to sell it for 150. You're
buying it and account for 5,000 and then work it and grow it for
a few months. Try to turn 50,000 followers into 100,000 followers
and then go put it right back on, you know, Fame Swap or
Social Tradia and see if you can sell it for $8,000 right? Or
$10,000 make three to $5,000 if you buy it for five, work it for
a few months and sell it for 10 you've made 100% return on your
investment in a few months. Of something that costs you
virtually nothing to do. So, that's the second way that you
can make money with Instagram is actually flipping these themed
accounts and again, there's platforms that make it very easy
to do. And then the third thing you can do is basically the same
thing only instead of buying it to flip it, you grow it to sell
it.
So you would still use Fame Swap or Social Tradia or any of the
other platforms, but you would, you would start where the first,
the first option started, which is actually grow your own theme
to count and then just go list it and sell it. There's good
automation tools that will essentially allow you to follow
unfollow. And then there's actually good tools for helping
you organize your hashtags onto the posts and you basically just
grow your account and sell it. It's like, it's like growing a
plant. It's literally, it's like planting a seed and watering it
and growing it in your garden and then putting it into a pot
and taking it to a store only selling it for $20,000. It's
totally a thing you can do on Instagram. Really, really
powerful. The next two both involve providing Instagram
related services. Um, the, so the fourth option for monetizing
Instagram is actually to find companies that let you manage or
will pay you to manage their Instagram presence.
And I actually really like this approach. You know, I spent six
years growing a digital consulting agency where we
managed, we didn't just manage Instagram, we managed social
media in general. We managed Google map listings, we managed
websites, we managed a variety of different digital services.
But over six years, that was an almost $25 million company in
terms of revenue and ended up selling the book of business for
multiple seven figures like this is big business to provide
digital services to businesses, but even starting in a small
level, even if it's you working from home, you remember I said
the last two years, we're going to kind of involve putting
yourself out there a little bit, but even you working from home
can start doing outreach on LinkedIn and Facebook. However,
you know, physically going out in your town and going to local
business owners.
Every business owner, I mean as somebody who ran an agency that
had over 10,000 active clients, we provided service to over
30,000 small businesses over the course of six years and we
always felt like, man, the ocean is so big. There's over 30
million businesses just in the United States where I live,
there's over a hundred million small businesses all around the
world and there are the vast majority of business owners.
Again, as somebody who sold into this market for years, they all
feel like digital marketing is something that they are behind
on. They need to be doing more of it. They don't totally
understand it. They're willing to pay for it. They're convinced
that they need it, that it's the future. And you know, for, for
several years it was, there was a lot of selling that had to
happen. We had to convince them that like, look, the yellow
book, the yellow pages doesn't work anymore.
The old school marketing doesn't work anymore. You gotta be
online. That's where it's at. And they would kind of fight you
on it. But now there's no fight anymore. Now there's
desperation. They're going, I got to get my online presence up
to speed. There are literally millions of businesses that will
pay you to manage their Instagram and their Facebook and
their YouTube for that matter and whatever else platform they
want to be on. Again, you've got to have some results for this.
So this, you know, I recommend, Hey, take these first three
models and at least get familiar with the Instagram landscape.
Show someone that you've been able to grow any type of themed
account or branded account from zero to 10,000 followers plus
and then go find a business and say, Hey, I'll do this for you,
but it's 1000 bucks a month.
I'll schedule your posts, I'll help you come up with content.
I'll help you curate the images. I'll come into your business and
I'll help you find the different angles of what you want to
promote, but it's $1,000 a month and it's a 12 month contract.
For most people, if they could get three or four clients like
that, three or four client businesses just out of their
local community, it will completely transform their life.
In my experience of working with thousands of people now for over
a decade who are trying to build some kind of income, leveraging
these digital systems, most people, if you show them how to
make between two and $4,000 a month in a different way than
what they're currently doing at their job, especially a way that
gives them flexibility to primarily work when they want,
where they want, I. E. from a laptop, you've completely
transformed their quality of life.
In your case, it would probably transform your quality of life
and it's like not that hard to do. Again, I had an agency that
was servicing over 10,000 local businesses at the same time. I'm
only talking about going out and getting to three or four to pay
you to manage their Instagram. Now the fifth way that you can
monetize Instagram is actually Instagram consulting. There are
brands and you know, personal information marketers and
company, big companies, startup companies that will literally
pay for people not to actually manage their Instagram, but just
to come in and tell them what to do. So for this, this is really
contingent upon you doing one of the first three things. Well,
primarily the first or the third option really well. Where you
grow a themed account, you show someone I know how to grow with
an account. And then there are businesses that will literally
just pay you to come in and tell them how you did it and tell
them what to do and help them brainstorm how they could do it
for themselves.
And then if you have a management service, you sell
them that on the backend of the consultant. You know, I mean, I
personally, I can say for myself as an information marketer, I
pay people thousands and thousands of dollars a month
literally just for advice, just for consulting on what to do.
Never mind separate costs for the services of actually getting
the work done. And I'm not, by no means am I the biggest brand
online. There are a lot of people like me and much bigger
than me that pay really incredible sums of money for
people who know what they're doing to come in and just give
them advice. So it all comes back to the same thing I say all
the time, look, you want to change your life. You want to
change your situation. And I got to assume if you're watching
videos about how to make money on Instagram, that you know,
that's the tip of a much larger iceberg in your life, which is
like, how do I change my situation?
How do I change my level of income or what I'm having to do
to generate income? How do I free up some time, flexibility,
get a little less month at the end of the money, a little more
money at the end of the month. If you're in that situation, it
comes down to changing your education, changing your
network, changing your habits. I talk about these three things
all the time. This one is very education focused. Just learn
how to grow an Instagram channel and that's five different things
you can do with it to start making money right away. Okay,
so thanks for your time. I hope that that's been of value to
you. I'm curious, you know, I don't know who's watching this.
What's your experience been? First of all, do you believe me?
Do you believe that you really can make money on Instagram?
Is that really a thing or is this just stuff that people say
online because they have a course that will teach you how
to do it and they're trying to sell you the course and get you
all pumped up? I do not have a course currently on how to do
this. I just have a video that tells you that you can so, but I
am curious your your opinion on is this real is growth is making
money on Instagram really a thing and do you have any
experience with that? Have you done it yourself? Let me know in
the comments below, and also if you have questions, ask a
question. I do respond to just about every comment or question
on my YouTube videos and listen, all of these videos, you know I
have hundreds of these videos. You can go watch them.
You're going to find one consistent theme, which is that
life is meant to be awesome. I believe it deeply. I've
committed my life to teaching it and preaching it and trying to
lift as many people into that belief as possible. If you
believe your life is meant to be awesome or you want to believe
your life is meant to be awesome and think, what would my life
look like? If I could just believe that, then I encourage
you to watch other videos and subscribe to my channel. Make
sure you click the bell to get notified when I release future
videos and let's make awesome lives together. Thanks for your
time. I'll see you on the next one.