I know I’m going against my principal on focusing on one thing only but hear me out.
I’ve always had a side experiment going on. I was reading up on making money with Instagram and came across this thread about making 2-$300 a day with Instagram on Warriorforum. Now, I take everything on Warriorforum with a grain of salt until there’s someone actually doing what they preach.
I mean it’s great about to learn about someone driving traffic to their website or growing their email list to xx,xxx but the most important thing in business is money. Yes, you should be providing value and all but never forget about your bottom dollar. If I can see a clear path to making money, my body starts to move in that direction.
This post triggered that feeling. I made 5 Instagram accounts, each in a different topic and start posting images and tagging like crazy. The idea was to spit test different niches and see which one seemed like the one with the quickest growth and had high advertising potential. Anyway, I found one that was gaining followers at a quicker rate than the others so I decided to stick with it.
How am I going to make money?
Good question. I never try anything in business unless I have clear knowledge on how it’s going to make me money. Most instagramers make money a variety of ways but it all comes down to posting images on behalf of other companies for a small fee.
Popular instagram personalities can post out a picture for 100s sometimes even 1,000s of dollars. If you can get a few of these a week, you’ll be making some pretty easy cash.
I’m aiming to grow my account to 50,000 and then finding companies interested in monetising. It might even be worth making a quick datafeed affiliate site and seeing if traffic gets through to the site and goes through with any purchases.
If we can find a way to monetise an Instagram account better than others then we can maybe even buy Instagram accounts, (of course only if that’s legal).
It only takes about half an hour a day and I can do it while watching a TV show so it doesn’t really take much out of my working time. In a few months I should have a decent following to let me know on the potential how much I can make. If it’s good, I’ll focus on it full-time and make a bunch of different accounts.
Again, it’s all about testing assumptions, following through till the end and re-evaluating if the business is the type of business you want to get into.
So right now I have a few things going on. At the end of the year hopefully something will show me positive signs but till then I’m just going to keep moving forward.
– Mateen
Want to get Serious with Internet Marketing? Join us on Aff Playbook Below!
what about selling tshirts ? have you tried to build instagram accounts and then promote tshirts ?
Hey Carlos,
it’s possible but instead of building a page, it’s probably better paying for some Instagram posts and seeing if people buy. Growing an Instagram account from scratch takes a long time. I might try that too with my account, it’s a good idea I guess you just never know!
Thanks for the article Mateen~
I initially started reading your blog when I was focused almost exclusively on T-shirts, and found your posts genuine and extremely worthwhile.
Of course I’m signed up to your list, and so when I saw the email mentioning Instagram as a business idea, I was eager to hear what you had to say.
A while ago I decided to get out of the ‘T’ business and focus on a new venture, leveraging what I believed would be a very hot trend that I could do well with.
Turns out it’s a red-hot market, and by going a few steps further than most – namely importing & white-labeling – I could do very well.
It just so happens to be a very visual, ‘instagram-ish’ niche, and I’m in the process of getting myself set up to take advantage of it.
The site & business is American Scooter Board, and you can see at once that it’s a niche ideally suited to Instagram.
I hope you’ll post regularly about your Instagram efforts as you have with your Teespring efforts – and I’ll try to follow up with comments about how well it’s working from the ‘other’ end – the guy that will be paying to ‘advertise’ via other people’s accounts.
Hey Michael, that’s definitely a cool niche!
Thanks for reading my stuff, I’m glad they’ve been helpful. This blog is really just updates on what I’m learning and what I’m doing. I realised there’s no real point blogging about Teespring when that’s not what I’m focussing on anymore.
Anyway, let’s see where these decisions take us, good luck to you!
I’m curious have you ever tried Ecommerce using the drop shipping you never hold any stock and a when an order comes through your supplier fulfills it for you. I’ve started promoting email submits and lead gen offers via 7search I only made 4 conversions then it just died. Same here I’m going to keep moving forward with this.
Do you have any tips on how to create amazing ads and increase conversions Mateen?
I’ve heard of people doing it here and there but have never tried it. Might give it a shot sometime later in my IM career.
Create amazing ads and increase conversions with 7Search? Not really, I don’t use that platform.
Never tried it, but I’m sure it’s possible 🙂
Hi Mateen
I have just started reading your blog, and find it very enlightening
for a newbie like me….I am thinking of going into Teespring and
is curious — Why are you NO longer focussing on Teespring ?
Is it saturated & too competitive ?
Thanks Mateen
I am curious as well.