How I Earned My First $100 from My Travel Instagram Profile

Being a travel blogger is not a matter of joke. It is tougher when you are doing a 10 to 7 permanent job simultaneously. Many of my friends ask me how I manage to travel 3-4 times in a year. Well for that, I was thinking to write another blog later.

If you are a travel blogger you need to maintain lot of things and keep the consistency. Like –

• Write travel content & publish on your travel blog
• Uploading travel photos on Facebook profile
• Updating Facebook page
• Creating travel vlogs & uploading it to YouTube
• Giving replies to travel enquiries via emails
• Giving replies to the comments on videos, photos & posts.
• Updating your twitter account
• Maintaining your Instagram account.

Now the last one, Instagram which is very important for a travel blogger. You need to upload images regularly to increase your Instagram followers. More followers mean more exposure in the web as a travel blogger.

I have my Instagram profile also. Well, believe or not, initially I was not that much enthusiast with Instagram. I hardly upload photos there. I had less than 300 followers that time. But during my Ladakh trip in 2016, I uploaded new photos every day during my trip and guess what my followers increased by 300 within 12 days. This blew my mind and continue I started uploading photos in a regular interval.

Frankly speaking, it is quite tough to build a popular Instagram profile with lots of followers. But it is possible and also with minimum followers, you can earn money from Instagram. Well yes, it’s right. I won’t believe it until I received this advertising proposal through my Instagram profile. Just after 11 months I have started my Instagram account I got an email asking if I have any advertising opportunity on my blog?

Find the email conversation below –

It was a great feeling after receiving sponsorship offer through Instagram. After this, I was more inclined to the Instagram and upload photos regularly. It helped me to build new followers and I started getting more advertising offers. Here is the amount I received through Instagram advertisement till now.

In the year 2017 – $400 – Around INR 24,800

• May – $100
• June – $0
• July – $75
• August – $100
• September – $0
• October – $0
• November – $50
• December – $75

In the year 2018 – $100 – Around INR 6,200 Till Now

• January – $0
• February – $50
• March – $50

Now, how you can earn money from Instagram like this? well, I am giving you some tips regarding earning money through Instagram.

How to earn money from the Instagram profile?

Before giving you the tips, let’s say you don’t have any travel blog like mine then why and where people ask you to advertise their product, service or website? Well, don’t worry if you don’t have any blogs. Without blog, you can earn also. It is called influencer marketing. Like if you have a huge number of active followers then you can promote the product or service of the advertiser directly to your followers through your Instagram profile or any other profile like Facebook, twitter etc.

Now coming to the point to know how you can earn money from your Instagram profile.

1. Consistency is the key – Keep posting your travel images in a regular interval.
2. Write an interesting description of your image.
3. Don’t forget to put hashtags – You can use total 30 hashtags for a single image.
4. Try to post a motivational image with description.
5. Do follow brands and tag them also.
6. Do like and reply to the comments.
7. Interact, communicate with other travel blogger in Instagram to build the community.
8. Make your profile bio more interesting. Put the words by which people actually know who you are.
9. Connect your Instagram profile with your travel blog’s Facebook page.
10. Add Instagram widget on your blog.
11. Place your blog URL in the Instagram profile bio.
12. Most importantly put your email id in profile bio section for getting offers.

Apart from the above tips, you have to make sure you are not overdoing these things like –

1. Don’t publish photos more than 2 to 3 in a single day. By overdoing this you may lose your followers
2. Don’t post multiple images by breaking a single image. By doing this your followers can be irritated and unfollow you.
3. Don’t put hashtags too much as it looks spammy.
4. Don’t tag other profiles too much.
5. Don’t post low-quality travel images.
6. Don’t upload direct promotional type images.
7. Don’t put too much texts in an image. Image with texts get low reach.

I believe by following the above tips you can increase your Instagram followers and also increase chances to get advertisement offers. So keep posting and don’t lose hope. You can earn also from Instagram like I do.

If you have any question regarding Instagram, you can drop a comment below. Also, don’t forget to subscribe my blog to get more tips like this. If you like my post, please like my Facebook page and you can follow me on my Instagram profile (Travel Photographer Couple) also.