Whenever you open your Instagram account or YouTube, you will notice that people are promoting different products or posting videos on various topics that have attracted
thousands and even millions of audiences. Different brands are using these influencers to promote their products or services. Some of them are making millions of dollars through their Instagram posts or YouTube videos.
These influencers have motivated many people to open up their own YouTube channel or use Instagram to promote products or services. These newbies often want to know how many followers are needed to make money on social media. Though many people might think that the more followers you have, the more money you will make, it is not the case. Sometimes you will see that an influencer with only 5,000 followers is making more money than one with 1 million followers.
The brands now realize that It is not worth paying a fashion celebrity thousands of dollars if his followers don’t have any interest in fashion. These companies would rather pay non-celebrity influencers having less number of followers but who are interested in fashion.
There are two ways you can make money on Instagram and YouTube. One is through sponsorship; that is, promoting others’ products or services; another is by promoting your own product or service. If you are going for sponsorships and if you have 1,000 followers, on average you will get paid $10 per post. In case of YouTube, it is $20 per 1,000 followers.
If you sell your own product, then the number of followers or subscribers you need to earn a specific amount of money depends on the price of your product. If the price of your product is $10, for example, then you need to sell 5000 units of your product per year to earn $50,000 a year. On the other hand, if the price of the product is $100 then you will need to sell 500 units per year to earn the same amount of money. As a rule of thumb, 5,000 views lead to 50 to 250 leads which eventually results in 1 to 25 sales. Therefore, to earn $ 50,000 a year, you will need 20,000 to half a million views per month.
So, this analysis will give you an idea about how many followers you need to have to make money in social media. You should remember that quality of the content is more important than the number of followers. You need more engaging audiences to increase the potential of sales. Your target should be to have an engagement rate of 4 – 6%; this will show that your followers are actually seeing your posts or videos. Only then brands will invest their marketing money on you to promote their products or services.