How to Make Money from Your Social Media Accounts

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Why Would Anyone Pay for Your Tweets?

If you have an influence, it has value. Don't ever forget that. Those that have the power to sway decisions – especially purchasing decisions – have to be aware of this, and use it to their advantage. Everyone knows why brands invest heavily in endorsement deals. The same principle works on a micro level too, when individuals have built up a reputation or authority to make people instantly follow their instructions.

Someone I know works for Sky. They wanted to sign up an American comedian to appear in an advert and do a single tweet about their service. Advert aside, that social media add-on would cost them £1,000,000. They declined and moved on, but it shows just how much people can charge, if they have an engaged audience.

There's a constant stream of start ups that want brand endorsements from influencers. Many will be clued up on the bloggers, vloggers and tastemakers within the niche before they enter it. Many won't have the slightest clue. With so many courses pushing private label products and Shopify dropshipping, many fall into the latter side. This is a perfect opportunity to make yours pay off.

How Do I Find Paid Social Media Opportunities?

There are established networks out there that simplify the process. Although I haven't used them, a few people close to me have received all sorts of freebies and regular payments for Instagram product placements and sponsored tweets.

These include:

These generally work based on the quantity of followers you have, verified for authenticity against the amount of engagement you receive. All of this variety tend to be one-offs. They're after a single post on a particular day and then you're done.

If you're looking for something more long-term, you're going to have to do the legwork yourself. Put yourself out there. Make it known that you're offering your platform up for brands to advertise through them, and make the connections yourself.

For those with a blog or YouTube presence, PR samples are part of the game, and you can charge to include those (so long as you've read up on the ASA guidelines and all that).

Have statistics ready. You're advertising, at the end of the day. They need to know that the audience you're offering to broadcast to is of a particular demographic. Age, location, sex. Quantity per month. Use FollowerWonk, Facebook Analytics and whatever you can to verify this information.

If you've done similar things to this in the past, have case studies ready. If you know your audience acts in your instructions, make sure you have proof. One of the easiest ways for bloggers and YouTubers to do this is by stating how many affiliate purchases they refer monthly. If they're going to use their marketing budget in you, show what worth your audience actually has.

Are Your Tweets Worth 7 Figures?

Probably not. But they could be worth something. As I mentioned, engagement is key here. Is your following actually interacting with the content you make? If not, they may as well not exist.

On a micro level – we're talking about people with a following of around 10,000 accounts in a particular niche – you can easily make £50 plus freebies for a post. The fitness and beauty sectors is especially ripe for these opportunities. Each niche will be different, so if you're still in the early stages, don't be afraid to rebrand to become more commercial.

I've worked with full-time Instagram influencers in the past. Most are former bloggers, but now all of their income is from brand partnerships and product placements. These people hire photographers. They have managers. They operate like businesses. If you take the time to build up an organic following, you can get to that stage.

How Else Can You Monetise Your Social Media?

Beyond the standard get-paid-to influencer sites, content creators in this space can earn money with tipping platforms. A handful of helpful ones are listed below, and rely on your ability to earn your audience's trust enough to deserve monetary rewards directly from them.

These probably require you to be more creative and try to make bonus content for loyal supporters to consume. Ultimately, if it pays for you to make more content good enough – that they see as valuable enough to pay to access – they are worth looking into.

Check out:

Beyond these, there's always good old-fashioned affiliate marketing. Although it isn't as great for the others, Pinterest comes into its own for this as a monetisation channel, and can become a much more passive way to generate income. More on that in a future post though.

Overview

There's a lot to social media monetisation. If you would like to reap the rewards of garnering a significant online following, it's up to you to find the most suitable ones for your needs. Exchanging tweets for products and a few pound is nice, but the rewards for building relationships to take part in full-blown marketing campaigns can be far greater.

Be aware that cheating your way to a big following doesn't tend to work anymore. Social Blade and tools of the like can help brands to detect bots or Fiverr-bought followings. If you're serious about this, keep things pure and natural. Make good content and interact and the followers will come to you.