How to Make Money From Social Media

Social Media Usage is at the all time high right now in World and still growing. India just became the number one country for Facebook in the world in terms of monthly active users! You can see from this slide from 2017 Digital Yearbook by ‘We Are Social’ that the active social media users worldwide are already about to touch 3 billion users! Just imagine how big the market is out there. All you need to do is to effectively tap this market.

Remember one thing, the primary purpose of Social Media is to build social connections but that does not mean that you cannot use it to earn money. In fact, the social media ads like Facebook Ads, Twitter Ads or LinkedIn Ads are meant for leads/sales generation only. So it makes sense to not spam your users with promotional offers.

Mixing informational posts along with promotional posts is the right way to build audience and business together on social media.

So, how to earn money by social media? Here are 5 ways to earn money through social media:

How To Earn On Social Media Via Your Own Products

You can also create your own products with digital and physical. Though I would recommend to begin with Digital products (like eBooks, courses etc.) because they are easier to create and promote and take less amount of money in the beginning to develop the products. For instance, you can list your eBook on Amazon Kindle or ClickBank and then promote the link of your eBook on different social media channels. And once the sales start rolling, you have to do nothing but collect the payment (being a digital product, you can sell it N number of times!).

Physical products, on the other hand, require larger capital in the development stage and one should go for them only once you have validated the product idea and have sufficient capital to invest in its development. That said, physical products like designer jewelry, crafts, and other home/living products are relatively easier to develop and sell online (for such product categories you can visit Etsy.com).

So, once you have decided on your product (digital or physical), you can sell it directly on different social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram etc., or you can sell it through websites like Etsy or any other e-commerce stores which allow such selling.

If you decided to sell directly on social media on your own, then you will have to take care of shipping, customer care, logistics etc., while with other e-commerce stores, they take care of these aspects.

Earning Money On Social Media By Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is one of the best ways to make money online. Affiliate marketing, in a nutshell, is a way to make money by promoting products of other companies (like Amazon.com etc.) using your unique affiliate links, which you get after signing up with them.

Apart from Amazon (which doles out 4% to 10% of commission per sale), there are many other networks like ClickBank (for Digital Products), Rakuten, CJ Affiliate, Booking.com (for Travel) etc., which offer lucrative affiliate commissions.

Amazon Associates Affiliate Program

If you are good at building social media communities and can promote affiliate products using social media ads (just remember to keep your ad costs less than the money you earn) then you can earn a handsome amount of money.

Just remember that it is always a good practice to add a disclosure about your affiliate links to your social media audience. This builds up a trust with them. Secondly, don’t spam your social media communities with affiliate links as this puts off the people. Always have a healthy ratio of generic informational posts (which are of interest to your audience) to the promotional posts (with your affiliate links).

How To Earn Money From Social Media Using YouTube

Building a successful YouTube channel is not a cakewalk, in fact, nothing on social media or digital media marketing is a cakewalk anymore. It requires a lot of planning, persistence, hard work and creativity to build a successful YouTube channel.

Once you have at least 10,000 public views of your channel videos, you are deemed eligible to apply for YouTube Partner program. You can visit  youtube.com/account_monetization to check your channel’s total view count. Apart from this, your channel should adhere to YouTube’s Partner Program Policies to get approved.

Here are the steps listed by Google to apply for YouTube Partner Program:

• Sign in to your YouTube account.
• In the top right, select your account icon > Creator Studio.
• In the left menu, select Channel > Status and features.
• Under “Monetization,” click Enable.
• Follow the on-screen steps to accept the YouTube Partner Program Terms.

Join the YouTube Partner Program

Building a popular YouTube channel can be a lot of work. But if you already have a following, or you're determined to build your audience, joining the YouTube Partner Program to make money on advertising might be a path worth exploring.
There are prominent YouTube content creators who have made substantial amounts of money with this program, but they are the exception rather than the rule. It would take a lot of time, strategy and sheer luck to make money on YouTube. However, this is a good thing to keep in mind with advertising in general. Unless you're already getting a lot of views and clicks, you're not going to make a lot of money on them.

Earning Money On Social Media By Providing Freelance SMM Services

You can also provide freelance social media marketing services to your potential clients. You can provide services like social media auditing, Facebook page management, social media content creation, social media advertisements (PPC Ads on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.), running social media contests etc.

You can start your freelance social media marketing business by creating your own personal brand on social media to attract the leads and inquiries. You can do that by writing guest blog posts on social media marketing on popular digital marketing related blogs. You can also create your own website or blog to create your own brand and share your blog posts on different social media channels to bring in traffic.

If you can create and share quality content (which is actually helpful to your target audience) on a regular basis, you will soon start getting inquiries from potential clients to handle their social media marketing. And once you do a quality work, you will start getting word-of-mouth references too.

You can also ask your friends or others acquaintances in your professional circles for any social media relating projects in case they are looking for someone to handle the same.

Another way to search Freelance social media marketing jobs is via Freelance sites like Freelancer.com, Upwork.com, Guru.com, PeoplePerHour.com etc. Just create an account on any of these sites. Add your complete professional details and work samples and you are good to go.

Use visual media to promote your crafts.

If you tend to create handmade crafts, art pieces, or even articles of clothing and knitting, there may be an opportunity to showcase your products on social media. Instagram and Pinterest may seem like obvious places to hit, but Facebook, Twitter and Google+ are also great channels for sharing visual media.
If you have an Etsy account, you can direct your followers to check out your products there, and between the different channels, you have the potential to make a good living.

Create and promote your own information products.

If you already have a blog, and you've demonstrated your expertise on a specific subject over a period of time, there may be an opportunity to create an ebook, audio program or video course and sell it to your audience. Social media is the perfect place to promote such a product.
Platforms like Gumroad, Sellfy and Amazon's KDP program make it easy for you to publish and sell your PDF, MP3 or video file at a price of your choosing -- keeping in mind that all platforms do take a cut, even if it's small.
As with anything, quality is key to creating something people not only want to read, but will pay to read. If you take extra care in creating great information, designing and promoting it well, you will definitely see more sales.

Do you like food? Not just eating it, but also trying new recipes and reading about  it? Then a food blog might be right up your alley. Food blogs are popular and easy to monetize. But like all other work-at-home options, it takes planning and action to be successful.

Pros to Starting a Food Blog

• You can turn your enjoyment of food into income.
• You get to be creative with your food creations.
• It's easy and affordable to get started.

• It's easy to monitize through ads, affiliate programs, and sponsorships.
• You can build a community around food and eating.
• It can lead to other opportunities such as books, or if you're really lucky, a cooking show as Ree Drummond, The Pioneer Woman did.

Cons to Starting a Food Blog

• Successful blogs need new content often, which means a lot of cooking and coming up with new ideas.
• You need to be able to take great photographs of your cooking process and end results.
• It can take time to build up a readership that leads to a good income.

How to Start a Food Blog

Here are tips to starting and making money from a food blog:
1. Decide what type of food blog you want to start. Niches always do better than general topics, even when it comes to food. Niches to consider are gluten, carb or sugar-free, vegan, or frugal cooking. Or you can specialize in a type of food such as chocolate or side-dishes.
2. Create a blog name. Choose a name that describes your blog and is available as a domain name.

When coming up with your name, be descriptive, but not too limiting that you can’t expand on your idea. For example,  a chocolate candy blog is too narrow and instead you might want to have a name that would include chocolate cookies and cakes, and even meals (i.e. mole sauce).

3. Purchase your domain name and webhosting. You can create a blog on free sources such as Blogger or Weeby, but the most succesful (and profitable) bloggers, have their own hosting.Many web-hosts will include the purchase of your domain name when signing up for service. Or you can buy them separately. Choose a web-host that offers easy WordPress install. There are other content management platforms, but WordPress is the most used and one of the easiest to learn.

4. Install WordPress on your webhosting account. Check with your host provider on how you can do this from within your hosting account. Once installed, choose a theme that works well with food. From within your WordPress dashboard you can search “food” themes and click to install. For best results, choose a theme that is responsive (adjusts for easy reading on tablets and smartphones), optimized for search engines, and is easy for readers to navigate. You can get themes for free, but you might want to consider purchasing a theme for greater customization and features.

5. Install plugins to maximize the site. The basic plugins you should install include Askimet for comment spam filtering, social media tools so people can share your content, caching to make your site load faster and be less of a drain on your host, contact form (don’t put your email address on your blog or you’ll get spam), and Google Analytics.Also, consider adding  foodie plugins such as EasyRecipe, which makes it easy to enter and print recipes, as well as optimizes your recipes for Google.

6. Set up an email list. Email lists will help you generate more income. How? You can email your list to let it know about new recipes, reminding people to return to your site so they can then click on your monetization options. You can also email special offers and promotions.  Use an email service and paste a sign-up form on your blog. Offer a freebie such as recipes or cooking videos to entice visitors to subscribe.
7. Add recipes. You should add 10 to 15 recipes right away so readers have several to read. After that, create a blogging schedule to add several recipes a week.  When you add your recipes, take appetizing photos and write clear, step-by-step instructions.

Don’t be afraid to add personalized information such as changes you made to the recipe or stories about the recipe’s history (i.e. if it’s grandma’s recipe).

8. Promote your blog. One myth many have is that by building a blog, people will read it. But that’s not true. People can’t read what they don’t know about. While you want to optimize for search engines, you can’t rely on search engines alone to drive traffic to your blog. Set up social media accounts such as Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter to share your recipes.  Make videos that you can post on your blog, but also publish on YouTube.  Develop an online marketing plan to reach your target market. Don’t forget to consider off-line marketing strategies as well.
9. Monetize your blog. Making money requires having traffic, which is why you need to market (#8) before you monetize. But once you have visitors to your blog, start adding money-making resources. A few options include contextual advertising such as Google AdSense and affiliate programs, such as promoting cooking tools. As you grow, you can write your own cookbooks or sell training videos.
Blogging is a business, so don’t forget to take care of legal matters such as business permits and self-employment taxes.

People who enjoy writing are now able to convert that passion into dollars quickly, thanks to the Internet. More specifically, the game-changing innovation is known as blogging.
Fortunately, blogging does not require much technical wizardry, if any. If you're capable of putting down inspiring copy, choosing the right blogging platform, and picking the right marketing tactics, you too can make money.
Curious about how it’s done?  Let's look at five ways you can build your audience and make money blogging.

1 Build Your Blog Audience

 

Use your favorite and most effective marketing strategies to bring people to your blog.  Building an audience is not a trivial pursuit, so don't hesitate to properly learn online marketing and advertising techniques if you're just starting out.
Begin with something simple, like using links to your blog from social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Proceed to other options like video marketing (YouTube), email marketing, and search engine optimization techniques as your audience grows.

2 Allow Your Visitors to Buy or Donate

 

If you write about specific topics (e.g. gardening, dog training, golf) that easily lend themselves to making purchases online, consider setting up a PayPal merchant account or the equivalent. This way, motivated readers can show immediate appreciation for your advice and you earn cash from original or affiliate products (see below).
See also: The Most Profitable Online Niches Markets Revealed
On the other hand, if you are wary of selling and marketing for profit, why not leave a coffee cup image to collect donations for your excellent information and brilliant insights? It won't earn you as much money as affiliate marketing or contextual ads, but the number of donations may give you an idea of your earning potential.

3 Make Money with Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is tough when you have to chase after new customers one at a time.  However, with a blog, you can strategically place great products in front of a loyal audience who are likely to know, like and trust you.
Whether you choose items from ClickBank or individual companies, ensure that these items are high quality and are aligned with your values and those of your audience. Check out the rules for earning commissions (e.g. first link versus last link purchases, full disclosure requirements, etc.) to ensure that you are properly rewarded by each program.
Note: you can see all of our affiliate marketing articles here.

4 Make Money Blogging with Contextual Advertising

Contextual ads give you a way to monetize your excellent content by showing readers relevant ads that may interest them. If they click through, you earn a small fee (commission) as compensation for hosting the ad. Small fees that add up over time…
The service effectively does all the work once you set the parameters: amount of ads, size, placement on your blog etc. Your selection of keywords will determine the quality of the appearing ads, and hence the amount of money you make.

5 Original Content is King

 Making money from blogs is great, and a number of people are able to earn a full-time income from it. Above all, though, your blog is meant for providing meaningful information to readers, so maintain your integrity as your income increases.This means sticking to original content, including product reviews of items you've actually used and can wholeheartedly recommend. Those being said, use all the creative and ethical techniques to attract attention to your best offers (e.g. embedded product links within text and/or images).
Conclusion
Making money from blogging can encompass different levels of financial compensation, ranging from weekly coffee change to a full-time online business. Whatever your income goals are, they are achievable with a little bit of work, some luck, and a willingness to grow your targeted reading audience with tried and tested marketing techniques.