You have probably seen it many times… a girl with hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram, casually traveling around the world and constantly dressing in luxury fashion brands. But are these instagram models making all their money from their accounts?
Most people wonder how do how instagram models make money from all of their time spent posting photos and other content to social media. The short answer is that these instagram models, at least the ones making the most money, run their social media like modern media companies more than a personal social media account.
We will jump right to several of the most common ways these models profit from their instagram accounts. Here are the top ways female instagram models earn money:
1. Paid Promotional Posts
One of the most popular and straight forward ways that a model can monetize their social media following is accepting money for a post that features a product. Several companies have really run with this concept and done a huge number of deals with various women to post their products.
An interesting shift has happened where the majority of product companies placing these paid spots have learned more about the audiences available to them. Instead of having models advertise women’s products like clothing or make up, they have realized mostly men follow these models and it is more effective to promote mens products like Manscaped razors or gender neutral products like Bang energy drinks.
Both of those two brands have placed hundreds of placements with various instagram models and have had pretty significant budgets to fund these campaigns. This is because influencer marketing like this works well for a brand and brings them new customers at scale.
Getting paid to make a post promoting someone or something is the most basic way to make money from a social media following, but it is not the only way or even the best for everyone.
2. Promote Paid Content
The newest trend for female content creators across the internet is being led by the OnlyFans platform. The concept of selling nude photos and other similar translation is not new…. but the platform of OnlyFans combined this demand with recurring monthly payments and a messaging platform that lets payments take place for additional things – photos, videos, conversations, whatever. Some have shown massive amounts of monthly income being made by OnlyFans alone, with the extreme end being someone like Corinna Kopf making $1 Million in just the first 48 Hours of being on the platform.
Many females have taken to new-er paid social networks like Patreon or Onlyfans to post exclusive content and ask their followers to pay a monthly subscription in order to access this content. Sometimes this can include much more revealing photos than they choose to post on instagram or that instagram allows. Models can earn upwards of tens of thousands of dollars each month from these accounts and they usually have multiple pricing tiers. Some may consider the original version of this was the wave of private snapchat accounts where you had to pay to be accepted as a friend.
3. Classic Modeling Jobs
Many realize the powerful impact of using a social media account to reach thousands or millions of people for free by posting content, and can turn this exposure into a ‘traditional’ modeling career.
Whether this means being picked up by a modeling agency, being scouted directly by a worldwide brand, or even shifting into acting; now anyone can spark a modeling career by posting their own photos.
4. Selling Physical Products
Many models earn pretty significant amounts of money for agreeing to do paid posts from outside companies to promote certain products, and this trend continues to grow simply because it can work very well.
A lot of models and really anyone with a strong following can end up shifting to only promoting their own companies products and taking all of the benefit and profits for themselves.
A great example of this Kylie Jenner and her makeup products; it has basically made her a Billionaire. While Kylie is the frontrunner many have become super well off selling their own clothing or product brand successfully using their own personal following while growing their business brand account at the same time.
5. Selling Digital Products
Instead of selling physical products like clothing merch or makeup, selling digital products is another great way for an instagram model to build their own company that they can continuously promote.
Digital products are perfect for social media promotion because they are very easy to fulfill, or no need to ship out orders, and they have great profit margins.
A couple examples of digital products would be a downloadable meal plan ebook, photo filter presets, or even another media format like music.
6. Accepting Gifts
Some female models end up accepting gifts from product companies and individuals due to their popularity. Some companies will offer to send free products in exchange for posts, or just send products with hopes of promo. Although not confirmed we recently saw a comment of a man claiming to have purchased billboard placements for a model, randomly.
Then you have the sketchier gifts that take place… some will share an amazon wishlist or just straight up put a Venmo username in a bio and get a response to these. EVEN worse is the transactions of photos like feet pics. We recommend not encouraging any of these suspect individuals. Anyone who has a different view on these let us know.
7. Paid Companions
In addition to receiving gifts from followers, getting paid to spend time together or go on trips is another huge thing in the instagram model world – although certainly not talked about too much.
Getting paid to go out to dinner or go on a vacation happens way more than you’d probably realize. We are not going to get into too many of the details here but just know there are plenty of guys willing to pay and tons of females willing to get paid.
Is a social media following valuable?
While there are a few different ways to make money from instagram for a female model, it is safe to say that yes having a large following on instagram is incredibly valuable. Even if someone is not making huge money at that given moment, chances are they will figure out the best course of action to benefit from that following they have built up – if that following is staying engaged and real.
