To start affiliate marketing with Instagram, you need to be an Instagram influencer. Once you have a good number of followers and people willing to copy your product choices, you can easily get into any affiliate program you like. Even Instagram has an affiliate program you can use to your advantage now.

3 Steps to Affiliate Marketing With Instagram

1. Make Sure You Have a Creator Account

When you created your Instagram account, it was a personal journey. However, if you want to get into affiliate marketing with Instagram, your account should be one of a professional.

There are two options to switch to from a personal account. You can switch to either business or creator, but if you plan to become an influencer, you need to choose ‘creator’.

To change your account status:
Tap the menu icon at the top right on your Instagram account.
Tap on Settings.
Select Account from the options.
Scroll down to Switch account type.
Choose Switch to Creator account.
A list of categories will appear.
Select the category that will be good for the affiliate niche of your choice.

2. Build an Audience

A Creator account will get you access to professional tools such as Insights. As you build your audience, you will get new tools too. For example, Instagram only allows those who have over 10k followers to add a link to their stories. 

So, building an audience is crucial not only for affiliate marketing but also for better marketing tools on Instagram. 

• Post in your affiliate niche. 
• Don’t post content that looks like promotional posts from the start. 
• Simply build content around the niche. 
• Your insights show when your audience is active. Either post in real-time or schedule it at the time beforehand. 
• Post consistently. In addition to pictures and reels, share stories on Instagram. 
• Keep your audience engaged by doing polls and quizzes, and make use of the entire activity tab on stories. 

3. Find Affiliate Partners

Once you have an audience, merchants would come to you of their own accord. For example, if you are creating content on lifestyle, you will probably have makeup brands in your DMs to ask you to promote their eyeliner and so on. 

You can sign up for affiliate marketing programs such as Amazon Associates, Shopify, etc. 

You can also pitch your service to brands in your niche you already love. If they see that you have good followers on Instagram and have promoted their product before, they will want to pay you for future promotions.  

You can also sign up for affiliate marketing with Instagram. 

• Go to Professional dashboard. 
• Under Grow your Business, you will notice Set Up Affiliate. 
• Once onboard, tap on Shops you can tag under affiliate tools. 
• Find products from different shops and tap the Save icon. 
• When you’re creating content, you will have the option of tagging affiliate products. 
• When you post your content, Eligible for Commission will appear on top of your post. 

If you enter an affiliate deal with a brand separately, without using Instagram’s services, you should choose the Paid partnership option to tag the brand while posting affiliate products. 

Your audience knows you are honest with them this way. But, of course, don’t post too much affiliate content either. Most successful marketers recommend restricting affiliate marketing to 5 percent of all posts. 

Final Thoughts

Affiliate marketing with Instagram is an option not available in every country. Therefore, you should check Instagram guidelines to see if your country allows it. If they do, offering your affiliate services on Instagram would be easier than ever. However, the first thing to do is grow to a big account on Instagram. Jake Markets can offer you solid tips in this regard.