Spending too much time on social media sites and apps is supposed to be a bad thing, right? But what would people tell you if you were making money off the time you were spending on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest et cetera.
The fact is that a lot of us do spend a lot of time on social media. And it’s largely for the fact that we enjoy it. If you are someone who enjoys their time spent on Facebook, Instagram or any of your online social platforms, the next time you log in, you can look at it as a place and time where you could continue doing what you usually do, and make some extra money as well.
While you will still be writing messages, uploading pictures etc, if you are to make money doing it, you will have to do it differently. What that means is that, for most part, you have to create popular content i.e. writing and posting about things that would interest other people. Attracting new people as followers and friends will also serve you well.
Before we proceed, I want to repeat what we always about making money and working from home. If you still cling to the notion that it is easy to make money online, that there is some magic secret formula, stop thinking that today. In stead, embrace the opportunity to learn something that will allow you to do that.
Actual and real work is the only way to make online. Yes, the work maybe simple but you may have never done it before. Find something that resonates with you and work with it. There are endless things to do, really, which is why we try and keep posting new content and new ways that, we hope, will help you come closer to your financial goals.
This might also interest you: 50 Websites Where You Can Make Money.
Without further ado, here are a few ways you can make money using your online social presence.
Review Things You Use And Promote Them On A Marketplaces Like Amazon.
We all buy and use all kinds of products. For examples, have you recently purchased a pair of wireless headphones that you think are great? Why not write a review for them on your social media account and add a link for buying them on the Amazon marketplace.
Of course this has to be an affiliate link which you can generate once you have joined the affiliate marketing program on Amazon. Once you do that you can pretty much promote any product on Amazon and earn 5% to 10% of the amount of sales as advertisers fee. This is the link for joining the Amazon Affiliate Program. It’s free to join.
Which brings us to the next option of making money through social media, namely, affiliate marketing.
Sell Through Affiliate Marketing
You can use affiliate marketing to sell 3rd party products and earn a nice piece of profit every time something sells. ClickBank is know for having digital products like eBooks and eGuides that will pay as much as 75% of the selling price to the affiliate. Affiliate marketing is good if you often talk or share information on a certain topic like health, beauty, business etc. but do not have a product of your own to sell.
What you need to do…
- If you want to be able to recommend and sells products, you need to post valuable content first, that your followers find useful.
- It will be great if you actually have knowledge about something. It could be anything from music, some sport, academic knowledge, books, apparel, fashion etc. As long as you have some engaging content to post.
- The content you post doesn’t have to be yours each and every time. You can share things from other sources as well.
- Once is a while, you post an affiliate link to a product you want to sell, along the SAME subject that you have been posting about.
- Once you have tried and tested the waters with your existing group, you can start a page of your own dedicated to subject matter of your choice.
- You can take the help of paid promotion to put your posts in front of thousands of users and gather more followers.
Your followers who are interested in listening to your posts will likely be interested in also buying what you recommend. Just make sure that you recommend everything in good faith and believe in the product you promote. Otherwise the loyalty of your followers will plummet fast and you won’t be able to promote any product after that.
Other affiliate marketing websites are Commission Junction, Rakuten, Shareasale. These sites have many physical product you can promote as well including apparel and electronics.
Become A Social Media Manager
There are lots of gigs are available for a social media manager. Check out the following sites for jobs related to social media. The jobs can be simple like responding to comments or more complicated like creating interesting content.
Do a more extensive search on a search engine as different locations might show up different results and include local search results.
Doing small gigs related to social media management is easy. Getting into work full time will be more difficult. But like everything else, starting small is a great idea and decide whether or not you want to get more involved in it later.
Once again, having a strong social media profile yourself will help you get the gig. However I have noticed that on several occasions it’s how you communicate with the employer that matters more. On sites like Fiverr, if you come across as friendly, efficient and offer a good rate, you are likely to get the work.
Specially since the starting rate is as low as $5, people are willing to give others try and see how things go from there. There is a need to be proficient with all major media platforms if you want to do this work. Not always but many times a job require cross-platform work. And I can tell you that if you are someone who is just as comfortable working around a Twitter as an Instagram account, you will find more gigs.
One-time gigs can often turn into regular work if the buyer is happy with the job you have done. I know that when I want something done on Fiverr I ask a certain virtual assistant if she is available and if the work is not urgent even wait for her to get free if she is busy at that moment.
Sell Stuff
This could be anything. You could sell your own things, someone else’s things or stuff that you have found and feel you can sell at a higher price through your social media promotions. It can literally be anything like clothes, cosmetics, paintings, art and crafts etc.
The only limitation will be the kind of audience you attract to your social media account. Somethings will sell better than others depending upon the taste of your followers.
Buying and selling at a higher price is a very popular way of making money. The biggest of companies do it. If you ever take a look at the back of the label of the product you will realise that the brand that you are buying and the actual manufacturer of the product are different people. Many small businesses and individuals also do this and so can you. Once you get into the swing of things you can make it your venture to discover more and more interesting products at source that you can flip online at a higher price.
Take things a notch higher and start packaging generic items you buy with your own branding. This pretty much sounds like the start of an entrepreneurship, doesn’t it? Well, it is. But you can always start with your social media account and see how things go from there.
By the way, have you heard of drop shipping? It is quiet the rage with people who would like to promote and sell things without the hassle of buying, keeping stock and shipping. All you have to do is choose items from the drop shipping website, promote them yourself, set your own price and when someone buys, notify the drop shipping guys of the shipping address. No need to keep a stock and an inventory as well.
Salehoo, Oberlo, AliExpress and Doba.
Become an influencer.
Okay, this one is probably harder. Influencer is a word I have been hearing a lot on social media. It refers to a person who has a sizeable number of followers who can be influenced by what account holder posts. This includes posting about products and businesses.
It is considered like an advertisement by businesses and more effective than the traditional advertisements because of the personal nature of the promotion. The audience is targeted since they have chosen to follow the influencer and the message goes directly to them on their computers or mobile devices during a time when they are probably receptive to what ever they are seeing and reading.
Businesses also know that certain ideas and products sell well when the target consumer is in a relaxed state of mind. A persons mind is more open to suggestions when they are in a recreational mode. Businesses realise that traditional advertising is facing what is known as the blindspot.
People get so used to seeing the advertisements in the regular places that they tend to ignore them or not notice them. Hence the value of sending a message directly to people embedded in a personal stream of social media updates.
Businesses are ready to dish out up to several thousand dollars for one single post from an influential influencer. Building and organic followership is hard and getting harder with time. The reason is that all social media platforms have also introduced paid promotions. You can pay to reach more people and in most situations that is exactly what you have to do.
Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest all give the option of paying and promoting your content without which your pots comes before few people. Even all your existing followers will not get to see the content that you post. So if you are starting now with building an audience for your social media account and want to reach far and wide, you will have to take the route of paid promotions.
You can always market and sell things with your current friends circle but becoming an influencer Requires creating a hefty following. One of the reasons why selling on social media is more suited to the young is because being in school or college give them the opportunity to befriend hundreds of young people, many of whom share similar interests and taste in things.
It is not unusual to see college students with thousands of people in their friend list and as followers. This is a great start to get the ball rolling as friends of friends can also see your content and start following you.
Promote yourself
Okay, this last one is not about making money directly through your social media account. But it is about using its reach to promote yourself. For example, if you are good at writing resumes, or take great pictures, you should promote your content through social media so people know about you.
Word by mouth is a big deal. If you get the word out more people will find out about you. Don’t be shy about letting everyone know about the skills you have and offer the same for a charge. It is a psychological fact that people take a person talents more seriously if he charges for them.
I’d like to give an example. I know someone loves to watch movies. Every time she sees one, she comes back home, writes a detailed review about it, and posts it on her Facebook page. She does this repeatedly and consistently. The result of this was that amongst her friends was a person who works in the editorial department of a local newspaper.
Through reading her posts she realised that this girl can write well and now provides her with freelance assignments with the newspaper as and when they come up. Similarly, other friends involved with other projects are also regularly rope her in for writing projects like a coffee table book, brochures and catalogs, blog articles etc.
So if you have a skill that other people should know about, use your social media to account to bring it to the attention of your friends and acquaintances. And like I said before, word-by-mouth is a big phenomenon. Many a people and small businesses have built their clientele solely on the basis of person to person publicity.
