5 Ways To Grow Your Affiliate Marketing Side Hustle On Instagram

Side hustles are a great way to boost your income, and sometimes they even turn into something more than a side hustle, making them definitely worth a shot for anyone interested. 

But where does one begin on the side hustle journey? And which side hustles are the best to try out?

We’ve got it all laid out here in a helpful guide to side hustles! 

Specifically, we’ll talk about how affiliate marketing is one of the best options, especially if you’d like to use Instagram as one of your main tools. Insta can be a great way to reach your audience, especially when undertaking affiliate marketing. 

So let’s dive right into how you can do exactly that!

5 ways to win on Instagram with affiliate marketing

Want to win at affiliate marketing? 

It can be a valuable undertaking if you know what you’re doing – essentially, you earn commission on products by promoting them to followers on social media. 

Here are some of our hot tips for making your affiliate marketing journey a success:

1. Add an affiliate link to your Instagram bio

When using affiliate marketing as a side hustle, it’s important to utilize Instagram’s link in bio feature. Here, you can provide a link to whatever products you’re promoting so your followers will have easy access to purchase them. And this is good for you because the more followers that purchase the products you’re promoting, the more money you’ll earn via commissions!

Although Instagram only allows each account to provide a single link in its bio, there are tools that allow you to turn one link into multiple. Essentially, when a user clicks on the link in your bio, they’ll be taken to a list of links that you have created. That’s where you can link multiple products or websites at one time.

2. Tag affiliate products as paid partnerships

Using the paid partnership feature on Instagram helps to establish you as an affiliate marketer or influencer. 

When other users view your posts, they’ll see that you participate in paid partnerships, which gives you credibility as an influencer as well as promotes transparency between you and your audience.

When other brands view your posts and see that you participate in paid partnerships, they’re likely to be more interested in working with you as an affiliate marketer. And, when your followers see that a post is labeled as a paid partnership, they’ll likely be more inclined to check out what you’re promoting in the post, especially if you have a follower base that adheres closely to what you recommend.

3. Create content on product tutorials

Tutorials are all the rage these days – everyone seems to love watching them, especially with the rise in short-form video content. Use this to your advantage when promoting products!

If you’re looking to promote a particular product to your audience, try filming a tutorial on how to use it. This will get people familiar with the product, raise their curiosity, and overall increase their interest and likelihood of purchasing.

Plus, when your followers see you film a tutorial for a product, they’ll be seeing you use the product. This confirms that you actually use the products you promote, rather than just creating content that entices other people to buy the items. 

People love to see “real-life” content, so sometimes a video filmed in your own kitchen resonates better than a photoshoot from an idyllic location.

4. Optimize your hashtags

Hashtags are one of the most valuable tools in your arsenal as a social media content creator! Social-media-based side hustles thrive on proper hashtag use, so make sure you’re using this feature to your advantage. 

When promoting a product, make sure that you select hashtags related to that product or related to the audience that you are targeting. This will ensure that your post is promoted among the proper market of users. 

It’s important that each of your posts has a unique set of hashtags – recycling the same tags over and over won’t get you anywhere. So, ensure that the hashtags you use on each post and story are relevant not only to your own account, but also to the specific product you’re promoting. 

5. Track affiliate performance

One of the best parts about using Instagram for side hustles is that the app allows you to track the performance of all of your posts. The insights provided by Instagram are thorough and help you to keep an eye on how well each of your posts is received – so make sure to take advantage of this feature!

Using Instagram’s analytics, you can compare and contrast how successful your affiliate marketing posts are. This allows you to experiment with various techniques and determine which ones work best for you.

How to get started

Sold on the idea of affiliate marketing? 

Here’s how you can get started! 

1. Switch to creator

The first step you’ll want to take in this process is to switch your account into creator mode. In order to do this, simply navigate to the settings on your personal profile. Then select “account” and then “switch to professional account.” From there, all you need to do is select “creator.”

Now, you’ve got a professional creator account! 

This will give you the ability to track the analytics and insights on the performance of your account’s posts, and your account will appear more official to viewers. You’ll also be able to learn more about your followers, create a contact button, and create promotions to reach a wider audience.

2. Focus on growing your followers

When using Instagram for an affiliate marketing side hustle, it’s important to ensure that you are reaching a sizeable audience. Without a significant amount of followers, your product promotions likely won’t be very successful. 

In order to grow your audience and boost the success of your account, we recommend using a growth service like Kicksta.

Kicksta is an Instagram growth service that prides itself on providing organic growth to its customers. It’s a good idea to employ a service that promotes natural growth on the app, as this will lead you to reach a wider audience of genuine followers who are interested in your content and, therefore, more likely to purchase the products that you promote. 

3. Pick the right affiliate partners

When starting out in affiliate marketing, it can feel exciting and overwhelming, and you may want to jump at every opportunity for a partnership that presents itself. However, it’s a good idea to be selective about the brands that you choose to work with. 

As an affiliate marketer, you’ll be developing a social media presence that is a reflection of who you are. Therefore, you should only promote products that fall in line with your personal branding as well as the values that you want to promote on your page. 

When determining which brands you’ll partner with, consider what your page stands for. Are you a health and wellness account? Fashion and beauty? Family-based? Travel? Each of these is a unique sort of branding, and certain products will align better with some accounts than with others. So make sure that you carefully craft a list of affiliate partners who work well with the branding you’ve developed for your own page.

4. Share your unique link

As an affiliate marketer, you’ll receive a unique link from your affiliate program. This is the link that your followers will click when looking into the products that you’re promoting. It’s important for you to share this link specifically, as it’ll allow your affiliate program to track your performance as a marketer. 

Your affiliate program will be able to track the sales, clicks, and commissions garnered from your unique link, which is important to your success as an affiliate marketer. So, when looking to grow a successful side hustle in this area, it’ll be important to boost this link to make sure that your followers use it as much as possible!

Ready, set, market!

Are you geared up to create a successful affiliate marketing side hustle now? 

We hope that this article has been helpful in developing your understanding of the value of using Instagram for affiliate marketing. 

Among all the side hustles that you can choose from, affiliate marketing can certainly be a lucrative – and fun – option! 

So, why not give it a shot? Keep these tips in mind, and refer back to this article for guidance throughout the process. And, of course…Good luck!

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