How Much Money Does Instagram Pay For 1,000 Views?

Instagram has over 2.4 billion active users from all over the world. Around 200 million of these users are considered creators who monetize their audience. So, about 8% of Instagram users earn on the platform. You can join them and also make money on Instagram. But then you need to know how much does Instagram pay for 1,000 views to estimate your potential income.

Read on to find out whether Instagram really pays for views, what factors influence your income, and how to make money on this platform.

How Instagram Pays for Views?

Instagram doesn’t pay creators directly for views. They are only a factor that influences your account’s engagement and content value. Your income depends on the number of followers, your engagement rates, and monetization strategies.

The platform pays creators once they reach 10,000+ followers through:

• Badges;
• Bonuses;
• Gifts;
• Subscriptions.

But first, you’ll have to comply with the Partner Policies and Content Policies. For instance, they prohibit the usage of looped and static videos, slideshows, text montages, and various other formats. You should also avoid using engagement bait, unoriginal content, and misleading information.

As for withdrawals, the minimum payout balance is $100 for wire transfers and $25 for PayPal. However, you should create a payout account to remove the $500 earning limit per monetization tool. Then you’ll get paid at the end of each month whenever you reach the payout requirements.

Factors That Influence the Payment Rate

Badges, subscriptions, and gifts have a fixed price rate that helps you figure out how much you could make. These will bring you more money with each sale. However, the situation is a bit different when speaking of the reels bonus program.

The first issue is joining the program. Instagram’s official statement indicates that it’s an invite-only program available in English and Korean. Although most people think there’s a certain follower count to join, most creators conclude that the system sends out invitations randomly.

The reels bonus program focuses on the number of views on your videos. Following the rule of thumb, a larger view count should bring more money. Reddit user frogman2525 shares earning only around $140 for 2 million views. They also indicate a bonus cap that limits potential earnings.

Dylan5589 shares a screenshot of Instagram’s dashboard. It requires 11 million views to earn a maximum of $1,200 during the month. The user earned $108.33 for 103.28K viewings. Every next dollar requires more activity from followers, growing in geometrical progression. 

As you can see, your video plays affect your earnings with the bonus program. All other methods are influenced by the number of sales. This depends on your audience’s loyalty, interest in your account, and motivation to follow your activities.

Other platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and Snapchat also use similar programs that share revenue with their creators. We previously covered how to make money on Snapchat. This social media has a similar approach to generating profits, so you should check it out to get the most out of your photos and videos.

How Much Does Instagram Pay for 1,000 Views?

Reddit user lexbuck estimates the payment to be $0.11 per 1,000 viewings of your videos. People also indicate that getting the first $100 is usually easy. However, passing this cap becomes a challenge due to the program’s peculiar algorithms.

It’s also necessary to note that you’ll get different payment caps depending on your overall community activity. There aren’t any certain requirements to increase them. Generally, the caps grow along with your number of viewers and content quality. 

The reels bonus system isn’t the only way to profit from Instagram’s official tools. You can also benefit from badges during live streams, subscriptions for unique content, and gifts on your videos. Let’s check out the payouts for all Instagram’s official monetization tools. These are based on the donation options users get to support their favorite content creators.

Donation Option	Payment
Badges	Per purchase: $0.99; $1.99; $4.99.
Bonuses	Capped at: $1,200; $8,500; $35,000.
Gifts	Per star: $0.01.
Subscriptions	Per purchase: $0.99; $1.99; $2.99; $4.99; $9.99; $19.99; $49.99; $99.99.

Although various sources state the average influencer earns $2,970 per month, this doesn’t include only these donations. Influencers use many other approaches to get the most of their videos, so we’ll share the best ways to make money on Instagram in the next sections.

How Can You Increase Your Instagram Views?

The more people see your content, the greater your revenue will be. That’s why you should aim at growing your numbers and covering a larger base with each video. 

Try out these strategies:

• Use hashtags. Publications with at least 1 hashtag get 29% more interactions. You can add up to 30 hashtags, so generate as many relevant options as possible with this free hashtag generator or any other you can find yourself as well.
• Write engaging hooks. The first line of text in all your content must make users want to keep on watching. You can find 100+ examples of the best hooks that grab attention and make people watch. But avoid using obvious clickbait because it’s not recommended by Instagram’s policies.
• Make shareable and saveable content. Social media algorithms are built to drive traffic to posts that get attention. This is proven by Hootsuit’s experiment, where they found a 38% increase in reach for highly saved posts. Examples of highly shareable content include infographics, how-to-guides, memes, and other formats.
• Share your publications in Stories. People usually first interact with Stories when they open Instagram. If you share a Reel there and people watch it, then it counts as an additional view. So even when the algorithms don’t place your content in the user’s feed, the Story will definitely show up on top of their screen.

Many bloggers also use these methods to generate traffic for their clients, making an extra income apart from the platform’s official capabilities. Influence traffic is when bloggers use their popularity to sell and promote products. You can learn more about influencer traffic in our previous article.

5 Best Ways to Make Money on Instagram

Influencers make most of their money from sponsorships, affiliate marketing, and other activities. You can even profit if you’re a nano-blogger with an audience of up to 10,000 followers. We gathered the most profitable activities for all accounts.

1. Sponsored Posts

Sponsored publications are one of the most promising ways of making money. This includes partnering with brands, local businesses, or other bloggers in order to highlight their products in exchange for payment or a freebie. For example, Cristiano Ronaldo with 634 million subscribers earns over $3 million per post. 

You won’t get that much unless you’re a global star. But you can still make a living even with an audience of up to 10,000 people. Check out this sheet to see an estimate of the rates charged by different types of bloggers. These numbers represent the industry’s average.

Influencer Type	Number of Followers	Rate per Post
Nano	Up to 10,000	$10 – $100
Micro	Up to 50,000	$100 – $500
Mid-tier	Up to 500,000	$500 – $5,000
Macro	Up to 1 million	$5,000 – $10,000
Mega	Over 1 million	$10,000+

Some bloggers contact potential advertisers themselves to share their sponsorship opportunities. There are also many marketplaces where they share their accounts with all their data for companies to find them. Perfect examples are services like Influencity and Billo.

2. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a profitable way to make a living on Instagram. It involves promoting third-party products and services for a commission from each sale or action. However, you’ll have to learn how to make authentic and persuasive recommendations that just make people buy.

For example, Erica Ligenza is a creator in the fashion and beauty niche. She shares everything related to these topics, so her community of nearly 100k subscribers is guaranteed to be interested in self-care products. Check out her partnership with Colleen Rothschild Beauty that integrated an emotional description that just makes the readers imagine themselves using the products.

Successful affiliate marketing consists of:

• Reliable affiliate programs. Many brands provide their own programs for influencers where they share a certain percentage per sale. For example, Oriflame is a beauty company with its own program. You can also use general programs like Amazon Associates with a broad pool of niches or check out the best affiliate programs on our website.
• Honest and reliable reviews. Research states that 50%+ reviews are subject to manipulations, damaging reputation and reliability. If users see that you recommend products of poor quality or services that are clearly a scam, this will lead to reputational damage. It affects your profits in the long run. Instagram and Trustpilot have clear guidelines for identifying fake reviews: keep them in mind to avoid hurting your reputation.
• Create engaging content. Whatever you plan to sell, always show it in a way that makes people want to buy it. You can show the product in a beautiful setting or demonstrate its features in an integrated reel. Just make them imagine using the product and they’ll buy it. Here are some examples of what different brands use to drive engagement and sales.

Using affiliate links might seem to be challenging. But don’t worry: we covered how to promote affiliate links in our previous article. Check it out to get a full guide to affiliate marketing online.

3. Selling Your Own Products

It’s a common practice for bloggers to sell merchandise and custom products in their accounts. You can start your sales by setting up the Instagram Shopping feature or using a third-party platform like Etsy. This allows you to list items, add prices, and let users make purchases in several clicks.

Many popular people sell their merchandise to strengthen their brand while generating extra money. You can check out how Billie Eilish, with a fan base of 119 million, promotes her “Happier than ever” merch.

Another example includes Dominic Cellini, an artist who’s famous for his “Emmy the Robot” ongoing comic. He has over 210k subscribers on Instagram, all eager to see each chapter of the comic. Dominic uses this opportunity to create a plushie of the comic’s main character and sell it on the Makeship platform.

Follow these tips to sell your products with ease:

• Set up Instagram Shopping. This allows you to tag products in your publications and stories, increasing the chance of selling them. Also, it’s more convenient for people when they can buy something without leaving the app. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to set up an Instagram Shop.
• Share attractive visuals. Regardless of what you sell, an attractive visual representation will make people want to buy the product. It’s similar to our tips for affiliate marketing: make people “feel” the product and drive their imagination. You can check out how brands use Instagram Reels to promote their products with engaging content.
• Don’t be too pushy. Try making integrated ads without focusing on solely promoting the products. This allows you to gently prompt people to buy without making a negative experience. HubSpot shares the best examples of native advertising that make people watch the ads like a movie.

If you’re out of ideas about what to sell, check out what your favorite bloggers share. You can also take a look at the ads made by e-commerce and nutra affiliate programs listed on our website: they have various interesting products for sale. This will give you some inspiration to come up with relevant products for your merchandise.

4. Brand Ambassadorships

Brand ambassadorships are a long-term partnership between influencers and brands. They represent a deeper collaboration than sponsored posts. Creators can receive payment or free products for promoting companies as their brand images.

For example, Michael Buffer, the world’s most famous ring announcer in boxing, recently became an ambassador of RTF, a global Web3 boxing application. He immediately made several collab posts with the brand, promoting its ideas and features. This is a win-win situation: he gets paid while RTF gets worldwide recognition.

Consider these tips to find a successful partnership for your account:

• Be niche-focused. Companies usually search for bloggers within a relevant niche or sub-niches. If your industry can be easily defined, you’re more likely to get an offer from a company. According to Sellfy, the most profitable niches in 2024 are traveling, beauty, and fashion. 
• Contact brands first. In case you feel like you’ve grown a large base of fans in your niche-focused account, you can contact relevant brands and offer your services. This lets you set your own terms of collaboration and get a higher chance to be noticed. Komi shares tips on striking great deals with brands as an influencer.
• Publish consistently. Partnerships must be an equal opportunity for both sides. Brands typically expect increased sales and recognition, so they’ll be eagerly awaiting your publications. The experts at Hootsuite recommend publishing at least 3 posts per week, mixing different formats.

Also, it’s a great opportunity when combined with affiliate marketing. Apart from getting a commission from each sale, you’ll also get special bonuses from your partners. That’s why you must evaluate and prepare your account from a value point for potential collaborations.

5. Live Badges

Instagram Badges allow your viewers to make a donation during a live stream. This feature is available for creators in the US, UK, France, Spain, and several other countries. You can get up to $4.99 per badge, depending on your followers’ choice.

Getting more badges requires you to create engaging streams that give your fans a certain emotional connection. There isn’t a universal strategy: sometimes users can even send you a badge randomly to show their appreciation. But if you want to increase your chances of getting one, then make sure you cover their needs in your account’s niche. 

Summary

You can make a decent living on Instagram using various methods. Influencers who use Instagram’s features get paid around $0.11 per 1,000 views on average. You won’t earn much through the platform’s official monetization features, so you’ll have to use other options involving affiliate marketing and sponsored publications. It’s always possible to use a mix of methods to get the most of your account. 

FAQ