How do influencers make money on social media platforms like Instagram, YouTube and TikTok?
A lot of you are familiar with the way YouTubers generate revenue from ads that play during their videos, but how do influencers make money beyond that?
What about influencers who only stream through Twitch or upload content to Instagram?
In this post, we list the most common (and some uncommon) monetization strategies influencers use to fund their empires.
How do influencers make money? 11 monetization strategies that work
1. Subscriptions
Because other monetization strategies on this list are unpredictable, many social media influencers turn to subscriptions instead.
You can charge subscription fees on YouTube (where they’re called “channel memberships”) and Twitch.
You can also use a third-party service like Patreon.
Subscribers receive premium content and additional perks no matter which option you decide to go with.
If you’re active on YouTube, use channel memberships. If you’re active on Twitch, use Twitch subscriptions. If you use both, use both!
However, both social media channels have partner programs you need to be part of in order to use the subscription feature.
Here are the prerequisites you must meet before applying:
- YouTube Partner Program
- 1,000 subscribers
- 4,000 watch hours in the last 12 months
- Have a linked AdSense account
- Live in a country where the program is available
- Have no active Community Guidelines strikes
- Twitch Affiliate Program
- Stream for at least 500 minutes in the last 30 days
- Stream on 7 different days in the last 30 days
- Average of 3 concurrent viewers in the last 30 days
- 30 followers
- Twitch Partner Program
- Complete Path to Partnership achievement as a Twitch affiliate
- Stream for at least 25 hours
- Stream on 12 different days
- Average of 75 concurrent viewers during livestreams
- Acceptance into the program occurs on a case-by-case basis, but it mainly boils down to:
- Average number of concurrent viewers
- Type of content you stream (advertiser friendly, consistent style)
- How often you stream
- Your follower count on other platforms
- Complete Path to Partnership achievement as a Twitch affiliate
And yes, Twitch has two kinds of programs you can join that allow you to earn revenue from the platform.
You’ll be accepted into the affiliate program first, and then the partner program when your following is big enough.
Partners have more benefits than affiliates, but you can still collect Twitch subscriptions as an affiliate.
You can also collect subscription fees on Facebook, though this feature is still being tested by the platform.
You need to have either 10,000 page followers or over 250 return viewers as well as “180,000 watch minutes,” which equates to 3,000 hours.
Related Reading: How Do Twitch Streamers Make Money? The Complete Guide.
Subscriber perks
YouTube and Twitch subscribers receive special “sub badges” that appear next to their names when they type messages in the chat section during livestreams.
They also receive special “sub emotes,” which are emoticons they can use in chat.
Each YouTuber or Twitch creator has their own sub badge and emotes, either designed by themselves or with the help of a graphic designer.
Subscribers also have access to exclusive livestream events and videos.
While many influencers prefer to use YouTune and Twitch’s in-platform subscription features, others use a third-party service like Patreon instead.
This is a fantastic alternative if you’re not yet eligible for monetization on Twitch or YouTube.
It can also help you keep premium subscriber content separate from regular content.
2. Ad revenue
Influencers can earn ad revenue from content they upload to YouTube, Twitch and Facebook.
This is the easiest and most passive way to make money as a social media influencer as it doesn’t require any extra work behind the scenes. You just need to enable monetization and increase the number of views your videos receive.
However, the path to receiving that ability can be difficult.
All three platforms require you to become a partner (or affiliate with Twitch).
We already talked about what this requires on YouTube and Twitch, and Facebook’s still testing revenue sharing strategies, so their requirements are likely to change.
For now, they mostly consist of adhering to several different policies.
In the meantime, Facebook recommends checking your eligibility status yourself from the Creator Studio dashboard.
Some Instagram influencers earn ad revenue from Reels, but this program is invite only and not a very popular way to make money.
Keep in mind that the best way to earn ad revenue from YouTube is by making longer videos of at least 10 minutes in duration each.
3. Affiliate marketing
Like Patreon subscriptions, affiliate marketing is another suitable monetization strategy for small and large creators alike.
This is because it’s not dependent on any partner programs, so you can get started whenever you want.
Instead of views, your success is dependent on engagement rates.
Here’s a quick explanation of affiliate marketing in case you need it:
Companies create affiliate programs as a way to encourage content creators to promote their products and services in their content.
These creators are given their very own affiliate links for the products and services they promote.
When their viewers click these links and make purchases, the creators are compensated through commissions, which are typically percentages of what their viewers paid.
It’s a simple way to generate revenue from products and services you may already recommend in your content.
You can even create content specifically made to promote affiliate products, such as product reviews.
Getting started with affiliate marketing is also easy since most affiliate programs don’t require you to have a specific follower count or number of views.
You just need to fill out a simple form in most cases.
Once you do, you can add affiliate links to YouTube video descriptions, your Twitch channel page, and a link-in-bio page for platforms like Instagram and TikTok.
Related Reading: The Definitive Guide To TikTok Affiliate Marketing.
4. Brand sponsorships
Sponsorship deals are a key component to receiving larger sources of revenue as an influencer.
They’re like affiliate marketing in that you get paid to promote other companies’ products and services, but they’re also quite different in a couple of ways.
The first is what it takes to get sponsored.
While many companies don’t have strict requirements for their affiliate programs, most prefer the influencers they sponsor to have a fairly sizable following.
This is to ensure they receive decent returns on investment on sponsored posts, which leads us to the second way sponsorship deals differ from affiliate marketing, and that’s the way influencers get paid.
With affiliate marketing, you don’t receive a commission until one of your viewers clicks on your affiliate link and completes a purchase.
With sponsorship deals, sponsors typically pay influencers in advance with the expectation that they’ll receive an influx of sales by appearing in their content.
5. Become a brand ambassador
Hiring brand ambassadors is another form of influencer marketing brands use alongside affiliate marketing and sponsorships.
This strategy is more similar to sponsorships than anything else.
This is because brands pay ambassadors in advance with the expectation of appearing in their content.
However, while sponsorships are often one-off deals, meaning creators and brands negotiate an individual social media post or a single set of posts at a time, brands pay ambassadors to appear in their content long term.
That payment could be in the form of free products, a higher affiliate marketing commission or even a payment arrangement, the latter of which is often based on the industry’s average cost per engagement.