With 3 billion users each month, Instagram is the third largest social network. With almost no built-in monetization tools (compared to YouTube, for example), it’s hard to build a real business from Instagram.

In this post, we’ll share a strategy that’s working for monetizing an Instagram following: communities! You don’t need an enormous following to earn a living from a community, and it’s super easy to mix a community with courses, events, coaching, and other offers.

This is your sign to stop chasing followers, and start growing a digital business that’s yours. Here we go.

Each of Instagram’s built-in monetization programs has its own requirements. They have slightly different subscriber requirements (e.g. 10,000 for subscriptions), but all will require you to be at least 18 years old, have a business account, be in good standing and follow all policies, and live in an eligible country.

Here are some of the options on the platform.

If approved, you get a monthly subscription with almost 0 fees (except for in-app purchases, which take 30%). Offer subscribers private livestreams, stories, and exclusive Reels & Posts.

Instagram’s Shopping tool brings social selling to your business Instagram profile. This includes an integrated shopping experience–and Instagram reports that nearly half of its users shop weekly on the platform. Add shop pages, product detail pages (PDPs), and instant checkout.

You can post in collaboration with a brand, the brand pays to show your post to more people. Basically it’s sponsored organic content; you create, the brand pays to reach people with your posts or testimonials.

• Content treadmill: The burden is on the creator to keep churning out new content to keep members happy.

• Platform limits: Instagram doesn’t play well with external links, websites, or other tools. If your subscription relies on tools beyond Instagram, managing everything can be a headache.

• Lack of control: Unlike your own platform, there are fewer ways to really manage members, collect emails, export subscribers, etc.

• Complete dependency: If you want to go to all the work to build a business on Instagram, understand the risks. One hack or ban could END your business.

• You don’t own the customer relationship: Meta owns them, and it can be hard to get the right data, connect to a CMS, CRM, etc.

Some creators might think they’re creating community on Instagram. But that’s debatable. You don’t own the relationship with your followers. If Instagram deleted your account tomorrow, they would all be gone. And just because they like and comment on your posts doesn’t mean they’re building real relationships–either with you or with each other.

Instagram gives you the building blocks of a good community: shared passion and you as a trusted guide. But it doesn’t take you all the way.

Building a subscription on a membership or community platform instead changes this dynamic, allowing members to create their own content (aka UGC) and engagement via conversations between members.

Building a dedicated community off Instagram actually gives you a more viable business as well. Here are the things you can include in a community business:

Estimated Income: 200 members x $48/mo = $9,600/mo (based on our average member data & a 2% conversion rate from 10,000 followers)

Requirements: Instagram following; Dedicated membership platform

How to monetize Instagram audience with memberships

Memberships have one of the highest potential revenues, combining a solid monthly payment with recurring income. Basically, you create a membership space off Instagram and invite your followers to become members there.

Unlike Instagram’s subscriptions, a membership platform gives you total control over community and content. And it makes it much easier to bring followers from multiple platforms into a branded member Space–great, for example, if you create on some combo of Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.

The bonus is that memberships get you out of the content creation rut. You build a network effect–in which members contribute and engage each other–making growth way easier.

Membership is ultimately belonging. That’s what makes it amazing! You create a kind, cultivated Space where people can find connection.

A dedicated community platform also means you can add in different parts to your membership. This could mean:

• Private community Spaces with different content (video, audio, texts, courses, livestreams, etc.)

• Virtual events and calls

• Member networking, messaging, chat & discussions, and discovery

• Gamification, new member journeys, challenges, & resource libraries

You also have total control over monetization. You can create different plans and bundles, each with their own perks. You control the brand. And you actually own your members’ information.

• You’ll need to pay a monthly fee for a premium membership platform (but most platforms pay for themselves with 1 or 2 members).

• You need to learn to bring people from Instagram to your community platform and convert them.

Try the platform with the most $1 million memberships.

Estimated Income: 200 students x $270 = $54,000 (Based on a 2% conversion rate from 10,000 followers)

Requirements: Instagram following; Course platform; Teaching expertise; Content creation skills.

How to monetize Instagram audience with courses

If your Instagram creation lends itself well to teaching, creating an online course could be in your monetization plans. Online learning will be worth $69 billion by 2028, and you should have a part of that.

There are a ton of different ways to create online learning experiences, from pre-recorded courses to live learning, from workshops to webinars. You’ll need to decide what method works for you and your teaching style.

To get started…

• Choose a topic that fits your audience. You could do some “market research” by interviewing a few followers about potential learning goals.

• Decide on your course format. For example, pre-recorded video courses are a lot of work, but give you the freedom to make mistakes and edit them out. Live cohort courses are less “forgiving,” but let you pre-sell to test your market. It will depend on you, but also your followers. Do they need live, virtual help? Would it be better if they could go at their own pace?

• Choose an online course platform and figure out how you’ll get your followers to convert into students.

Teaching takes some work, but creators often find this work very fulfilling–not just financially rewarding.

• Each style of building has potential downsides. Pre-building a course that doesn’t sell well feels like a waste of time. Hosting a live cohort course and struggling with presentation is frustrating. (You’ll get better as you go!)

• Third-party course platforms all have some form of course fees–either a flat fee or a percentage cut. When comparing platforms, look at whether they charge a flat monthly fee, transaction fees, or a percentage of course sales, since each model affects margins differently as you grow. The downside of percentage pricing is that you may feel penalized as you grow.

• Instagram can be a barrier to sales. It’s not easy to add external links to posts, so promotion can be a challenge.

Bonnie Christine brings people to her website from Instagram, and sells some awesome courses & eBooks on surface patterns and licensing.

Estimated Income:

• Virtual Events: 200 attendees x $44 = $8,800 (Based on Eventbrite’s average price & 2% conversion on 10,000 followers)

• Live Conferences: 200 attendees x $500 = $100,000 (Global Conference Alliance Numbers x 2% conversion on 10,000 followers)

Requirements: Instagram following; Virtual event platform; Venues for live events; Event planning know-how; Team support (esp. For live events)

How to monetize Instagram audience with events

Events are an awesome (and underused) way of making money off of any type of following. If there’s a clear case for bringing people together, virtually or in person, it can be an incredible experience. As a business opportunity, events also let you monetize the energy of a conversation you’re hosting online. AND people genuinely like them.

Here are some examples of events you could run:

Virtual

• Webinars and workshops: with live instruction from a teacher (maybe you).

• Virtual conference: that brings together speakers, panels, and a ton of value.

• Live Q&As and office hours: These provide unstructured event styles that are still engaging. These also work in the context of a community or membership.

In-Person

• Conferences: Bring together a group of people with speakers and agenda for a life-changing experience. Conferences are big costs upfront and a lot of work to organize, but done right they can be huge.

• Workshops or training: Bringing people together for live instruction and co-learning.

• Retreats & excursions: In-person events don’t have to be serious. They can be getaways or even adventures.

• Up-front organizing and high overhead, ESPECIALLY for live conferences which can run anywhere from $15,000-$500,000 to organize.

• Need for additional staff, support, coordination, etc.

• Often need the event to succeed to cover the high overhead and upfront costs.

• A LOT of planning, probably more than any other thing on this list.

Kit hosts an awesome live conference each year: Craft and Commerce. It brings together all sorts of creators, many of them from Instagram.

Estimated Income: 10 clients x $710 = $7,100/month

Requirements: Instagram following; Expertise & reputation in your niche; Coaching & booking platform.

How to monetize Instagram with coaching

Coaching is a really incredible thing, working with clients to help them get results. Instagram is a great spot for coaches to grow their client base, because it’s a good platform to get your authenticity across.

Although online coaching isn’t endlessly scalable like some of the options on this list, it does provide a high-ticket offering for monetizing your Instagram. And it lets you see your clients’ life-changing results first hand.

Here are some of the different ways to structure coaching:

• 1:1 coaching is what most people expect, you work directly with a client to help them get results. The impact is high, but the scale is low.

• Group coaching can be a great alternative to 1:1 coaching, since it lets you work with more people at once. You can earn more, while sometimes charging clients less. Some clients will prefer 1:1, but group coaching can be really powerful too, as people go through a transformation together.

• Hybrid coaching and courses lets you scale through offering some coaching sessions, but mixing it with pre-recorded courses to let you scale more.

• Masterminds are an alternative coaching style, which can bring people together for amazing results. Unlike group coaching, a mastermind isn’t directed from the coach downward. Instead, members work together to coach each other and encourage them through a transformation.

• It can require a higher time commitment to deliver, and you’ll need to balance it with content creation.

• Requires a high amount of personal attention, managing expectations and boundaries, and setting schedules.

• There’s a limit to how scalable it is.

Any community starts with a big idea. A common theme. And the great news is, most creators have this hard piece done for them.

If you've built an Instagram following around something you are passionate about or some expertise you have, you already have the idea that will build your community. Look back at your posts. Look at the comments. (You can even copy some comments into AI and run an analysis: prompt: “What do these comments suggest about my audience’s goals, challenges, and motivations? What are their needs and wants?”)

If you have a broad Instagram following, you might need to narrow your focus.

Every community needs to be built around an Ideal Member. Just as traditional businesses might think of an ideal client, in a human-centered business, your Ideal Member is the person who will benefit most from your community.

Chances are, this type of person is already following you on Instagram. Again, look at the people who are always commenting and engaging. You need to find one thing among your current following: a transition.

Start with somebody in transition. Community businesses based on people in transition always work best.

• It could be the person looking for their next career move.

• It could be the new parent nervous and looking for support.

• It could be the interested historian wanting to become the armchair expert in the room.

Those are transitions.

If you don’t have a clear vision of this right now, try some posts with “transition” prompts in them. This could be things like…

• “Comment below and tell me your goals for the coming year.”

• “Tell me what your biggest challenges are in learning X.”

• “If you’re trying to launch a business, comment YES below and I’ll send you a free guide.”

You can use your content creation to zoom in on this person.

Big Idea: If you have followers you recognize who always comment and engage, why not slide into their DMs? Pick 5-10 followers that “Get it” and ask if you can do an informal interview with them. If they say yes, ask them questions to identify the transition they’re going through.

That ideal member going through a transition needs one thing from you… they need their Best Year Ever. And it’s going to happen off Instagram.

What will their life look like in one year if they join your community? What will be true of them that isn't true today?

That's what their transition will look like when you map it over time.

This is why it’s important to choose ONE type of person for your community from your Instagram following. You can’t plan a Best Year Ever for all your followers–just for one avatar.

Pricing is always a challenge. Obviously each of the options above has their own pricing logic. We included some of those in each section.

When it comes to pricing communities, our data shows that the average community on Mighty costs $48 a month.

That's a reasonable charge for a membership, and a great number to build a recurring business off of. Remember, chances are you’re going to keep creating on Instagram. If so, you’re already doing a lot of stuff for “free.”

It can be hard to charge for stuff, but your community absolutely should be a premium offer for your Ideal Member. Don’t charge too little, and don’t offer a free option. (You probably don’t even need to offer a free trial.) You absolutely don’t want ALL of your Instagram following to jump into your community (even 500 at once would kill a community).

Instagram is now where you build trust for free. The community is for a small handful of serious people looking for transformation.

We like to turn all of this planning data into one Big Purpose Statement.

It looks like this:

Now the hard part is done. You've got all the foundations of a great community business.

So you don't have to scratch your head about what to do.

Just work backwards. Once people start joining your community, you’ll have a clearer sense of who they are and what they want. How can you design the community to make sure they get that transition?

• Monthly themes: can you divide the teaching and conversation up into relevant monthly themes? Pro tip: If you have an open membership year-round, don't make the monthly themes cumulative. Otherwise when new people come in you have to start at the beginning all the time.

• Weekly activities: create a calendar of weekly activities, focusing on creating some rituals that people can come back to every week (e.g. community office hours, motivation Monday, featured member Friday).

• Create daily polls and questions to keep conversations going. Once you have everything else done, it's not hard to create regular touch points. Mighty has AI built into its community software to help you figure these out if you're stuck.

If you want to keep it simple, keep your themes and activities lined up with the content you’re already making. It makes it a lot easier to make Instagram content that isn’t totally different from what you’re doing in your community. In fact, if you do the community work first the Instagram content will probably be pretty easy.

Whatever type of community you envision, you need software to host it on.

Consider a community platform that will let you do everything you need, instead of mixing and matching. Memberships. Courses. Events. Coaching. Yes, it is possible.

For example, Mighty Networks brings all these together in one place and one Space, under your brand. It gives you monetization control to build the community business you want, and create under your own brand too. You own everything. Everything you build is yours. No algorithm or shadow ban can take it away.

Now all you need is people! And you don't need a ton. In fact, starting with 10 or 15 members is the perfect step. It helps you make sure you have the right ideal member and creates the core of a successful community.

You will grow from here.

You can announce the launch on Instagram if you want to. But be careful. If you have a huge following, you actually don’t want everyone in. Especially at the start. It can be a better idea to launch slowly, perhaps with an invite list or screen people coming in. The more Insta famous you are, the more likely people are to drip in just to meet you. You actually don’t want that. The goal is to get a community of the right people.

Now that you’re up and running, your community and your Instagram following can complement each other beautifully.

Instagram - your “funnel” Instagram is where you create your content. But your content can always be framed around a value journey of helping people to learn and grow. Some of these may eventually join the community. Many won’t! But you’re building credibility around the thing you care about.

The community - your “product” As you do the work of community management, you’ll see that communities are surprisingly grassroots. If you’ve found the right Ideal Member, you’re like the Host of a party. You don’t need to talk to everyone or host every conversation. It will happen organically. Your job is to prompt and shape the bigger conversation in a way that benefits the transformation!

Speaking engagements: This is a slightly different take, but instead of hosting your own events, you could find speaking engagements at existing events. Great speakers with a proven social following can run anywhere from $5,000-$25,000, so this is definitely worth exploring. And bonus, you don’t need to do any of the organizing.

Digital Products: We’ve got an ultimate guide to digital products you can sell here. But this could be turning your Instagram following into a sales platform for things like eBooks, Lightroom presets, Canva templates, photography guides, or content calendars. You can go beyond Instagram’s built-in shopping, and build out a storefront or hosting somewhere (like Amazon or Etsy). For a really cool example, photographer and videographer Peter McKinnon sells presets and LUTs from his Instagram.

Physical Products: We covered the Instagram Shopping option above, but this can be either mixed with or replaced with a separate store for physical products. Physical products can be more work, but there’s a tangible value at the other end for a customer. And with the increase in dropshipping and print-on-demand outlets, it’s pretty easy to get a physical product up and selling. You could create your own store with a platform like Shopify and sell products you make, use Etsy or Amazon and sell print-on-demand products like shirts (you can use a platform like Printify for printing and fulfillment), or even partner with brands to release your own products with a brand.

Affiliate Marketing: Affiliate marketing means you earn commissions by selling products that you really love. Although most Instagrammers are thinking about sponsored posts, affiliate programs can be a pretty great way to earn some income too. Unlike brand deals, affiliate programs are usually “self-serve,” meaning you can start regardless of following. All you need to do is join the affiliate programs of brands you love, get your own sharable link, and start!

Services: If your Instagram account either teaches an in-demand skill or demonstrates that you know how to do it, can you use it to monetize? For example, if you teach digital marketing or content creation or ads, those are all things businesses pay for. Or, if you’re naturally great at building a following and managing social profiles, that’s a service skill too.

Sponsored Posts: Sponsored posts and brand collabs are probably one of the most common Instagram monetization techniques. In fact, Instagram’s influencer market is an estimated $17 billion business, with the average brand on Insta sponsoring at least 5 posts a week.

Instagram can be a powerful place to build an audience, but the real opportunity is turning followers into members, customers, students, clients, and collaborators inside a community you own. The next step is choosing the monetization model that best fits your audience, your expertise, and the kind of business you want to build. Whether it’s side hustle money or you replace your day job, there’s a freedom and joy that comes from earning from your hard work online.

And if you want to launch a membership community, course, or events, come build with us! Mighty is G2’s top-ranked community management platform. We’re home to creators and names like Tony Robbins, Gary Vaynerchuk, Marie Forleo, and Matthew Hussey.

You can try the platform free for 14 days!