How to Make Money as a Micro Influencer in 2024?

Over the last couple of years, influencer marketing has seen a shift in trend. You may or may not have noticed it. Still, now we’re seeing brands, even the heavy hitters, pumping more money into influencer marketing than ever, and more of it is going to the micro influencers.

With the up-rise of micro influencers, influencer marketing has become much more affordable for brands.

With the right implementation, startups can utilize influencer marketing and not spend thousands of dollars doing it. In this article, we’ll show you how to make money as a micro influencer and work with brands.

Types of Instagram influencers based on follower count

Before answering the question “How to make money as a micro influencer?” you’d better know different types of influencers.

There are four types of Instagram influencers based on follower count, including mega, macro, micro, and nano influencers. Let’s define who they exactly are to make it easier for you to choose the right influencer for your brand to execute the best influencer marketing campaign.

#1- Mega influencers: 

Mega influencers with more than one million followers have the greatest reach among all categories of influencers. Because of their vast viewership, these influencers have a “mega” impact on society and the marketplace. They could be celebrities or bloggers from a variety of fields.

#2- Macro influencers:

Macro influencers have a following of 100,000 to one million people. Unlike mega influencers, macro influencers’ success on social media is mostly based on their expertise and internet-related activities, such as professional blogging or vlogging.

Macro influencers are the best form of an influencer if you want a good blend of reach and influence. Macro influences include a wide range of celebrities, singers, and other public figures.

#3- Micro influencers:

Individuals with a following of 10k to 100k on Instagram are known as micro influencers. They are frequently well-known in specialized areas and are thought to be experts in their respective fields. Micro influencers, on the other hand, are often experts in a specific field, such as beauty, fashion, fitness, gaming, and so on.

#4- Nano influencers:

Nano influencers can readily be identified by their number of followers. Nano influencers have a following of between 1,000 and 10,000 people. They are, nonetheless, extremely prominent and engaged in their local neighborhoods or communities, with the highest levels of participation. These local influencers want average individuals to tell their friends and family about a brand’s product or service.

What  are the basics of making money as a micro influencer

Before we get into the details of how to make money as a micro influencer, let’s talk about what will get you there. To establish your value as a micro influencer, you need some basics that can help you gain credibility and win the trust of your audience and brands that are looking for influencers. So, you need the following basics to start with.

1. Produce high-quality content

If you want to make a solid first impression, you need high-quality content. Brands will look at the influencer’s relevancy, reach, and engagement rate when looking for suitable social media influencers to partner with. They will, however, go through the influencer’s content to assess how excellent of a content creator they are.

If you want to know how to make money as a micro influencer, pay careful attention to the content you post on social media. Here are some tips on how to create quality content on social media.

1. Invest in a competent camera to improve your image quality.
2. Whatever you post, bring value.
3. Improve your text content.
4. Ues appealing captions to your target audience.
5. Diversify content types.
6. Use Call-To-Actions (CTA).

2. Engage your audience

Engagement rate does matter to brands when looking for influencers to collaborate with. So, it’s crucial to build an engaged and loyal audience if you want to know how to make money as a micro influencer. 

Instead of simply creating content, you need the following tips to build an engaged and interested following across the major social media platforms.

1. Be clear on your tone.
2. Make your profile bio clear.
3. Ask specific questions in posts.
4. Answer your audience questions using Lives, DMs, and comments.
5. Keep your content focused on your specific topic area (niche).
6. Be conscious when you post.
7. Share user-generated or industry-specific content.
8. Join a hashtag.
9. Post consistently.

3. Join an influencer marketing platform

Influencer marketing platforms and marketplaces allow brands to find influencers and collaborate with them much easier as opposed to reaching out directly via social platforms. These platforms can even help influencers explore thousands of brands and send them offers to partner up.

One of the best free influencer marketplaces is Ainfluencer. This brands and influencers marketplace allows you to find brands, connect, and collaborate with them quickly. 

So if you don’t know how to make money as a micro influencer, it’s a great idea to start finding potential brands with Ainfluencer. Here is how to use this service as an influencer: First, you need to download the app from Google Play or the App Store ad then Sign up for free.

After connecting your Instagram page, the “Explorer” tab allows you to view brands’ ads. Here you can view different offers and open the ones you are interested in to view more details. 

• If you are interested in working with the brand, tap on the “Make an Offer” button and negotiate with the brand owners about the ad, pricing, etc.

How to make money as a micro influencer?

After you have completed these basics, you can use some of the most popular and effective ways for micro influencers to make money with social media.

1. Sponsored post

Sponsored social media posts are one of the most popular ways to see how to make money as a micro influencer. It is a form of advertising in which brands or marketers pay social media influencers to promote their product or service.

The post may be about the product or service itself, a review post, informational post, or it may simply include a link to the product or service. 

2. Become a brand ambassador

Becoming a brand representative or brand ambassador is another way to see how to make money as a micro influencer. As a brand ambassador, you will receive free products from the brand. You’ll have to advertise these products on social media in exchange.

Some brands may charge a fee for each piece of content that their brand ambassadors create. There may also be a compensation clause in place in which you are paid a percentage or a set amount for each conversion you make.

What’s so good about this form of partnership is that it is a kind of extended contract. Instead of one-time cooperation, consider a prolonged contract lasting at least a few months or even years.

 3. Make money on Instagram and other platforms with affiliate marketing

Another excellent way to make money as a micro influencer is by leveraging affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing for influencers is done by approaching brands that offer affiliate programs. 

Through this kind of performance-based marketing, brands’ affiliate marketers are provided with a unique affiliate link or code that will be used for tracking influencers’ conversion.

Influencers need to create posts in which they can review and promote brand’s products or choose from a collection of products that a brand provides to you for free.

4. Photo and video sales

Instagram is well-known for its fantastic photographs. Travel influencers and those who create picture-worthy images may be able to sell them as a result. Photo sales are normally prints that you may purchase on their website in this case. You can sometimes purchase the rights to them as well. Videos are often licensed.

Here are 2 examples of brands and micro influencers collaborations:

Michelob Micro-Influencer Campaign

The influencer below is an example of a golf micro-influencer promoting a luxurious-looking beer, Michelob Ultra Slim, to golfers that follow him due to the knowledge that many golfers love to drink beer casually while they play. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Colin McCarthy (@colinmccarthygolf)

This is a good strategy from the Michelob, and it was likely very cost-effective while lucrative. So far, the video has 31,500 plays since September 2018.

That means 31,500 different Instagram users watched this video for at least 3 seconds. What’s great for Michelob is that they’ve probably spent approximately $300-$500 to harness 31,500 different eyes to increase brand awareness. 

Do that with 3-5 different influencers, and you’ve spent about around $1500-$2000 for over 100k different eyes and potential customers. 

You’d have to spend that or more on influencers with 150k-200k for one campaign, and generally, their engagement rates and views aren’t that high. Many of their followers know they’re being sold on multiple products on a fairly regular basis, and they lose trust with the influencer.

Sperry’s Utilizes micro and nano influencer

In 2016, Sperry shoes worked with more than 100 micro and nano influencers on Instagram to create engaging content promoting their boat shoes.

Sperry wanted to work with users who were already creating content with their shoes and in exchange for exposure and recognition, these micro influencers provide Sperry with quality, authentic imagery, posting it to their official Instagram account.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Sperry (@sperry)

The above post, featuring a photo taken by @slavatheshrimp (4,000 Instagram followers), was Sperry’s most-engaged photo of 2016. You can see why it got so much engagement! 

The takeaway from this campaign is that influencers may already be talking about your brand in a positive light, why not harness that? This is exactly what Sperry did and likely at a very low cost.

What startups should take away from This?

What brands should take away from this is, nano influencers and micro influencers have the ability to push a brand’s sales and awareness at a low cost, and for the most part, more effectively than macro and mega influencers.

Why? Because these lower follower count influencers more than likely have real followers and have built a strong relationship with their followers.

This bodes well with higher sales and awareness considering there are real followers willing to engage with relevant content. When an influencer’s followers are flooded with robots and many of the real followers feel like they’re always being flooded with sales pitches, they disengage, lose trust, and inevitably become dejected.

Start off Small and A/B Test

Startups can still use influencer marketing in a cost-effective way. Start off by spending a couple of hundred dollars on a micro or nano influencer and see what it does for your business.

Invest a couple hundred more with a different digital influencer and see how if it has a positive effect on your business again.

If you find there’s been a direct boost in sales or a rise in traffic on your website due to an increase in brand awareness, then the campaign you could deem successful.

Influencer marketing done right can boost startups to another level of sales and brand awareness.

Conclusion

In conclusion, becoming a micro influencer is a great way to make money in 2024. There are many ways to monetize your influence, and the opportunities are only going to increase in the years to come. So if you have a following of 10,000 or fewer people, start monetizing your influence today!