How to Unlock Five Profit Areas on Instagram for Your Biz

By Jake Adam Davey.

In this article, I want to walk you through the number one thing that will have a massive impact on the results you get directly from Instagram, and how, by focusing on this one thing, you can unlock the five major profit areas on Instagram.

Many people out there will tell you that this is not the most important thing and that you can actually get results without this.

Many people will say that you can have a successful online business without this, and it doesn't play a significant role.

I'm going to disagree.

I think that doing this one thing and focusing on this one thing will be the number one factor in continued success and expansive and scalable growth. As you start to grow your business using Instagram, what is that one thing that I'm talking about?

The size of your audience - Your followers

The bigger your audience, the more opportunities you have to grow and scale to reach an even larger audience and ultimately increase your profits from Instagram. 

Many people out there will say, 'You can have a business from Instagram with 1000 followers or less. You can make sales on the platform with less than 1000 followers' and yes, you can.

However, here's the big question. Are we going to generate more sales with 100 authentic followers, 500 authentic followers, 1000 authentic followers, or 10,000 authentic followers, or are we more likely to generate more sales with 100,000 authentic followers, or even a million real genuine engaged, authentic followers?

Okay, it's obvious, right?

The number one factor is the size of your audience. When we start to focus on growing our audience, it opens up multiple opportunities to start generating an income with Instagram and the five different profit centres I'm going to share now.

The five profit centres on Instagram

There are five significant ways that you can start to generate sales through Instagram almost immediately.

Five ways you can start generating sales directly or use these areas as lead generation for your business.

It doesn't matter whether you're an experienced business owner or if you're new to business and you want to get started for the very first time.

It doesn't matter if you're totally new to Instagram or have been using the platform for millions and millions of hours (okay, maybe millions is a little bit excessive). Still, it doesn't matter if you have thousands of followers or 100. It is purely is about implementation.

Let's jump in. The number one place and the first of these five profit centres to generate an income from Instagram is through your Instagram bio link.

The Bio Link

This is the link you have in your bio, which allows you to redirect your followers to your online store, your website, or register for training or a phone call. Naturally, the more followers you have, the more engagement you have when you post, more interaction in your stories, and the opportunity for people to find out more about you and your business.

Driving your followers into the link in your bio allows you to take people off the platform where you can then start to monetise, using Instagram as the vehicle.

Magic!

The second route to be able to do this is available when you get to your first 10,000 followers.

Swipe Up

Instagram unlocks different features depending on the size of your audience, whether you're verified, and several other factors, but one of the easiest to access, is the 10,000 follower swipe up.

When you hit 10,000 followers on Instagram, you unlock the story swipe up, which means that within stories, you can get people to swipe up using their thumb, or finger to access a weblink of your choice. 

This feature allows you to grab their attention. By getting them to swipe up, you can take them off the platform and into your online store, get them to register for a training, book in a phone call, or even visit your offline store (when we fully get back to the good old days), or whatever it might be that ultimately you're looking to monetise.

So that's the second way you can monetise via Instagram, and you only get to unlock that feature when you get to 10,000 followers.

Just a quick note - this month, Instagram has rolled out 'links in stories', a fantastic sticker function and another amazing way to drive people to you, but swipe up continues to be only accessible for those with 10,000 followers. Try out the sticker function now!

Influencer Opportunities

The third way to leverage Instagram is through the opportunity to be an influencer, and influencer opportunities mean you can start to monetise fast!

Immediately when we think of influencers, if you're like me, I think of beautiful people lying on the beach in shorts and bikinis and getting modelling contracts or people posting pictures of their dogs in their handbags, LOL. For most people, ' influencer' has a bit of a negative connotation, which is a shame.

The great thing is, there are influences in every single niche, every single industry, every single business. You don't have to lie on the beach in a bikini to be considered an influencer or to at least have influence over other people, and share your suggestions, thoughts, opinions, and ideas and encourage people to take action on that.

You can influence every industry, so it doesn't matter whether you are a solicitor, a gym owner, a yoga instructor, or in crochet! Whatever your niche may be, you can be an influencer.

In every single space, niche and industry, you have the opportunity to be considered as an influencer, and the bigger your audience, the more reach you get, the more influencer opportunities you draw your way.

The top people of the world, Kylie Jenner, as an example, earn over a million dollars per post, but we've got clients with 14,000 followers who still get paid to post. In fact, one of our clients had less than 1000 when she started to get sent free things! This can lead to paid promotions, where you get paid to recommend and refer products just by posting on Instagram.

These things are only available as you start to grow your audience and begin to grow your following.

Yes, you can generate an income and get results from Instagram with a smaller audience. Still, the number one currency online for you to succeed and continue to succeed online is the size of your audience and the size of your following.

Direct Messages

The next 'profit area' on Instagram is available from the day you open your account, and that's direct messages (DM's).

The tremendous power of direct messages is that it's a private conversation. Yes, you can have groups where you talk to multiple people at the same time, you can share posts and stories with all of your followers, but the joy of the DM is that it's a private conversation - one to one.

This is an opportunity where you can start to find out the problems your audience have, the challenges that they face and discover if you can offer the solution to what they are looking to achieve.

The number one rule online is that we market publicly, and we sell privately. Nobody goes on social media to be sold to - market it publicly, sell privately.

That's a whole other conversation and a whole other article, but direct messages allow you to start a private chat, and now direct messenger also has clickable links, which opens up a whole new world.

Not only do we have clickable links inside direct messages, but when you share a clickable link, there is a preview image. So a preview pops up, and the person receiving that message can see a preview of what is behind the link. This immediately removes any fear or doubt that it could be spam. It makes sense. The recipient can see that the link is for a particular product. It could be a line of T-shirts, trainers, handbags, for booking a phone call, for registering for a training, for securing a retreat, whatever it might be, because a graphic shows up.

This feature immediately allows people to lower their guard and feel more relaxed about having those conversations.

So, now you have three ways to move people away from Instagram and into a buying window - the clickable link in direct messages, the 10,000 followers swipe up, and the clickable bio link. These all allow you to send people off the platform quickly and easily.

The Shoppable Feed

The final option that you have on Instagram is more suited to those of you in E-commerce. However, even if you're not, I think this is extremely exciting. I'll tell you why in just a moment.

On Instagram in 2021, we have the shoppable feed.

The shoppable feed is where you can make a purchase directly through the Instagram platform with a few clicks. This is great for e-commerce products - makeup, jewellery, accessories, clothing, etc.

Through lockdown (2020 and 2021!), more and more people have become accustomed to purchasing online. We've been trained to buy online, and we feel more comfortable than ever parting with our credit card details because we've had to. Yes, we've been able to go for groceries and search. Still, generally, most purchases that we've had to make, if we've chosen to make them have been online, so we've become accustomed to it and become more comfortable with parting with our details.

Suddenly, we're in a position where, thanks to this incredible system Instagram has provided for us, many E-commerce businesses can benefit from the shoppable feed, where, with the matter of a few clicks, people are taken to a website where they can make a purchase.

Even if you don't have e-commerce products or physical products that you're shipping and sending (I don't), I still consider the shoppable feed to be a positive for my business, even though I can't necessarily be sold directly through there. The birth of the shoppable feed shows that there are gradual steps in the evolution of Instagram and the way people use the platform to make purchases, and there's nothing to say that within a few months, maybe next year, that there's not more scope for people to be able to purchase information products as well.

The more comfortable that people become purchasing and making purchases directly on the platform, the more opportunities Instagram will provide us.

So those are the five different profit centres on Instagram - here's your summary!

1. The Bio Link
2. Swipe Up
3. Influencers Opportunities
4. Slide into the DM's
5. The Shoppable feed

The major player for you to succeed in each of these areas is one thing - the size of your audience.

The bigger the audience, the bigger the following (authentic, of course, genuine, real followers), the more opportunities and the more profit centres are unlocked for you to generate an income directly on Instagram.

One platform which allows you multiple streams of income.

If you're not yet unlocking each of these features, or if you want to hear more about how you can lock each of these features and start progressing, then now's the time to focus on growing your audience and growing your following. There has never been a better time to do this than right now.

So, which of the 5 Profit Areas can you unlock today?

Send me a dm on Instagram @jakeadamdavey

 Jake Davey is the UK’s leading Instagram expert. Former high school French and Spanish teacher turned online entrepreneur, Jake shows business owners and entrepreneurs how to build an authentic audience on Instagram and be seen as the go-to authority in their industry.
 
His Flagship program, InstaGalactic follows the proven, 6-Step ROCKET system and shows people how to explode their brand on Instagram so they can impact on a global scale. 
He is passionate about helping business owners to scale by leveraging the power of Instagram via his online course, 1:1 and group coaching, hosting the INfluence podcast, and international speaking engagements.
 
Jake currently has an audience of over 65K followers on Instagram, and has helped hundreds of large and small businesses to influence more people, and build authentic, engaged audiences that convert.