How to make money on social networks: 9 ways to start earning an income now!

How about making money through your favorite social network?

Over the years, the digital market has reinvented itself. Going beyond online stores and e-commerce, social media has become the new target for entrepreneurs who wish to sell their products or earn extra money.

According to the Digital 2022 Report, over 55% of the world’s population can be considered active social media users. That’s 4.62 billion people!

With this increase in the number of users, new ways of converting them into customers and making money with the help of social media outlets have also emerged. But because it’s a relatively new market, new businesses and small entrepreneurs still aren’t sure how to profit in this environment.

If you’re one of these people, don’t worry! Today we’ll be talking about the most profitable networks for you to start or reinvent your online business! Ready to get started?

Can you make money on social media? 

With the expressive growth of social media use around the world in recent years, many companies and professionals have found new opportunities.

The power of these networks to bring people with common interests together has led to increasingly more businesses to emerge, including new professions, which only exist thanks to the digital environment. Think about all the new content creators, digital creators, and influencers.

What was initially intended to create connections and build friendships has become a new environment for business. That’s why social apps are providing even more options to generate profit within the networks or to link to external pages.

Complete platforms and tools have been designed to help you buy and sell products within social media, sponsor ads, and track metrics regarding business account results.

If you didn’t know that it’s possible to make money on social media, the answer is: absolutely! Both on the platforms and by directing users to a virtual store or e-commerce.

Not only is it possible, but we will provide you with a list of ways to make money in this new environment!

How to make money on social media

As we have shown, social media isn’t merely for sharing photos from your amazing weekend or keeping in touch with friends and family.

They are powerful tools for anyone who wants to monetize a physical or digital business, scale their sales, and reach new audiences.

Want to know how to make money on social media? Then check out these tips.

1. Create and sell digital products

If you know a lot about a given subject and want to share this knowledge with others, why not use the Internet to monetize your knowledge?

One of the ways you can make money on social media is by creating your own digital products and using your social media profiles to promote them.

It doesn’t matter whether you know a lot about cooking, financial education, business, or any other subject. The fact is that most people nowadays search for information online! This is where you can use your skills to produce ebooks, handbooks, podcasts, workbooks, etc.

The major advantage is that, because it’s a digital product, you don’t spend on logistics, and don’t need a physical infrastructure to sell it. You just need to find a way to make your content available and for people to pay for it.

Then, you can use social media, such as Facebook or Instagram, to promote your products.

By finding your niche and attractively promoting your product, you’ll be able to make money doing what you know and love, and you can help educate thousands of people.

2. Create online courses

Creating and selling online courses is another way of making money on social media.

This practice more or less follows the same idea as the previous tip. The difference is that you need to create content that’s even more detailed and divided into stages.

You can, for example, create a series of videos and provide supplementary materials for your students to further develop their knowledge.

In this sense, social media sites are also strong allies to help you promote your course. As an online course creator, it’s important that you present yourself as an expert on the subject to gain your audience’s trust.

3. Promote digital products created by other people

If you don’t want to produce your own course or digital product, you still have the possibility of earning money on social media by promoting materials created by others. Then, when you make a sale, you can earn a commission.

There are two ways of promoting other people’s digital products. Check them out below:

Contacting the creator directly

The first way to start promoting content produced by other people is through direct contact with the creator.

You can negotiate, for example, a commission to post a positive review about a certain course with a specific discount code on your social media.

However, you need to keep in mind that this is a more labor-intensive process. You’ll need to negotiate with the creator and tracking your sales might not be so easy.

Becoming an affiliate

The other way of generating income by promoting digital products created by others is to become an affiliate. This means that you’ll have a specific link to sell the content, which gives you several benefits, such as:

• It’s easier to track your sales.
• You have the option of setting up your own online store with materials from different creators.
• Access to automated commission payments.

This way, you can optimize both the sales process and the way you get your cut of the transaction. This will prevent headaches and make your job easier!

4. Promote your physical products or services

Do you produce handcrafted products? Do you offer coaching and consulting services?

Using social media to advertise your physical products or services is a great option! After all, this is a way of advertising on a large scale and without costs.

To do so, take good photos of your product and make sure your ad is attractive.

You can, for example, point out the benefits of the service, show testimonials from those who have already bought it, and interact with your audience through polls. There are some best practices that will help you make money on social media!

Another important message is: be sure to maintain a good relationship and communication with your audience. After all, everyone can see what’s been posted on social media, and good customer service makes all the difference when it comes to winning over new customers or building loyalty among your current ones.

5. Become a digital influencer

Because it has become so popular in recent years, this may seem like the most obvious way of making money on social media.

A digital influencer is able to generate income mainly by promoting brands – and can sell an ad in an Instagram Story, for example. But that’s not all!

By becoming a digital influencer, you can gain status to give talks, launch products, or even make appearances at events. But you need to keep in mind that this isn’t an easy path. You’ll need to focus on a specific niche, know which social media sites are the best to use, and understand the best way of presenting yourself and communicating with the public, among a myriad of other issues.

You might even need to hire an agency or a specialized professional to guide you. After all, this career depends on investing a lot of time and money to generate solid results.

6. Work as a Social Media Manager

Nowadays, one of the main functions of the marketing area is that of a Social Media Manager. This is the professional responsible for handling a company’s social media profiles, thinking of the best strategies and actions for the organization to reach an increasingly larger audience, and obtain customer engagement.

To be a Social Media Manager, you need to know more than social media alone. It’s necessary to study these networks, because you’ll need to analyze the results of your actions to understand what’s working and what isn’t.

In addition, in many cases – especially when dealing with a lean marketing team – the Social Media Manager also needs to know about design, create visuals, and understand copywriting techniques to produce text that generates results.

As a Social Media Manager, you’ll be able to find opportunities for full-time and freelance work. Therefore, it’s essential to evaluate each option’s conditions and choose the one that best meets your needs.

7. Create a premium community

With a premium community, you can present new content in videos, images, audio, and specific texts about a topic directed to your tribe.

You can create your own community and offer relevant content to your audience for a monthly subscription. 

The premium community is a feature already present on certain social networks, and in specific tools that provide a special and exclusive area for users. Sparkle is the Hotmart app and is ideal for those who wish to create a premium community.

8. Work with paid traffic

As one of the professions that have emerged in the digital environment, the traffic manager, or digital ad trafficker, makes money by creating and managing ad campaigns on social media platforms for other businesses that wish to grow in these environments.

Creating and boosting paid ads and content is already popular on social media, so much so that social media sites provide complete tools for this type of service. 

Although the platforms make the process more convenient, you are mistaken if you think that generating paid traffic that pays off is easy.

It’s necessary to be professional and stay up to date by studying the best strategies combined with marketing to get the best results in reach, interactions, and conversions, while spending as little as possible on each client.

9. Monetize video content

Digital media such as YouTube is great for those who enjoy and create video content!

The best thing is that YouTube itself has its own monetization tool, which means that it’s possible to earn money by posting videos on the platform in exchange for placing ads during the broadcasts.

However, making money on YouTube requires dedication. First, you need to have at least 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 views on your channel to participate in YouTube’s partner program.

Be sure to select attractive topics, create good scripts, do a good job regarding production, and develop a good promotion strategy on the site and other social media.

More reach, engagement, and views increase your earnings and strengthen your image to gain channel subscriptions and views for the future videos that you post.

Start making money on social media

Social media was created as a space to keep in touch with family and friends, meet new people, and share interests.

These networks are now part of every aspect of our lives. We consume content, learn, find new brands, and buy through social media.

In other words, entrepreneurs and brands that wish to stay up to date in this scenario need to use these channels in the best way possible.

Making money on social media involves more than merely having profiles on the main platforms. You need to know your target audience well, strategically plan the content that you’ll post, and, of course, always keep learning!

Now that you know how to use social media to monetize your business, how about delving deeper? Here are some tips on how to grow on YouTube!