[FREE] How to make money on Instagram as Programmer: The Ultimate Guide

This article contains some of the most important lessons from my most popular book How to make money on Instagram as Programmer. I am offering these lesson for free to help you start a steady monthly income stream.

Let's go through some of the most foolproof strategies to grow your Instagram audience and monetize it

Change your mindset

• The sequence is important here
• One cannot expect to earn money on Instagram until they have true fans
• And once you have enough true fans no one can stop you from creating a money generating machine on Instagram

How big of an audience do you need?

• 100 followers?

• 10000 followers?

• 100K or 1M followers?

• The answer is - it does not depend on the number of your followers

• There are many accounts on Instagram that have 1M+ followers

• But, the problem is - most of them are fake or bots or dead-accounts

• What you need to focus on is earning true fans

• Even 1 true fan can pay you for a lifetime!

• So, change your mindset - don't look at the wrong parameter

• This handbook will go in-depth on how to set up your Instagram account for success - and turn it into an auto-true-fan-generating machine!

Here's how you can quickly and easily earn $1000 on Instagram

Making money on Instagram is something that everyone wants to do. However, it is not as easy as you think. In this article, I will share how to generate $1,000 per month on Instagram, on a repeat mode.

Select Profitable Niche

• Building a successful business depends a lot on choosing the right niche
• Posting random photos on Instagram just because some bigger account is doing it will not get you anywhere
• Every piece of content you post must have a purpose to it
• Your content should attract the right audience to your page
• So that, when you are trying to sell them something you can connect to them and convince them to buy from you

• Follow these strategies to choose the perfect niche for your business

3 Step process to identify a profitable niche

1. Identify your passion

• Your business niche depends a lot on your interests

• If you are not interested in the niche - you will not put 100% into the business

• So, identify your passion

• List all your interests

• At least 10 of them

Example of passion: Fitness, Life Coaching, Career guidance, Personal finance, Programming, Luxury lifestyle

1. What problems do you care about the most?

• After you have created a list of your passion
• Jot the some of the major problems you face in that field
• Which problems do you really care about? So much so that you are willing to pay someone if they solve that problem of yours

3. Evaluate the market

• Now that you are aware of your passion

• And also the problems you face in that field

• Now it's time to see if there are other people in the field facing that problem too

• Furthermore, do they really care about it?

• Quick and free way to find that out is to check the search volume

• You can use Google keyword planner tool for this

• Check for keywords, phrases from your niche and observe the search volume

• Another quick way is to find your competitors in that field

• Observe what they are talking about the most

• Observe how do they add value to their audience

• And finally what are they selling to their audience

ACTION ITEM

• Follow the above 3 step process to choose a niche for your Instagram account
• Don't skip this step - because skipping this can cause you to lose time and add frustration to your hustle

Optimize Your Instagram

• Now, it's time to open your Instagram account within your selected niche

• Your Instagram BIO is one of the most important things you would want to focus on

• Because that's how a person coming to your page would convert into a follower

Key points to optimize your Instagram

1. Choose a suitable account name and handle

• Choosing the perfect name and handle for your brand is very important
• That is how people will find you and your account will start growing
• Ideally, your IG handle should be that business name
• If you don't have a business make it one of the most popular words/phrases from your niche

- Example for fitness niche: @fit_instagram, @healthyrecipes, @backpainworkouts

- Example for personal finance niche: @passiveincome, @stockinvestor

2. Choose a suitable profile picture

• Profile picture on Instagram should be clean and something that stands out

• It should look professional if you have a business but it should be clean at the very least otherwise

• Instagram profile picture dimensions should be 180px x 180px

• Instagram profile pictures are circular - so be careful that your corners are not cut off unexpectedly

Tip: While uploading a profile picture - zoom in or out of the circle to customize the cropped image.

3. Write an impactful bio

• This is very you will make your first impression on your visitors

• Make it impactful and enticing

• Write a quick note about the "what" of your brand

- Example: "Actor/Director/Singer"

• But, focus on the "Why" of your brand
  • Why should someone follow you
  • Why should someone buy from you
  • What will they get if they follow you
• Make it about the customer

- Example: "Lifestyle guru", "Personal finance coach"

ACTION ITEM

• Use the above key points to create an amazing bio and send me the screenshot of it via email at sleeplessyogi@gmail.com
• I will review it and give you my feedback

Create High Converting Posts

Capture the attention

• With creative posts, colorful posts (with a theme, brand colors)

• Capture the photos at the right angle - learn some basics of photography

• If you are not posting photos from a camera you can use tools to create the posts

• Tools like Canva, Illustrator are very popular

Post ideas

• Inspire your audience with quotes or inspirational messages

• Engage with your audience by giving them challenges or quizzes

• Post tutorials on the most painful concepts in your field

• Post DIY videos

• Click beautiful photos of the places you visit if your niche is travel

• Show your results to your audience to inspire them

• Sometimes, also share your vulnerabilities with them so that they know there's a real person behind this Instagram account

Pro tip: Find what your competitors are posting. Jot down the topics and create your own content in your own style and post it.

• Focus on adding value to your audience

• Give out daily tips and lifehacks to make your audiences' life better

Read all my huge list of small advices to achieve great results in your life

Here is a sneak peek for you:

• Stop seeking for support. Learn to figure it out yourself and do it on your own.
• Life is not just about hard work - you should have some fun too.
• Make a list of recurring expenses. Prioritize them - see which ones are not really needed, cancel them.

Don't just add posts

• There are so many different types of posts Instagram allows you to add

• Type of content

  • Images
  • Video
  • Stories
  • Boomerangs
  • Reels

• Experiment with every type of post

• See what you are most comfortable with

• And see what your audience engages with the most

Captions

• Textual captions of your posts are equally important
• Don't go lazy on it
• Use it as an opportunity to tell a story, inspire, teach them a valuable lesson
• You can also add a call to action in your captions - telling your audience to visit the bio and click on the link

ACTION

• Try a different strategy
• Write a caption first - tell a story to your audience to inspire them or entertain them
• Then create an amazing post around it (image or video)

Scale Your Instagram Growth

• Once you have optimized your bio and start post content consistently you will see your fan-rate rising higher

• But, there are some other strategies you can use to expedite the process

Post daily content

• This is a no brainer - you must post content consistently
• Some people post 3 posts per day - but it is not sustainable
• So, aim to post at least one post per day
• There are tools like the Facebook creative studio and Later that you can use to schedule your content

Engage with your audience

• Let your audience know that there's a real person behind the account

• So, don't just post the content

• Engage with your audience too

• Reply to their comments on your posts

• Answer their questions

• Reply to their DM's

• Reply to their story replies

• Like their responses

• Thank them for taking their time to respond to your posts

This is how I manage my time to produce 100X results

If you lose money, you can earn it. If you lose your health, you can build it again. But it feels if you lose your time, your time is lost forever.

Target your competition

• Competitor analysis is a super important concept in business

• To simplify it for our purposes - follow these tips

• Identify your competition (larger accounts)

• Observe what they post

• Answer the questions that users ask on their posts

• This is how people will start noticing you

• They will realize you are adding value to them

• They might visit your profile and if they find anything interesting - voila! you would just earn a new fan!!

• Similarly, ask questions on bigger accounts in your niche

• That is another way to get noticed

• You can also DM users who are facing problems and you have an answer to that problem

• Then post that conversation snippet to your profile - that will win the trust of your audience

Sky-rocket your growth by collaborating

• When it comes to building a brand or a business - networking is the key!

• If you keep posting photos on Instagram in isolation there is only so much you could grow

• Even if your photos are super-awesome

• This is where networking comes into the picture

• The key here is to find other similar accounts like yourself (slightly larger)

• Engage with the account holder

• Start by helping them

• Helping their audience

• Adding value, giving free service to that account

• Next step is to reach out to them

• Via DM or email

• And ask them if they would like to collaborate

• This is a lot more common than you think

• Simply ask them this

Hey, love your content!

My IG account is in a similar niche too. 
Would you like to collaborate?
We could help each other grow faster 
and help our audience better.

How about promoting each other on a story?

• If you have built up your relation - you will surely get a positive response

• And finally, simply tag them in your story - and they will do the same

• Find 3-4 similar accounts

• Repeat the above process

Pro Tip #1: Beware not to spam your audience by only doing promotions. Your first duty is to provide value to your audience.

Pro Tip #2: Don't stop at only story shout-outs. Try such shout-outs on posts too. Posts usually have higher engagement than stories.

Monetize Your Instagram

• Now that you have worked hard to grow your Instagram it's time to cash in!

• Remember before you even think about making money on Instagram - focus on providing relentless value to your audience

• Have a system in place wherein you are posting consistent content

  • Posts
  • Videos
  • Stories
  • Reels

• Engage with your audience

• And once your audience has turned into your true fans - then start thinking about monetizing it

Instagram is a powerful platform to earn serious income on a consistent basis.

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Ways to make money on Instagram

• Depending on your niche there are different ways you could make money on Instagram
• Let's look at them starting with the level of difficulty

Sponsored Posts

• This is simple

• You just reach out to similar IG accounts in your niche

• Ask them if they want to promote their account or their product on your page

• Promote their content on posts or story

• And take a one-time fee from them for this

• You could offer them package deals of 3 or 5 posts as an upsell

Coaching service

• After you have earned the credibility and some expertise

• You could start charging your audience for consultations

• Remember - you don't need to be an expert

• You just need to be a few levels higher in the subject than your audience

• Please do not fake your expertise!

• Coaching calls are trending

• Students are also willing to pay - because they get 1:1 attention

• You could start by charge $45 per hour

• Then increase to $95 per hour

• Depending on your niche there's potentially no limit to how much you could charge your students

Create A Course

• This is another new trend

• And for a good reason

• If you have an audience

• And if you have the drive to teach the masses

• Why not create a course instead of doing 1:1 coaching calls

• You can create a simple e-book

• Or you can do video tutorials

• You don't have to show your face - if you are not comfortable

• Just walk through the slides and explain the matter in your voice

• Then host it on Gumroad

• And collect a one-time fee for your course

Affiliate Marketing

• If you don't have the skills or the patience to create a course

• You can simply market someone else's course

• Simply reach out to the creator

• And ask them if you could become an affiliate partner for their content

• You'd get a unique link

• If your audience uses that unique link to buy the creator's content you earn a commission in between

• For digital content, the commission is usually around 40%-60% of the total price

• So, that is a pretty good commission for almost no efforts!

Please reach out to me at sleeplessyogi@gmail.com if you'd like to become my affiliate partner.

E-commerce

• Similar to digital content - you can also sell physical products on your account

• Dropshipping is pretty hot - and super-profitable

• But beware - it takes some skills and patience to nail down the art of dropshipping

• If you have those or are willing to learn through the process - give this a shot

• Basically, you create a shop on Shopify.com

• You add products from Aliexpress to your store

• You promote those products through your IG account

• Send the audience to your shop

• And when someone places an order - you simply fulfill it

Pro Tip: Most of this fulfillment process can be automated with various free/paid tools. Example - Oberlo.

• I hope this gives you an idea about how to monetize your Instagram

• There are potentially hundreds of other ways I can teach you to monetize your Instagram account

• But!

• The first step is to start building your Instagram account

• Provide value to your audience

• The money-making part becomes a piece of cake after that!

Pro Tip: I repeat. Do not focus on money-making at first. First, add value to your audience. Turn them into your die-hard fans.

Build Your Product - a note for you

After you have come with your amazing 
business idea and also have 
validated that business idea it is time to execute.

It is time to build your info product.

It maybe a video course, a SaaS product, 
or an eBook.

If you have chosen to go with create 
the eBook guide route - 
use my other modules where I exactly 
tell you how to create your info-products.

If you have chosen to go a different route - 
still check those modules out it 
still contains a lot of hidden gems 
on my strategies and tools that I use.

Sell Your Product - Landing Pages

• Now that you have built your info product - it is time to sell it!

• YAY! Finally the step you were waiting for...

• You need a landing page to sell your product

• It is also called a squeeze or splash page

• It's a web page

• The objective is

  • To convey your audience the benefits of your product
  • To collect visitor's information through a form
  • Offer them some incentive in return

• You can give away a free item to capture user's email and other details

  • Free ebook
  • Free webinar
  • A free course

• Landing page is typically only one page

  • It can be as long as you'd want
  • The goal is to convey enough information about your product

• Check out my landing page example

• The landing page was done for HTML to React: The Ultimate Guide

• I use Gumroad extensively for my info products

• I am planning to implement it and design it better on my own site - SleeplessYogi

  • But, my Gumroad landing page is working amazingly

Tip: Don't over complicate things. Use tools that are easy and free - don't spend too much time trying to overdo something. If it's working keep it as is - prioritize something else that you should be focussing on.

How much I spend per month as a Tech Entrepreneur

This post is going to reveal my darkest secrets and guilty pleasures. More importantly, this post is much more than that - it is packed with a lot of tips and tricks on budgeting, managing finances, and frugality. So don't miss a single line below this one.

Call to action

• The most important parts of your landing page

  • One - headline
  • Two - call to action

• Call to action should guide user to take some action on your page

• Make it clearly visible

  • Make it big
  • Not too big

• Play around with the colors of the button and the text

  • See what your users like
  • This point can make or break your conversion

• Don't be vague with your CTA copy

• Write a phrase if you have to

• Ex: "Get Started"

  • "Subscribe Me"
  • "I want it"
  • "Try 7 days FREE"
  • "Claim the discount"

TIP: Make a list of power phrases (CTA). You will need it everywhere.

Measure and test - Analytics

• You have to measure how your page is performing

• Else there is no way you would know what is working and what is not

• Add Google Analytics on your page

  • Look at numbers
  • Number of visitors
  • Bounce rate
  • Time they spend on your site

• If the bounce rate is high

  • It means your copy is not good enough
  • You are not using language that will connect with your audience
  • The page is confusing

• Run A/B tests on your site

  • Split traffic in half
  • Half traffic see version X of your page
    • Half traffic see version Y of your page
  • Half traffic show X call to action
    • Half traffic show Y call to action

• You can then make informed decisions

  • Which page gave you better results?
  • Which CTA gave you better results?

TIP: When doing A/B testing try changing only few things at a time. Else you won't know what exactly worked and what did not

TIP 2: Don't forget to check out the checklists. For all the tools you can use to create a dope landing page for your product.

Why Ebooks

• First and foremost question - WHY eBooks?

  • Why not video
  • Why not SaaS app

• Writing content and creating ebooks is simplest way to put yourself out

  • In front of your audience
  • Start generating side-income
  • It can easily be turned into a full time job for yourself

• It's a build once sell multiple times strategy

  • You just need to spend time and efforts one time to create it
  • And then it will generate you revenue for the rest of your life

There can be various reason you'd 
want to write ebooks for

Examples:
- Increase traffic
- Get more sales
- Lead magnet
- Explain about your product
- Teach your students about something
- Repurpose your existing content

• It is a perfect opportunity for creators who do not prefer going on camera or a microphone

  • There can be multiple reasons for this
  • Maybe they are shy
  • They are not good on the camera
  • Their employer might not appreciate it

• Creating ebooks is easy and FREE

  • Tools to create ebooks are FREE
  • Even hosting your ebook is FREE - and I will tell you later how you can do it!
  • So, basically this is FREE money!
  • You just need to put in effort one time

Ebooks are better than videos

• I believe ebooks are better than other form of content ex videos
• Videos are easy to forget.
  • You watch it once - and you forget it after some days
• Then if you want to search something again
  • You won't remember where in the video exactly to search for
• Searching in ebooks is super easy
• You cannot skim through the videos
  • Skimming through ebooks is easy too
  • To get the entire picture of what is being taught in the book

Why Gumroad

• Simply put - Gumroad is a super easy and minimalist platform

  • Especially for beginners

• It also handles payments pretty easily

• It is a secure platform

• Are you one of these?

  • Creator
  • Artist
  • Writer
  • Designer
  • Software Developer
  • Educator
  • Anything of this sort

• Then Gumroad is for you

• It's a simple platform to sell stuff that you make

• Using Gumroad you can
  • Build email newsletter
  • Sell on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, any social media
  • Integrate Gumroad onto your website

• Your location is not a problem

  • They support creators from many countries

• You can collect payments via Paypal

  • This now depends on the country you are in.
  • So remember to check out

• They provide sufficient analytics to understand your customers

  • Number of views
  • Sales
  • Sales by dates
  • Locations
  • Consumption analytics

Details of your product

• On the next screen you will be asked to add more details about your product

• You can edit the name of your product here
  • You can edit it even after your launch it - don't worry

• In the description field you can add the copy of your sales pitch

• This is the landing page of your product

• Check out the "Building Instagram Business" module for more details on Landing Page

• Here are some examples you can use for inspiration

  • https://gumroad.com/l/html2react
  • https://gumroad.com/l/tough
  • https://gumroad.com/l/200adaywithemail

• Then add a cover for your product

• This is where you can reuse the ebook cover you have already created from the previous section

• You can choose the CTA - call to action from these options

  • I want this!
  • Buy this
  • Pay

• You can then a add summary of your product

  • Example
  • You will get 1 eBook of 200 pages
  • You will get 1 video webinar and 10 homework sheets

• Describe what your customers will get after they make the payment

• This will make it easier for the customers to set their expectations

Competition is good

• Research your competition

  • Go through their posts - especially the top performing ones

• Jot down the hashtags they used for those posts

  • Make a list of them
  • Try and see which ones work for your own posts

• Don't use the hashtags that are overused

  • You posts will get lost in the crowd
  • You the hashtags which are a little less popular
  • So that your posts will stang out

Here's my journey of creating the passive income empire

I am a Software Engineer by profession. So obviously I code for 8-10 hours out of my 24 hours every day. I always had that drive to do something extra and master the skills in other fields.

BONUS

Congratulations! For making it this far.

Now here's a bonus inspirational story of one of my students as a gift to you.

I hope you take MASSIVE ACTIONS after reading the story.

Case Study of my student Damien who made $30,000 with one message

How Damien made $30,000 by sending one message on Instagram following my scripts and strategies?

If you have come this far through this ebook I am sure you are interested to learn the advanced strategies of making money on Instagram.

Some people still think Instagram is not a mainstream platform to build your business upon. I am here to bust that myth today. Well, my student Damien is actually.

So, here's a story about Damien and how one IG DM changed his life forever - following the exact scripts and strategies I gave it to him.

Little about Damien - he is an indie-hacker. He has been a hustler all his life and to date, he's worked on more than a dozen of projects - but unfortunately, none of them made it far, until this one.

Like you, he also got this ebook and followed all the strategies and tips. He was doing all the right things, putting in consistent hard work to grow his account. Starting with 0 followers 6 months back now he's sitting at 12K followers (Damien was not comfortable sharing the account handle for privacy and copyright issues).

While Damien was studying his competition - one of them stood out to him prominently. That account was doing things very similar to Damien's niche did. But, based on the engagement they were getting they obviously were converting a lot better than him. He was immediately compelled and he knew that very moment that he had to connect with that business somehow - and probably get mentored by them.

So, following some of the advanced strategies mentioned in my ebook "Build. Create. Sell. Scale." (more details below) he decided to reach out to him via IG DM.

Mind you - the first rule of sending DM to bigger influencer accounts is to keep it short, simple, and grab their attention. That's what he did. In a very crisp manner, he described his venture, explaining his strength and weaknesses, and asked them for very specific advice on his business.

He was prepared to be ignored! But, little did he know - how well my strategies worked!

He received a quick reply with some actionable advice that had an immediate impact on Damien's venture... and that business was even interested in investing in Damien's venture!

They went back and forth over emails and a few calls. Damien did his due diligence - it was for the first time someone had shown interest to invest in his venture.

Long end short - Damien was offered $30,000 as a sign-on bonus + an experienced investor will now advise him to scale his business + they are negotiating further terms that would potentially result in even more funding.

Now, if that does not inspire you - I am not sure what will?

An indie-hacker who is diligently working on his Instagram business, growing his audience, putting in the hard work every single day. And one fine day all his hard work pays off. And although I am proud I was able to help him out with my ebook "Build. Create. Sell. Scale." - I feel the entire credit goes to Damien's relentless efforts.

Below was Damien's message to me -

I hope you got that push that you needed through this ebook. Make sure you don't let that push go in vain - use that fire to ignite your IG business.