Did you know there are social media platforms that pay you?
You can make money finding work, selling products, and partnering with brands on social media. Making money on social media isn’t easy, but it can be very profitable. You just need to know where to start and put in the work.
The best social media platforms to make money include:
- YouTube
- TikTok
- Medium
- Snapchat
- Clubhouse
- Poshmark
- Twitch
Imagine making more money through social media than you do with your 9-5. You wake up each morning and send out a Tweet or post on Instagram.
You’re no longer required to go to a job. Instead, you are making money from your phone!
Yes, it is entirely possible to make money with social media. People are doing it every day.
Luckily, I will show you the best social media sites for earning money. Put in the work, and you’ll start earning money quickly!
Key Takeaways
- Snapchat is the social media platform that pays the most for creating content.
- You can make money on social media by partnering with brands to create sponsored content, affiliate marketing, sell products, funnel traffic to your website for sales, or display ad revenue.
- Focus on creating an audience on social media before focusing on monetization. You’ll earn more money with a large audience.
- Some social media platforms have creator funds where they give you money, typically once, to create content.
- Making money with social media is profitable, but you don’t own the platform. Pay attention to the rules and diversify your traffic because you may get banned at some point.
This article may contain affiliate links which pays a commission and supports this blog. Thank you for your support!
Which Social Media is the best for making money?
Snapchat is the social media platform that allows its content creators to make the most money. As the highest paying social media site, Snapchat pays its contributors up to $1 million per day based on the number of views your Snap receives.
YouTube is also making headway in its ability to throw lots of cash to its content creators. The new YouTube Shorts Fund has $100 million to dole out for original short videos to post on the website.
The easiest social media platforms to make money include:
- YouTube
- TikTok
- Medium
- Snapchat
- Clubhouse
- Poshmark
- Twitch
Some social media networks are more difficult to earn money with.
For example, you may struggle to make money on Reddit. Reddit is a vast community where people don’t take kindly to self-promotion.
Other platforms are easy money makers once you’ve acquired many followers. Many companies recognize the opportunity from exposure to hundreds of thousands of people daily.
People who make money on social media often do so through sponsored advertisements. Companies are learning they can build brand awareness fairly inexpensively through influencer marketing.
So how can you use each social media platform to make money? We’ll walk you through each of the most notable social media platforms and how you can start accumulating wealth.
Click to Tweet! Please Share!Click To TweetTwitter is a gold mine for selling your products. Look at The Wealth Dad.
The Wealth Dad has tweeted his way to $1,000 per week in product sales. He sells a $20 ebook on index fund investing for beginners through Gumroad.
You may wonder, how does he make 50 sales per week using Twitter?
First, his product is only $20. Most people don’t bat an eye at $20, so it’s a low-risk investment.
Secondly, his product will teach people how to make back their initial investment. Sure, you invest $20 now, but you’ll make more money if you follow the advice in his ebook.
Third, he’s optimized his Twitter bio for conversions. The first thing you’ll see when you visit his page is an advertisement for his index fund ebook. A large red arrow points you in the direction to look.
You’ll notice that he has over 18,000 followers on Twitter. How does he build a following on Twitter?
How to build a Twitter following
Building a Twitter following is as simple as tweeting helpful content your audience likes. You need to be an active Twitter user if you want to gain traction. Build a profitable Twitter following by:
- Tweeting 5-10 helpful or motivational posts per day
- Quote retweet users
- Respond to Tweets and questions
- Remind people of your product every once and a while
Look at the kind of Tweets The Wealth Dad sends out daily.
You can tell he understands his audience. People who are interested in investing and building wealth. His Tweets resonate with people!
Remember, your Tweets will show up more often the more you Tweet. Therefore, you need to produce quality content frequently.
Monetizing your Twitter account
There are many different ways to earn money from Twitter. Make money from Twitter by:
- Selling your products
- Selling someone else’s products
- Send traffic to your website for sales or display ad revenue
- Collect emails
- Partner with brands
- Tweet sponsored content
- Generate leads for companies
- Turn on Tips
Your first focus should be building your audience around a specific interest, such as investing or health. You can then determine which monetization method works best for you.
Everyone should turn on Twitter Tips. Twitter Tips allows others to send you money or Bitcoin through a third-party payment service, like PayPal.
You should also see what other successful people are doing in your niche to monetize.
For example, @NicheSiteLady uses Twitter threads to add valuable content. She then refers people to her email list and generates leads.
There are plenty of ways to get money out of Twitter, but it all starts with getting followers.
Making money on Instagram is very similar to Twitter. Create quality content to build an audience around a specific niche. Send relevant offers to your audience and partner with brands to make money.
Instagram is all about pictures. So if you’re good with an iPhone camera, it can be one of the best paid social media platforms.
You’ll need to build a following if you’re going to make money on Instagram. Here is a video from Improve Photography with helpful tips for growing your followers.
How do I monetize my Instagram?
You can make money on Instagram with affiliate products or courses, sponsored brand content, and selling your physical products.
So, how much are your Instagram followers worth?
I was recently working with an Instagram influencer with over 300,000 followers. They charge $3,000 for one Instagram post which features your product.
Brands are willing to pay $0.01 per follower to advertise their product. You need to bring the followers and keep your engagement rates high. The higher your followers and engagement rates, the more you can get paid for posting ads.
Again, you can link to affiliate products on your IG posts. You’ll earn a commission whenever someone buys through your link.
Pinterest is great for driving traffic to your website. Your goal is to write content for your blog, which aims to sell a product. Avocadu does a good job of creating pins around yoga and weight loss.
Each pin takes you to an article. Should I click on a yoga pin, I’ll read a well-written article on yoga. At the bottom of the article, you can find a pitch for their product, Yoga Fat Loss Bible.
The more content they create, the more traffic comes to their website. With more traffic comes more sales. Pinterest is an excellent tool for driving customers to your website.
If you’re a Pinterest creator, you should consider signing up for Pinterest’s newsletter. Pinterest has a creator’s fund where they pay content creators to make awesome content. Unfortunately, applications are closed as of writing, but they should announce the next round of funding via their newsletter.
Facebook is the ultimate networking tool. You can find freelance writing jobs or virtual assistant work by hanging out in the right groups. For example, joining the right Facebook group could land you a paying freelance gig.
Facebook groups are another powerful tool for selling products. Essentially, you create a group around a specific interest. Once you have enough group members, you can promote your products or affiliate offers.
I am part of a specific Facebook group where the owners sell their courses in the description.
People join the Facebook group for help. This group helps people learn to blog, but you can form a group around anything!
Groups help people form a community, find help, and share. You have to help the group grow, stay active, and remind people of your products.
Content creators have also turned to making money from Facebook videos as an easy way to earn. You can monetize your videos through ad breaks, selling merchandise, and receiving donations from viewers.
LinkedIn is where your next job is at. I don’t care if you want to be a lawn mower, blog writer, or find freelance gigs. Having an optimized LinkedIn profile is where finding high-paying work starts.
I might be looking to hire an SEO expert. Most SEO experts aren’t going to live in my town locally, so I might try to find one on LinkedIn.
This profile shows an extensive history of working in search engine optimization. Therefore, I might reach out and see if this individual or agency is looking for extra work.
LinkedIn is one of the best social media platforms that pay you for finding work. You can land high-paying jobs or new contracts just by networking.
YouTube
YouTube is the best video social media platform that pays you. It’s easy to connect with an audience around your niche. Video provides a format unlike anything else for building trust.
Remember, if your audience doesn’t trust you, they won’t buy from you. Therefore, it’s essential to build trust and keep it.
One of the best examples of YouTube success is Ricky Gutierrez. Ricky has built a massive YouTube channel of over 710,000 subscribers. All of his subscribers are interested in stocks.
He also sells a stock trading course which sells for over $200. All Ricky has to do to sell is mention the product in the video and link to it in the description.
Imagine, converting one percent of your subscribers into customers. A one percent conversion rate for Ricky means he has made $1.4 million.
Making money on YouTube starts with producing consistent content. The content needs to be something people are searching for. Once you’ve built a relationship, you can build a course and release it to your audience.
Click to Tweet! Please Share!Click To TweetTikTok
You may not have time to make long YouTube videos, but you can do short creative snippets. TikTok is another popular social media platform that will pay you for your videos.
Once you have at least 10,000 viewers with over 100,000 views within thirty days, you can begin earning money through TikTok’s Creator Fund.
The best way to hit those high numbers fast is by posting content that follows whatever is trending in the social media realm.
Entertaining and funny videos usually get the most recognition, as do videos that allude to pop culture.
You can also aim to capture sponsorships right away and begin promoting businesses. One of the best ways to do this is by offering a few free sponsored posts.
Choose a business that sells a product or service that you can back to make it easier to create sponsorship content. Reach out to the company once you have a decent following, so they know it’s worth investing their money in you.
You can also promote your products on TikTok to make money. However, it’s best to see what product would sell best to your followers before investing in creating a product that won’t sell.
Medium
Medium is an excellent way for writers to earn money posting articles for free. Although subscribers to Medium pay a monthly fee, writers do not need a subscription to contribute.
The pay rate for Medium is based on the reading time of the viewers. You still need to put in the time and effort to create an excellent article to earn views.
However, Medium is a great social media platform if you love to write and want to create your content instead of having publications dictate topics.
Certain topics gain more views on average. If you are looking for a quick trip to earning money on Medium, focus on creating articles covering startups and entrepreneurship, cultural and political content, technology, personal stories, and motivational content.
Although the percentage of writers who regularly earn over $100 is small – less than 10% – you can land yourself within that percentage if you tailor your articles to Medium’s readers.
The highest-earning writer in September 2020 made almost $50,000, so it’s not impossible to mine the treasure trove of Medium.
The most active writers can typically expect to make between $100 and $500 per month if they contribute quality writing and popular content.
Snapchat
Snapchat functions similarly to TikTok. One of the best ways to make money from this social media platform is by promoting products or creating advertisements.
Since Snapchat is a platform where users flip through content constantly, there is plenty of space for eye-catching ads. Make your ads and promotions short and sweet to attract the most attention.
You can also create original content with the intent to go viral. Snaps with gifs are more likely to go viral, but this is a tough sell because millions of users produce content daily.
A unique way to earn money on Snapchat is by creating filters people can use in their Snap stories. Snapchat will pay for good filters that they believe will be popular.
Snapchat also has a feature called Spotlight, where you can submit your original content story for a chance to make up to $1 million every day.
Once you have an established following, it is worth submitting to Spotlight because the earners are calculated based on views.
A great way to produce original content is to create a serial story by posting a different piece of the story each day. Since Snapchat posts expire after 24 hours, this will force your followers to engage daily so they don’t miss out on content.
Clubhouse
Clubhouse is a relatively new social media platform that is gaining popularity. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, which anyone can join, Clubhouse is by invitation only.
Creators can start a club room combining live conversations and podcasts. You can make money by charging people an entrance fee or club membership.
The members then have exclusive access to the conversation. All topics are welcome, so the sky is the limit with creative license.
As always, you can get sponsors to fund your room, especially if you host a hot topic club that discusses things like investing or self-help skills.
Since Clubhouse is still in its infancy, many paid functions are still being worked out. However, many creators and members use outside apps such as the Cash App for payment.
Some unique ways to make money with Clubhouse are by charging an entrance fee to exclusive rooms or allowing your followers to get your perspective by asking questions.
Originally, Clubhouse was only built for iPhone users, but they have recently expanded to accommodate Android users. Even though this greatly expands the possibility of joining, you still have to be invited to become a member.
Poshmark
If you go through clothes like nobody’s business, Poshmark is where you need to be making money. Poshmark is an online clothing resale website for those who love thrift store shopping but don’t want to leave the house.
Although there are hundreds of vendors on Poshmark, there are a few simple tips to bump your products to the top of the search page.
Use keywords that people will search for – don’t get too detailed, or no one will ever find your merchandise. Your items may get lost in the shuffle if you’re too broad.
It’s important to photograph your items to look their best. Use a model so that your customers can see how the product fits.
Finally, source your clothes cheap and resell them for a fair price. You want to make sure you turn a profit but not compete with big-box retail store prices.
There is a lot of potential on Poshmark if you read your customer base correctly, set up fair prices, and sell quality clothing.
Twitch
Twitch is the best social media platform for gamers to get paid.
1. Become a Twitch Affiliate
If you have at least 50 followers and stream daily, you can apply to join the Twitch Affiliate Program. This program helps you monetize your channel as you work towards becoming a Twitch Partner.
2. Ask for Donations
For those with a special bond with their followers or subscribers, consider asking for donations if you need cash for a specific purpose that would resonate with your viewers.
3. Accept Twitch Bits
Twitch Bits are similar to virtual currency. Each Bit is worth one cent. If you accept Bits from your viewers, you can save up enough to withdraw them as money or spend them on Twitch.
4. Create Merchandise
If you’re a streamer with a strong following, consider creating customized merchandise and promoting it on your Twitch page. This works exceptionally well if you’re known for a slogan or particular image.
Try a “print on demand” company to avoid buying inventory before any purchases are made.
5. Get Sponsored
If you are fond of a brand or are contacted by one, consider becoming sponsored by them. This is when you use and promote a product or company and receive either a set payment or a portion of any sales that are made from your sponsored link.
You can also work with brands to offer giveaways and contests, increasing interactions on your Twitch page.
6. Use Affiliate Links
Some companies will also let you use affiliate links without sponsorship or being a Twitch Affiliate. This means linking out to certain products or services, and if your viewers click the link and buy something off of it, you get some proceeds.
7. Apply to Be a Twitch Partner
The best streamers on Twitch become the platform’s influencers through the Twitch Partnership program. This exclusive program allows you to sell and advertise more on your page than other streamers, vastly increasing your potential income.
8. Set Up Subscriptions
By encouraging your followers to subscribe to your channel, Twitch can collect between $4.99 and $24.99 per follower monthly. This is split between Twitch and the streamer. You’ll need to be a Twitch Affiliate or Partner first.
How do you get paid for posting on social media?
Brand deals and selling products are the best ways to get paid for posting on social media. Regardless, you need a social media account with active and engaged followers. You could have a social media following of 10,000 people and earn nothing if they aren’t engaged.
Influencers are one of the highest-paid groups of people on the Internet. You can be an influencer in anything from fashion to cooking to self-sustainable living. As long as people are interested in your work, you can make money doing it.
The most important part about trying to make money on social media is patience. You won’t become a success story overnight – it takes time to build a following.
Therefore, you must focus on producing quality content to build your list. Take the time to master a platform before moving onto the next.
Blogging networks
You can find brand deals on blogging networks like Izea. Izea is a website that connects influencers to brands. Your job is to connect with the brands and strike deals once you’ve built a target audience.
Affiliate marketing or sell your own products
In the meantime, start with affiliate marketing. Selling other people’s products is an excellent way to see what sells. Create your product once you’ve found something your audience likes.
Too many creators build a product first and fail. You have no idea if your audience will like the product. Therefore, it’s important to see what works!
Attracting brand deals
A simple way to get sponsors and companies that will come to you to promote their products is to become an influencer.
Instead of reaching out to various brands to ask for sponsorship, just start using them in your videos.
If you are an avid outdoorsman and can’t get enough of LL Bean’s camping gear, post your influencer videos and spotlights of your best camping tips or craziest outdoor experiences and mention the brand.
Once you gain a following, LL Bean will notice, and they may reach out to you to continue promoting their products.
Pay attention to the trends if this is how you want to make money. Trying to break into the social media scene with a completely new topic is not impossible, but your chances of success are far lower.
Research successful influencers and follow their content. Sometimes they will give good advice and tips on being a social media influencer. Take their recommendation because it is working for them.
Offer exclusive content
Depending on your number of subscribers and your content creation goals, you can offer exclusive content. Essentially, you’re teasing your followers with free content, but you’ll offer even better content behind a paywall.
For example, some Twitter users built up a large social media presence that were interested in trading stocks. These users are successful when it comes to building wealth through stock trading. They then created an exclusive Discord community that people could join, for a cost, to see their top stock picks.
They are successful because they offer a lot of free valuable content, which helped them build an audience. They then turn these social media users from potential customers into paying customers by offering new features, a private community, and more helpful content.
The Discord community is subscription based and they charge $30 per month for access. Getting even just 100 people signed up means they’re generating $3,000 per month, although they have substantially more members.
Launchpass put together a guide to show you how to setup your own paid Discord community. Follow this guide if you’re looking to offer exclusive content as one of your monetization options.
Funnel traffic to monetized pages
Some of the most popular social media platforms are also a great way to generate traffic to your own website.
For example, you could have a blog about yoga and monetize your blog posts with display ads. One of the best social platforms to build an audience around would be Instagram. Each of your posts should link to a relevant blog post so Instagram users can find your blog where you make money from display ads.
Capture leads
Capturing leads is about turning your social media marketing efforts into email marketing. Your goal is to get people signed up for your email list so you can send affiliate offers or your own products.
Live Streams
You can also share live videos where you’re recording yourself helping your audience solve a problem. At the end of the video, you’ve got a product to sell which helps your audience further solve their problem.
For example, you might have various social media platforms which focus on being healthy. You host a webinar for ‘The best ways to lose weight going into the next year.’
Your followers watch the live stream and you present your top 10 tips for weight loss. At the end of the webinar, you talk about the product you want to sell and why it’s going to help your audience. The more people that buy your product, the more money you’ll make.
You can then save the recording of your webinar and upload it to YouTube for more video views.
Neal Schaffer put together a guide on promoting your webinar on social networking sites. Check out this guide if you’re interested in using webinars as part of your marketing campaigns.
Produce video content with ads
Various platforms are starting to become video dominant. Therefore, social media influencers have a good opportunity to produce video content. Once you create your video content, you can spread it across multiple social media platforms like YouTube and Facebook.
How to make money on social media
Any social media platform can be monetized.
The steps to making money with social media include:
- Determine your niche
- Identify which social media works best for your niche
- Build your social media following
- Identify your audience’s interest
- Determine how you want to monetize
- Promote to your audience
Determine your niche
A niche is a specific focus around an interest. Maybe your niche is about making money or staying neat and organized. Most influencers start broad and then dial in on their niche when they see what content does well.
For example, you might start in the pet niche. So you post content on your social media about dogs, cats, gerbils, and other four-legged critters.
As you can see, you’re starting in a broad area of interest, pets.
Over time, you see that your content on cats significantly outperforms any of your other content. So your next step is to double down on your cat content, making your niche more cat specific.
If you want, you can drill down your niche even further. For example, you can post about cat toys, food, care, and more.
Identify your social media platform
You need to figure out which social media is best for you. Once you’ve decided, start building your audience around a particular niche.
For example, Instagram would be an excellent choice to make money advertising clothes or other visual products. Twitter might be a good choice for selling digital products or generating website traffic.
Build your social media following
Your brand should be focused on a persona or central theme. Focusing on a theme will help you attract people interested in your niche and product offers.
Building followers or getting likes usually requires both:
- Posting awesome content about your niche
- Engaging with other people
Engaging with people is how most social media accounts start. Posting awesome content doesn’t do much for you because you have no followers to see the content. Therefore, build your followers early on by actively engaging with people!
Once you have a decent following, you can focus on posting shareable content. Your followers are going to interact, like, and share content that is valuable and relevant.
Don’t make the mistake of branching outside your accounts’ overall theme. So if you’re tweeting about finance, don’t post about yoga unless it’s somehow related to finance.
Identify your audience’s interest
You should already have a good idea of what your audience likes. However, you can use social media tools like polls or surveys to identify your following’s problems. Knowing what your audience needs help with will help you when it’s time to promote an offer.
Monetize
Some of the most common ways to monetize your social media accounts include:
- Generating leads
- Sending traffic to your website for sales or ad revenue
- Affiliate marketing
- Selling products
- Partnering with brands for sponsored posts
- Paying other people to promote your product
Selling other people’s products is one of the easiest ways to start. You don’t have to create a product or build a website. You simply search and sign up for a relevant affiliate program.
So if your Twitter audience was focused on fish tanks, you should poll your audience to see what problems they have. For example, most fish tank owners might have issues with overgrown algae.
You may have a particular product in mind that helps with fish tank algae. But if you don’t, that’s ok.
Go to Google and search for your affiliate product. In this case, “fish tank algae remover affiliate program.”
As you can see, multiple aquarium affiliate programs show up. See which product you like the best, sign up for the affiliate program, and then let your audience know about it.
Partnering with brands is another good option for content creators. Companies like Izea will match you with brands that will pay you to create a sponsored post.
Promote your offer
There are many different ways to promote your offer. Many successful marketers link to the product after providing good value to their readers.
Different ways to promote include:
- Capturing emails
- Email funnels
- Saying why you love the product
- Recommending the product as a solution
- Give discounts
- Give extras to those who buy with proof of purchase
- Paying others to advertise your product
- Linking to the product in a blog post
Remember, selling products or offers is about providing value to your audience. The more value you provide, the more money you can make.
Is social media a good career?
Social media can be a good way to earn money as a side hustle. However, you don’t own your social media account, so the platform can shut down your account. Social media is only a good career once you’ve become financially independent.
Don’t believe me? One quick search in my blogging group shows how many people get suspended.
Imagine, having 300,000 Instagram followers. Pretty cool, huh? Now, imagine IG suspends your account on a fluke or because you broke a rule.
Sometimes you lose your account even if you didn’t mean to break a rule.
It happens every single day. Your income disappears instantly.
Therefore, you should work on social media as a side hustle. Invest your money until you become financially independent. Then, you can quit your job and focus on social media full-time.
I also recommend building your own platform. No, not a social media platform. You can create your blog or email list, which you own.
Imagine your YouTube account gets suspended that had 700,000 subscribers. However, you had a large email list. Now, you can tell them to subscribe to your new channel. You might have lost some income, but it wasn’t completely wiped away.
Click to Tweet! Please Share!Click To TweetSummary: Social media platforms that pay you!
As you can see, there are several social media platforms that pay you. You just need to know which social media is best for you. Once you decide, build your following before you monetize.
Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube are the best social media platforms for making money. Each platform has its strengths. However, you can still make money through sales and brand partnerships.
Affiliate marketing, sponsored content, and product sales are good ways to make money from social media. Focus on your engaged followers. The more followers you have, the easier it is to make money.
Building followers is all about producing quality content consistently. What’s your niche? What content does your audience want to see?
Social media is a promising career once you’re financially independent. Account suspension is a real problem that can cause you to lose your income. Therefore, focus on building your websites and email lists.
Are you comfortable posting pictures of yourself online? You may want to check out our article on getting paid for pictures of your body. The article covers how to maximize revenue through quality photos of yourself and which websites pay top dollar. This is the perfect article for anyone wanting to be an online influencer or model.