Instagram affiliate marketing – where is the profit here?

Instagram affiliate marketing is an effective and well-established method to generate online income. This platform has evolved far beyond its initial purpose as a simple social network and its income-generating potential has been widely recognized. Thanks to its visual concept, Instagram almost immediately became a tool for business promotion and affiliates have quickly realized that it is an unlimited source of traffic with many advantages. If you haven’t yet tried affiliate marketing using social networks, you will find this article very helpful. Here, we’ll guide you through the process of converting traffic from Instagram, choosing the right affiliate programs and achieving an excellent ROI.

Back in 2010, Instagram was positioned as a photo-sharing platform. Early adopters will remember how the app attracted 25,000 users on its launch day, reached 100,000 users within a week and hit the 1 million downloads milestone in just two months. The startup became immediately popular because it gave people what they were desperately looking for – the ability to share edited photos. But in 2024, it would be a huge mistake to call Instagram just a social network. Today, it represents a vast digital universe where individuals can make a name for themselves, become influential voices and earn significant income without being a traditional blogger.Instagram’s statistics are impressive: every minute, users exchange 694,000 Reels via Direct Messages. According to the latest data, as of January 2024, the platform had 2 billion active users.

Instagram is by far the most popular platform for influencer marketing and continues to gain momentum. It is expected that by 2025, the global market will reach $26 billion. Why Instagram? It is the easiest place to find your audience and reach potential customers through organic promotion or bloggers.  

Instagram Media Buying – Which Verticals Are Worth Using

Media buying on social platforms, especially Instagram, offers a unique opportunity to either purchase or attract targeted traffic at no cost for offers from the most profitable and evergreen verticals. Instagram’s audience is predominantly young, with medium to high income levels and a reasonably balanced gender distribution. This diversity provides a wide canvas for advertisers, especially those with a good budget. Let’s take a look at which verticals are doing well on Instagram:

1. Gambling. Instagram’s visually rich platform is ideal for creating compelling ads to promote online casinos. We all know how Instagram loves to show off expensive cars, travel and other luxury attributes, perfectly fitting for gambling creatives that appeal to both men and women. Authentic proof, such as screenshots of winning bets or payouts, serve as powerful incentives.
2. Nutra. Anything related to beauty and healthy living is a major trend on Instagram. Such offers are not difficult to promote and they sell quite well.
3. Info Products.  Courses, online marathons, master classes – as practice shows, you can sell any experience and knowledge on Instagram if you package and present it correctly to the target audience.
4. Finance. Amidst scrolling for entertainment, Instagram users are also keen on discovering ways to make money online, trade, explore microloans, or invest in cryptocurrency.
5. E-commerce. Consumer goods, from the latest gadgets to fashionable accessories, can be vividly showcased through photos and are well suited to promotion on Instagram. The platform’s users are often prone to impulse buying, so well-presented new arrivals or attractive products can quickly become bestsellers.

What Offers Are Suitable for Instagram Media Buying

You can find examples of Instagram offers that can generate substantial revenue in any of the verticals above. Our media buyers have recently shared the top offers.

For those considering diving into the betting vertical via Instagram, it is better to start with the former Tier-2 countries. In Ukraine, there is a great inst2dep with Parimatch and Fabvet. Olimpbet stands out in the Russian market. For those targeting more affluent regions, National Casino, Level Up, and 22Bet have shown promising results. You can start with simple GEOs that have already shown a good conversion rate, such as Portugal, Poland, Spain, Slovakia, Greece, Slovenia, Czech Republic. Once you’ve established a solid basis, you might consider expanding into more competitive markets like Canada or Australia. 

In the dating vertical in 2024, you can safely test offers such as EmilyDates, Fuckbook 2.0, Gentlove, and Bangbooth Cams or look for a decent Smartlink affiliate. LosPollos has separate Smartlinks for the dating and cams verticals, enabling profitable campaigns on Instagram regardless of market conditions.

How to Promote Offers on Instagram

Depending on the type of offer you are going to promote on Instagram, the methods can vary from “white hat” strategies to not-so-white ones. 

If you chose “white hat,” you need to create an account to promote the offer. No matter the offer type, investing in your account’s visual (such as bright, creative photos) and textual content is important. Affiliate links can be placed in the post description or the profile bio. To send traffic to the account, you can use the following tools:

• paid advertising posts in the feed;
• links in communities with relevant topics;
• influencer collaborations;
• mass following and mass liking;
• targeted advertising. 

Mass following and liking can quickly promote your account at a lower cost compared to targeted ads. If you want to use the services for scrolling and avoid getting banned, prepare or buy several dozen accounts at once. Ideally, each account should have a separate proxy with a suitable GEO, and the link in the description should lead to different domains. Choose the best proxies for affiliate marketing on Instagram from sellers with a good reputation so that you do not buy used proxies for accounts. 

Another effective strategy for promoting accounts with various offers on Instagram is the creation of quality pages and “auxiliary” pages. Auxiliary pages can help promote your main pages by using tags and other engagement strategies, driving targeted traffic while keeping the main accounts safe from potential bans.If you have properly designed a profile for an offerer on Instagram, you will be able to promote your brand with the help of advertising posts (both informational and selling). Influencer partnerships can be set up directly or through special exchanges. The cost will depend on the size of the audience, the specifics of the offers, and the type of advertising.

Targeted ads on Instagram, which are set up in the ads manager on Facebook, allow you to direct users to the page with the offerer immediately through actionable buttons such as the “Buy” and “Read More” buttons. Targeting has one significant disadvantage – strict moderation, which makes affiliate marketing through Instagram difficult but not impossible. Experienced affiliate marketers who know how to set up cloaking get quality traffic from targeted advertising, even with “gray” offers. That is true; sooner or later, the account will be blocked.

Where to Find The Target Audience?

You can search for your audience by competitors, hashtags, and geolocation – for maximum efficiency, it is worth combining all of these methods. Special services, such as InstaPlus, Zengram Parser, SocialKit, and other cloud and desktop parsing programs, can help you find your target audience based on these specific criteria. Remember that you need an active audience that regularly posts, reacts, and subscribes.

Advantages of Instagram Media Buying

Instagram media buying is good because:

• Firstly, you can generate free and low-cost traffic. Beginners are often interested in Instagram media buying because it allows marketers to get traffic without a significant initial investment. No other social platform has mass following or mass liking like this. In addition, you can do free advertising on Instagram through hashtags, geolocation and other tools.
• Secondly, the audience on this platform is vast and different. Affiliates can promote anything, and there will be target users for any offer.
• Thirdly, Instagram has relatively easy moderation. Compared to Facebook, which owns Instagram, it is easier to work with cloaking and other ways to get around moderation.
• Fourth, there is a loyal attitude to advertising. Users of social networks regularly interact with advertising content and are used to it. The caring algorithms of Instagram allow you to have personalized advertising with competent settings and targeting advertising, yielding impressive conversion rates.

What Affiliate Program Is Suitable for Instagram

Generally, any universal affiliate program will work well, but for Instagram affiliate marketing, the offeror must be popular, relevant, and recognizable. The most popular affiliate programs for Instagram:

Amazon Associates

This extensive affiliate program from Amazon is perfect for those looking to dive into the vast world of e-commerce and installs on Instagram. To promote Amazon’s wide array of products, you must have a minimum of 500 followers. It’s important to note that your account could be at risk of closure if you don’t manage to attract at least one real customer before approval. Successful affiliates can earn up to 10% in sales commissions. The program is well-regarded for its huge selection of products, automated monthly payments, and various tools designed for affiliates.

ClickBank

This is a popular affiliate program with information products in the niche segments of healthy lifestyle, business, finance, entertainment, food, art and travel. The advantages of this affiliate program are free registration, high rates (up to 75%) and detailed reporting.

LosPollos

An affiliate platform with 1000+ advertisers and various Smartlinks for the main and most profitable affiliate marketing verticals. If you have no experience or desire to test bundles and optimize campaigns, you can send traffic from your website or Instagram account to a single link with a smart rotation algorithm—one of the few affiliate networks with exclusive offers, high rates, and an impeccable reputation. Today, LosPollos has over 100,000 webmasters choosing Smartlinks, also for Instagram.

OFFERRUM

A multi-vertical affiliate network, formerly known as Ad1.ru, with a good set of tools and a system of incentives for partners. It has a simple interface, fast registration, and offers for different verticals. The affiliate program allows you to work with promotions and promo codes, which is especially relevant for Instagram affiliate marketing.

Plibber

Another affiliate program has a large selection of brands, goods, and services for different topics. The affiliate program offers good advertising materials for Instagram affiliate marketing.

KMA.biz

This is one of the most popular affiliate programs with offers for goods, including own products. Partners can use the automatic selection of offers on the platform, monetize traffic from 75 countries and set up API in one click.

ShopStyle Collective

This affiliate platform is particularly well-suited for Instagram influencers and bloggers focusing on lifestyle and fashion niches, which are highly engaging areas on social networks. The service has its own app and pays on a CPA model, but Instagram partners are only paid for users who make a purchase. Before sending traffic from Instagram to this affiliate program, the platform verifies that the account owner is a real content creator.

Admitad

Another affiliate program suitable for media buying in the social networks. Instagram users are always interested in offers in the categories of online games, micro-loans and e-commerce.

Dr. Cash

Affiliate program from a large manufacturer of dietary supplements, which is also suitable for Instagram media buying. Here, you will find frequent payments, many products for weight loss, anti-parasites, hypertension, varicose veins, and anti-aging cosmetics – a total of about 55 verticals.

How to Drive Traffic from Instagram to an Affiliate Program

To effectively monetize traffic from Instagram it’s important to choose the niche and establish the proper partnership with the product/offer’s owner. There are two ways of monetization: through an affiliate network or by working directly with the advertiser. The first way is easier and safer. For example, with LosPollos, you can send traffic to a single link that integrates hundreds of popular offers from the same vertical. The Smartlink algorithm will automatically detect the user’s parameters and redirect them to the relevant offer. Instagram is a great solution if you don’t know where to get traffic for the smartlinks. Don’t hesitate, because smartlink is a good solution for any kind of mixed traffic from social networks.

The success of Instagram affiliate marketing depends on the ability to engage your target audience in their language and through high-quality visuals. Offers should be delivered through both posts and stories so that more users see them.

To minimize the risk of blocking and reduce testing costs, use these methods:

• warm up your account for at least two weeks before placing any ads there;
• do not use banned domains;
• add payment details before launching your first advertising campaign;
• avoid multiple ad rejections;
• regularly monitor your payment card balance to ensure uninterrupted campaign runs;
• do not link one card to different advertising accounts;
• start with small budgets;
• do not add everyone to your advertising account. 

A brief text description of 200-300 characters is sufficient for story ads, while posts can be up to 700-800 characters. Anything interactive is welcome – voting, polls, quizzes. If the details of the offer are too extensive for a story, highlight the key points and direct followers to a post for more information. Use geotags for popular locations relevant to the direction of the offer. Stay away from mass and irrelevant hashtags; they will not bring you any profit and can even be harmful. Hashtags will only increase reach if they are relevant to the offer, brand, business or topic of the post.

Have There Been Any Successful Cases of Making Money on Instagram?

Before you buy traffic from social networks to drive to affiliates, you would probably like to see successful cases. Let’s try to inspire you with ready-made offer bundles for Instagram media buying. You shouldn’t copy other people’s bundles, but understanding the overall scheme can be valuable.

Pokerdom + Instagram = ROI 300%

This bundle was shared on his blog, TikTok Guru. An investment of 10,400 rubles in advertising through bloggers’ stories directed traffic to a Telegram channel with winning strategies. The primary targeted audience was men aged 18 to 25 years old. Using Slot Aviator, the case study author earned 45,000 rubles, achieving a 300% return on investment.

Vulkan Vegas + Instagram = ROI 166%

In this example, 87,700 rubles were spent on Instagram over two weeks, utilizing video creatives. The initial advertising purchases showed promising results until Instagram began blocking accounts en masse. As a result, the decision was made to purchase advertising directly from bloggers. The outcome of this strategy was successful, earning 145,800 rubles in two weeks.

Jolly.me + Instagram = 83%

In this case, the Instagram traffic was directed to the Mainstream Dating offer. We created well-designed creatives (with a touch of erotica, of course) that did not need to be changed as they attracted a lot of comments and were clearly liked by the audience. The advertising cost $395 for two weeks and the profit was $328.

Montblanc purse and Patek watch + Instagram = ROI 123%

Another interesting case study on making money on Instagram, but this time on merchandise. Customers were offered a watch as a gift and a discount on the purchase of a purse. The creatives emphasised video reviews and took into account local geo features (Russia and Kyrgyzstan). The cost of targeted advertising was 94,200 roubles, and the two-week bundle generated a profit of 209,935 roubles.

P. S. Affiliate marketing in social networks, especially Instagram, is a work-intensive but profitable process. The profit depends on the strategy and efforts to promote the offers. Even if you choose free promotion methods on Instagram, you will have to invest a lot of time and effort. First of all, choose an honest affiliate network and a promising offer. Study the reviews of affiliates and bloggers, promote several offers at the same time and find a way to reach your audience. Instagram media buying can be free, but you should also be aware that it will not bring global profit. Once you try to buy Instagram traffic, you will see the difference in the numbers.