Instagram Affiliate Program 2025

Affiliate marketing is a great way to monetize your efforts on the Instagram platform that you’re already using.

It’s basically easy money to earn without having to do much to earn it.

For starters, include some of your top keywords to quickly communicate to people what you’re all about. Ideally, come up with a tagline or short description that tells visitors what’s in it for them. Know exactly who your target audience is and communicate as effectively as you can with them.

Create a hashtag with your unique tagline or handle to encourage sharing, tagging and branding. Also add some special characters to mix things up. Finally, include a link with a strong call-to-action to your homepage, offers or landing page.

2. Get An Instagram Business Account

An Instagram business account allows you get additional features that aren’t available on a personal account:

• You’ll get access to Instagram’s analytics where you’ll get the key performance metrics of your pages followers to gain valuable audience insight
• You will be able to add live links to your Instagram Stories – which is huge
• An Instagram business account gives you the option to schedule your posts
• A business account allows you to add a valuable contact button
• Having access to Instagram’s affiliate program and advertising platform
• The ability to turn your feed into an online shop with the product tagging feature

3. Get Creative To Set Yourself Apart Visually

Instagram is all about its emphasis on the visual element. As an Instagram marketer, you need to take full advantage of this. Use the same color themes, fonts and filters in all of your content to start earning important visual brand recognition. Be different. Don’t just copy what others are doing. Instagram users love uniqueness. Get creative.

Plus use the highest quality graphics and pictures that you can. Anything less just doesn’t cut it on Instagram. If you’re less on the creative side, you can outsource this task on a platform like Fiverr where there are plenty of pros who can crush this task for you.

4. Use The Instagram Stories Feature Frequently

People love storytelling. The Instagram stories feature use a slideshow format that allows you to tell a compelling story visually. You can get super creative with Instagram stories and should. But before you can master the creative side, you’ll need a little practice using the editing & accessory features Instagram offers.

Take the time to learn the editing platform is time well spent since the more your content stands out, the better. You can also repost your Instagram stories which is a key feature and something you must do.

5. Don’t Go Crazy And Overpost

Many Instagram marketing newbies screw this one up. Usually because nobody told them in advance. While it’s important to post consistently, do no overpost. The best practice is to post at least once each day, but never more than 2-3 times in a day.

Since Instagram marketing is more about quality over quantity, post when you have something really interesting to say. That is your best strategy.

6. Once You’re Established On Instagram, Look To Partner With Influencers

Influencers have already done the hard work for you, and if you can leverage that it’s worth the time and expense. Just make sure you are working with an influencer who has the same target audience that you do.

• Instagram has over 500 million users each and every day
• Instagram has well over a billion monthly users
• Engagement is 10 times higher than Facebook, 58 times higher than Pinterest, and 84 higher than on Twitter
• Instagram is a top 5 social platform
• A third of Instagram users have used their mobile to purchase a product online
• You’ll reach 100% of your followers per post… compared to just 6% on Facebook

What Instagram can do for you is help you create a presence, expand your sphere of influence, draw in new followers and friends, and humanize your brand. And if you think that since you only sell other peoples products as an affiliate marketer you don’t need branding then you’re mistaken. I’ll save the topic of branding for another day but with social media going more and more visual (Instagram, Pinterest) you need a logo or a name to promote to start forming your own tribe.

The key to Instagram traffic is to NOT treat it as a photo album. Think of Instagram as a tool to help you give value to people who don’t know you. You must focus your efforts on using it to meet new people who can become your followers and eventually your customers.

Why Instagram Is A Buyers Goldmine

Instagram allows you, the digital marketer, to tap into 700 million buyers who engage offers many times more than people presently do on Facebook. And as of this writing is creating more “free traffic millionaires” each and every day than all the other internet platforms combined. Who is cashing in on free Instagram traffic?

• People like Ali Maffuci, who started “Inspiralized”, an Instagram account on turning vegetables into simple spaghetti dishes. She’s now quit her corporate job and is raking in thousands of dollars daily.
• And Shirley Braha who has over 2 million followers on “Marniethedog”, just by posting pictures of her dog, she now earns a fortune by featuring famous celebrities.
• And “thefatjewish” who only posts other people’s funny pictures and now makes 6 figures promoting their accounts, too.

Who Succeeds On Instagram?

It is true that you must keep in mind some factors that will influence your success as an affiliate marketer on Instagram. Here are the top three characteristics your profile must possess:

• Brand Value: Both your profile (whether you are an influencer or a brand looking to promote other brands and their products) and the product or brand you are promoting should have value. You must be trusted by your followers. Likewise, the product or brand you are promoting must have a good reputation.
• “Good” Following: A “good” following is one that is not made up of bots or paid followers. A good place to start from is 5,000-15,000 followers, but even a smaller dedicated follower base can be effective. As long as you get at least 100 likes on your posts consistently and your followers engage with your content, you can be sure that you have a good chance at affiliate marketing.
• Relevancy: Last but not least, the product you choose to promote must be relevant to your followers. If you are an influencer connected to makeup, then you should probably choose products for personal care and, well, makeup.

Translating Instagram Content for More Exposure

Before we get into the process itself, it is important to mention a tactic that you can benefit from in order to increase your exposure and subsequently the number of your followers. Instead of only producing content in English, consider translating it to other languages with the help of an online translation service such as The Word Point. You will be able to reach multilingual audiences and then become a better affiliate marketer.

Creating a New Profile or Transitioning

As an affiliate marketer, you have two options available to you: create a new profile or transition from your usual user profile to an affiliate marketing one. To create a good Instagram profile, consider such things:

• Username: Choose a username that will be easily found by your followers when they want to find you or tag you. If you want one username for all your social media accounts, you can check its availability across platforms with the help of Check Usernames.
• Profile Picture & Bio: Use your profile picture and bio to reflect what you or your brand stands for. You have a limit of 150 characters, so use them wisely.
• Privacy Setting: Make sure that you have a public account so that you can be discovered easily and don’t have to approve every follower.
• Captioning, Tagging, & Geo-Tagging: Write great captions, include tags and include your location in some posts.

If you decided to transition from being a usual Instagram user to an affiliate marketer, then you will probably have to increase your following count. Use hashtags in your posts, host giveaways and contests, make sponsored posts and be patient. It will take some time in any case.

Promoting Links on Instagram

Unlike on other social media platforms, Instagram doesn’t enable you to link to external websites in your post captions. This means that you have only several options when it comes to including your affiliate link:

• Link In Bio: The most obvious option is including a link in your bio. This can be either permanent or semi-permanent depending on the purpose. If you are collaborating only with one brand, then this is probably the best option for you as you can include only one link in your bio.
• Linkable Instagram Gallery App: A linkable Instagram Gallery App such as Linkin.bio allows you to have a personal gallery that has links from all of your posts. The link to your gallery can be included in your bio for your followers to get access to it.
• Link In Stories With Swipe-Up: Unfortunately, this option is only available to accounts that have over 10,000 followers. The Swipe-Up feature allows your followers to swipe up on your stories to go to an external page or an Instagram profile you link.
• Shortened Link: This is the riskiest option as not all of your followers will be willing to use it. You can use a URL shortener such as Bl.ink to shorten your link and allow your followers to type it in by themselves in an external browser.