How To Make Money on Social Media: 6 Ideas for 2026

You’ve probably seen social media influencers living luxurious lives, decked out in designer clothes and posting pictures of fancy restaurants and five-star hotels. Indeed, the top 50 creators on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube earned a combined $853 million in 2025, according to Forbes. But how exactly do they make money on social media? 

In-app monetization features and brand partnerships can help creators generate extra income, but the real money is in starting your own business. Ahead, you’ll learn how much each social media platform pays and how to get started. 

How much do social media apps pay?

• Instagram
• TikTok
• Facebook
• YouTube

The most popular social platforms offer in-app monetization tools that reward creators for producing engaging content. The payouts are typically pretty small, but it’s an easy way to get started.

Instagram

There are multiple ways to make money on Instagram without leaving the app:

• Instagram Live badges. If you turn on Instagram badges for your Live videos, your followers can purchase up to $250 in badges per video to show their support. 

• Instagram gifts. Your viewers can purchase stars to send you as gifts on your Instagram Reels. You’ll get 1¢ for every star you receive. 

• Instagram subscriptions. If you have more than 10,000 Instagram followers, you can sell Instagram subscriptions and then share exclusive content with your subscribers. Creators set their own rates.

• Instagram bonuses. The invitation-only Instagram bonus program lets creators earn money directly from Instagram itself, not from paying fans. The program consists of regular seasonal bonuses and a breakthrough bonus of up to $5,000 for new creators on the platform.

TikTok

There are two ways to make money on TikTok within the app:

• Creator Rewards. TikTok’s Creator Rewards Program pays TikTokers for videos longer than one minute, based on originality, play duration, search value, and audience engagement. How much TikTok pays depends on the individual creator and video. It ranges from a few cents to a few dollars per 1,000 views.

• Gifts. You can also make money on TikTok from Gifts, which users send you for either regular content or TikTok LIVE videos. Users purchase gifts with in-app coins, which they buy with real money. 

Facebook

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, offers a few ways to make money on Facebook without leaving the app:

• Content Monetization Program. Facebook’s Content Monetization program is the successor to several programs (such as in-stream ads and performance bonuses) that ended in August 2025. The program pays creators for high-quality, high-performing video, photo, and text posts. Content Monetization is currently invite-only. You can express interest by navigating to your professional dashboard, clicking the Monetization tab, then filling out the form under Content Monetization. 

• Facebook Stars. Stars let you earn from fans during live broadcasts—you can make money in as little as one hour. Each star is worth 1¢. You can encourage fans to send you stars by setting a Stars Goal, essentially a personal fundraising target. To incentivize your fans to help you reach that goal, offer exclusive perks, like behind-the-scenes content.

• Subscriptions. You can also sell subscriptions to your biggest fans. Make sure to offer incentives for subscribing, like discounts on your products or exclusive content. You can set your own subscription prices.

YouTube

Once you’ve been accepted into the YouTube Partner Program, you can earn money in the following ways:

• YouTube ads. You can enable YouTube ads for full-length videos, livestreams, and YouTube shorts. How much you make depends on your niche and viewer engagement, with creators reporting earnings of less than a dollar to more than $20 per 1,000 views.

• Channel memberships. Sell channel memberships for 99¢ to $499 per month (creators set their rates) and earn recurring revenue from subscribers. You’ll take home 70% of your membership revenue, after taxes and fees.

• Stickers and Super Chat. Stickers and Super Chat help you monetize livestreams. Viewers can buy Super Chats to highlight their messages in the livestream, and Stickers to animate them.

• Super Thanks. Super Thanks lets your most loyal followers support your videos and Shorts. When a viewer buys a Super Thanks, they’ll see a one-time animation over a particular video. 

How to make money on social media

1. Become an affiliate partner
2. Create sponsored content
3. Sell merch
4. Sell complementary products
5. Sell digital products
6. Sell memberships

You don’t need a massive following to make money. In fact, micro-influencers (creators with between 1,000 and 100,000 followers) can earn substantial sums on social media. Regardless of follower count, remember that the best way to make money on social media is to convert your audience into customers of your own business.

Here are six ways to make money on social media:

1. Become an affiliate partner

Affiliate marketing is one of the easiest ways to get started making money on social media, since you don’t necessarily need a high follower count to join a brand or affiliate network’s program. All you have to do is create content featuring products you like and start sharing affiliate links for them.

“Consumers no longer look to traditional ads when they want to know more about a product. Instead, they turn to their communities—they seek out product reviews, shop comparison sites, and listen to the voices of the real people sharing real experiences, like influencers and friends and family,” says Jerrid Grimm, head of publisher marketing at Impact.com. 

If you publish a blog or newsletter, you can include affiliate links in each new post. There are a few options for doing so, and they vary by platform.

With Instagram affiliate marketing, you can share affiliate links using the link sticker feature in Instagram Stories, as creator Mia Rigden did with this Wonder Valley Oil Cleanser:

For more permanency, create a Story Highlight with affiliate links to all your favorite products, like dermatologist and Prequel Skin founder Dr. Sam Ellis did with this “Click to shop” Highlight:

Your social media bio is another good place to share affiliate links. Rather than listing a bunch of them, many creators build a virtual storefront where followers can browse products by category or theme. 

Platforms like ShopMy can do this, but then limit you to working with the brands available on their platform. To fully customize your affiliate storefront, creating your own website is the way to go, especially if you plan to expand your social media empire by starting a blog or selling your own products.

While it’s easy to get started with affiliate marketing, it’s only profitable when you have a large follower base. “Conversion rates in the affiliate channel vary from 1% to 3%, meaning that for every 100 people that click on an affiliate link, one to three of them will make a purchase,” Jerrid says.

2. Create sponsored content

Partner with brands to create sponsored posts—essentially mini advertisements—and you’ll get paid per post or series of posts. 

Look for partner brands that sell products related to your niche. Sticking with what you know helps your sponsored posts feel authentic and relevant to your existing audience.

“A recurring style or series that brands could then plug into is a really nice way to partner with brands and monetize your reels,” social media consultant and Link in Bio author Rachel Karten says. 

She points to TikToker Alix Earle as an example. “Everyone watches her get-ready-with-me videos,” she says. 

Because these videos regularly feature skin care products, they present a natural way for Alix Earle to partner with brands like EltaMD without the videos feeling too much like ads.

To build relationships with brands, consider posting about them organically.

Mauricio Abascal, managing director of social media marketing agency Untitled Social, says his team actively seeks accounts that are already engaging with its clients. 

“As the agency representing the brand, we look for that authentic, organic engagement,” Mauricio says. “If you’re an influencer and you want to work with fashion brand X, are you using them in your everyday life? Are you tagging them? Are you posting them?”

3. Sell merch

If you’ve built a strong brand around your social media presence, consider using it for branded merchandise (merch). Merch ideas include apparel such as t-shirts and sweatshirts, accessories like embroidered hats and tote bags, and home décor such as printed mugs and throw blankets. 

Photographer Ethan Barber sells a variety of New York City–themed merch to his 1.1 million Instagram followers, most notably a yearly calendar featuring his photos of the city.

Print on demand (POD) is an easy way to make and sell merch for TikTok, YouTube, Twitch, and Instagram. With a POD model, you design the product, and when a customer places an order, a third-party partner creates it and ships it directly to the customer. This way, you avoid storing inventory and managing order fulfillment. Choose from various print-on-demand apps that let you manage all your POD sales from a unified hub in your Shopify admin. 

As you consider which merch products to sell, make sure they suit your brand and content.

“Figure out what type of content or what niche you’ve created for yourself, and go from there,” says Ethan. “So, if you’re a cooking creator, maybe you create a cookbook like everyone else, or maybe you design your own recipe cards, or you create a blank recipe book and sell that.”

Once you’ve decided what to sell, incorporate it into your content organically to promote your products. “If you’re a cozy content creator, create your own candles and mugs and use them in your content,” Ethan explains. “If your entire content is around coffee, design your own mug and use that mug in your content.”

4. Sell complementary products

The best way to make money on social media is by selling your own products. Once you’ve built up a following, you can turn your audience into customers. 

That’s what Kevin Espiritu did with Epic Gardening. Kevin initially monetized his media company through affiliate marketing and brand deals. Eventually, he realized he could earn more by starting his own shop.

“I kind of looked at the landscape, and I was like, ’Why would I just accept a deal from a brand that I like working with? What do they really want?’ They want access to my audience, and I have that,” Kevin says on an episode of Shopify Masters. “So why wouldn’t I try to offer something directly to that audience?”

Kevin notes that gardening, like other home hobbies such as cooking or carpentry, has a lot of associated gear. 

“That’s where my mind went: ’I need to find some way of offering products directly to the audience, because we’ve built a level of trust between myself and them,’” he explains. 

Kevin launched the Epic Gardening ecommerce site in 2019, and now the online store accounts for 90% of his company’s revenue.

Quickly set up an online shop with an ecommerce platform like Shopify, then figure out what to sell. You can find a manufacturer and go through the product development process to create highly specific items. To get off the ground faster, you can also sell predesigned and manufactured products from wholesale brands.

If you want to use your brand name but don’t want to develop your own items, a dropshipping model is a great option. With dropshipping, customers place their orders on your online shop, and your dropshipping partner ships the product directly to them. This model makes it easy to start selling without managing inventory. 

Several dropshipping suppliers integrate with your Shopify storefront, letting you manage everything from a single hub. You can also sell products from other Shopify merchants through Shopify Collective, which enables you to list other brands’ products on your site.

Once you listed your products on your ecommerce site, you can start social selling across your social media profiles to broaden your reach. Shopify’s integrations with Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube make it easy to set up an in-platform shop. 

Social selling apps are extremely popular. In fact, around 25% of Shopify merchants downloaded a social selling app within the first month of opening their stores, according to Shopify’s 2024 global signup data.

Here’s an example from YouTuber and podcast host Emma Chamberlain, who runs a coffee brand called Chamberlain Coffee. Emma found YouTube fame with her funny and relatable vlog-style videos, in which she often talked about her love of coffee. When she launched Chamberlain Coffee in 2019, it was a natural fit.

Emma’s products are available on the Chamberlain Coffee website and through YouTube Shopping links that direct customers there.

5. Sell digital products

Selling digital products like photo editing kits or knitting patterns can be a great side hustle, since you can earn without managing inventory or shipping. 

Take a look at these digital products from photographer Ethan Barber. These downloads let buyers use Ethan’s signature filters on their own photos.

If it suits your content, consider creating digital educational resources, such as downloadable PDF pamphlets and ebooks. Or, you can sell online courses and one-on-one coaching sessions.

Align your educational content with your area of expertise. For example, a cooking creator might sell recipe PDFs, while a fashion creator might sell downloadable guides for putting together different outfits.

To offer coaching or lessons, you can sell prerecorded or live videos. In this case, a cooking influencer could sell a prerecorded cooking fundamentals video series, while a fashion creator could sell one-on-one Zoom styling appointments.

Shopify’s ecommerce platform makes it easy to sell digital products like ebooks, and it offers several appointment booking apps to simplify client bookings.

To cultivate interest in your digital products, consider posting previews on your social media channels. Publishing customer testimonials gives potential buyers social proof, demonstrating that your products are worth it. Once you’ve developed your materials, update them regularly to keep them fresh. 

Here are some digital product ideas to help you get started:

• Digital art. If you make visual art content, you can sell digital downloads of your work for users to print and hang on their walls. You could also create coloring pages or instructional PDFs for drawing or painting particular subjects.

• Templates. If you create business-focused content, consider selling templates that make it easier for your followers to assemble assets like slide decks and résumés.

• Photography products. High-quality stock photos, digital wallpapers, printable high-resolution images, and photo editing presets are all viable products for creators who’ve built a following around their photography.

• Planners. Printable planners, journals, and calendars are good digital product options for creators who post about productivity or mental health. You could create different versions of these products depending on your content type. For example, you might sell planners for workout routines if you post fitness content or meditation journals if you’re in wellness.

• Music and audio. Digital music tracks, sound effects, audio samples, or music production templates and presets can make great products for creators who’ve built brands around music production or playing an instrument.

• Crafting patterns. If you run a crafting social media page, you might sell digital products like crochet, knitting, or sewing patterns. You could also offer crafting instructions, like a PDF on how to make a specific decoration with a Cricut, an advanced cutting and printing machine.

6. Sell memberships

A dedicated social media following is a community, and a great way to monetize yours is by selling memberships for your content. Most social media platforms offer in-app subscription options. Still, you can take it a step further by creating a new, paywalled revenue stream, such as a newsletter or podcast, using platforms like Substack or Patreon.

Here’s an example from Amy Smilovic, the founder of clothing brand Tibi. Amy runs a personal Instagram account with over 231,000 followers where she posts lifestyle and fashion content, and she has a Substack called The Creative Pragmatist that offers paid memberships. Paying subscribers get access to articles that would otherwise be paywalled. 

The best way to sell content memberships, however, is on your website. A website builder like Shopify lets you sell subscriptions and paywalled content.

Incentivize your followers to buy memberships by giving them access to exclusive content, discounts on products, or perks like free signup gifts. To cultivate community, respond to comments on your content to demonstrate that you hear and value your customers. Consider soliciting user-generated content (UGC) to repost on your profile. And, you can host livestream or in-person events.

Note that communities are often platform-specific. If you post on multiple channels, you’ll need to cultivate a community on each one. 

James Hoffmann, who runs a 2.45 million-follower YouTube channel dedicated to coffee and a coffee-themed ecommerce store called Tens Hundreds Thousands, speaks from experience. James thought his burgeoning Instagram following would come to YouTube and watch his videos there, but they didn’t.

“Whatever audience I had had outside of YouTube, be it Instagram or Twitter, had no interest in coming across to YouTube,” James says on Shopify Masters. “That was a great lesson. You have to build a community locally within that place.”

Starting your own business

While there are plenty of ways to earn on social—from getting paid directly by platforms to becoming an affiliate marketer—the best way to make money on social media is by using your audience to start your own business. 

Social media creators are uniquely positioned: they have established audiences and can begin marketing their products directly to loyal followers.

It’s easy to set up an online shop with Shopify, which even has an AI site builder that can help you launch a website in minutes. You can then utilize Shopify’s social media integrations to link your profiles and start selling across platforms from a single hub.