How to Sell on Instagram: 8 Strategies for 2026

Since its launch in 2016, Instagram has evolved from a photo-sharing platform into a hub for social selling. Learning how to sell on Instagram means gaining access to a multibillion-dollar market. 

Social platform sales doubled in the US between 2022 and 2025 and are expected to reach $100 billion in 2026, according to Grin’s 2026 social commerce report. Meanwhile, Emarketer predicts that nearly half of all social buyers will shop on Instagram in 2026.

Ahead, learn how to establish your Instagram Shop, and read eight tips for selling on Instagram.

How to set up a shop on Instagram

1. Check your eligibility
2. Download the Facebook & Instagram app for Shopify
3. Manage your Instagram Shop inventory
4. Tag products in posts and ads
5. Measure your Instagram sales success

A shop on Instagram is a storefront where users can browse your products without leaving the Instagram app. Your Instagram Shop appears on your business’s Instagram profile, and you need it to be able to tag products in Instagram posts and ads. When shoppers are ready to purchase, Instagram directs them to your ecommerce store to check out. 

Here’s how to start selling on Instagram:

1. Check your eligibility

First, make sure you meet these requirements for opening an Instagram Shop. You must:

• Have an Instagram business profile
• Do business in a supported country
• Meet Meta’s commerce eligibility requirements, which include adhering to community standards
• Sell an accepted product (banned items include alcohol and medical products)
• Have a domain to connect to your business account

If you don’t qualify, there are other ways to sell on Instagram. For example, you can make a link- in-bio page with Shopify’s Starter plan and direct followers to purchase from your bio. You can also add product links to your Instagram Stories.

2. Download the Facebook & Instagram app for Shopify

If you’re on Shopify, set up a shop by adding the Facebook & Instagram app to your Shopify store. This app automatically syncs your product catalog.

Once you install the Facebook & Instagram app, follow the steps in the setup wizard from your Shopify admin. Steps include connecting your Instagram business account, entering your business details, selecting privacy settings, and installing a Meta pixel.

Once you’ve completed the steps in the setup wizard, Meta will review your shop.

As of August 2025, you’ll be responsible for collecting sales tax on orders placed through your Instagram Shop. You can establish your tax settings in Shopify, since Instagram customers will check out through your Shopify site.

If you’re not on Shopify, you can start your Instagram Shop with Meta Commerce Manager by navigating to the Commerce Manager login page > Create your shop.

3. Manage your Instagram Shop inventory

When you set up your Instagram Shop through Shopify, your product catalog automatically syncs to your new storefront. Later, as you edit product listings on Shopify, those changes will also appear on your Instagram Shop. 

Manage your Instagram inventory from your Shopify admin. Navigate to the Products page, then select Add filter > Sales channel > Facebook & Instagram. Select Included to see what’s available on Instagram and Excluded to see what’s not.

To remove products from your Instagram Shop, select the items you’d like to take down, then select the three dots next to Set as draft. From here, select Exclude from sales channels > Facebook & Instagram. 

4. Tag products in posts and ads

Adding Instagram product tags to image posts, Stories, and Reels lets customers shop wherever they discover your Instagram content.

When a user selects your tag, they’ll see a pop-up with product details. From there, they can choose a product to see in your shop on Instagram. Here’s an example from makeup and skincare brand Rhode:

To tag a product in a post, upload and edit your photo, select Next, then select More options > Tag products. Select the products you want to tag, then select Done. Select Share to publish your post. 

Users can also tag your products in their own posts, creating user-generated content (UGC) and social proof. You’ll get notified when someone tags one of your products. You may choose to disable this feature or to remove tags from specific posts.

5. Measure your Instagram sales success

Track your Instagram Shop sales through your Shopify admin with Shopify Analytics. 

First, navigate to Analytics > Total sales by channel to view your order count, gross sales volume, discounts, and returns.

You can also use Instagram Insights in Commerce Manager to track engagement with your shoppable content. Instagram Insights shows you how many people visited your product page, followed you, or viewed your profile after seeing shoppable content. It also gives you information on reach and where on Instagram users saw your post.

8 tips for selling on Instagram

1. Partner with influencers
2. Start an affiliate program
3. Run Instagram ads
4. Boost your posts
5. Curate user-generated content
6. Use Instagram SEO
7. Engage with DMs
8. Start an Instagram broadcast channel

Try these strategies for selling on Instagram:

1. Partner with influencers

Influencer marketing gets your products in front of new audiences and can be effective at driving sales. Almost 60% of consumers have bought something based on an influencer recommendation, according to Grin’s 2026 report.

To keep influencer marketing costs down, consider seeding, or gifting, products rather than paying creators per post or series of posts. This is what pickle brand Good Girl Snacks did.

“It’s created a lot of buzz around us and allowed for a lot of sales while still maintaining a zero-dollar CAC [customer acquisition cost],” Good Girl Snacks cofounder Leah Marcus says on Shopify Masters. 

Instagram influencers act as brand ambassadors for your company, so be sure to vet the creators you contact. 

“We did our research when we figured out who we were going to reach out to,” says Leah’s cofounder Yasaman Bakhtiar. “We made sure that we reached out to the girls that we knew would love the pickles. We knew they were either pickle connoisseurs already or they ate a similar snack, so naturally it felt more organic for them to talk about it and show it in a video, because it’s already part of their everyday routine.”

If you do pay creators, consider micro-influencers. While celebrity influencer prices can run tens of thousands of dollars per post, accounts with 10,000 to 100,000 followers deliver the highest average engagement rates, according to Sprout Social, and cost $250 to $5,000 per sponsored post. 

2. Start an affiliate program

With affiliate marketing, you pay creators only when they successfully convert sales. You distribute unique affiliate links or promo codes, track sales made with those links or codes, and then pay affiliates commissions. 

To make money on Instagram, affiliates promote products and post links in captions, Stories, or link-in-bio apps. In April 2026, Meta introduced product tagging directly in Reels. Brands must register those products in Meta’s commerce catalog (which you’ll do when you set up your shop on Instagram).

If you’re on Shopify, you can use Shopify Collabs to connect with affiliates and manage your affiliate program. Ramen brand Immi used Collabs to grow their affiliate network to 432 ambassadors and earn $200,000 in affiliate sales. 

Immi started by sending hundreds of samples to creators. The company asked those creators for their feedback and offered them the opportunity to become affiliates. Collabs enabled Immi to distribute free products and track affiliate revenue from one central hub. Anyone can apply to become an Immi ambassador through a landing page on their site.

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3. Run Instagram ads

With an Instagram Shop, you can tag your products in shoppable Instagram ads. These let ad viewers navigate to your product page. 

There are several types of Instagram ads you can build in Meta Ads Manager: Feed ads, Story ads, Explore ads, and Reels ads. Reels ads are the most popular: More than half of 2025 Instagram ads ran as Reels.

When you create Instagram ads, you can set complex audience targeting parameters and create lookalike audiences to reach new potential customers in your target audience, and put your brand in front of users who don’t already follow you.

You can use Shopify Audiences to target specific customer groups—like a list of your most interested buyers—who you can then target with retargeting ads. 

You can also install a Meta pixel to create retargeting ads for individual shoppers. This is a line of code that tracks site visitors’ activity on your ecommerce site. You can use this data to show customers ads for products they’ve viewed.

4. Boost your posts

If an organic post is doing exceptionally well or you want your ads to have an organic feel, you can promote existing Instagram content with Boosted posts. 

Boost posts from your Instagram profile. Click on the post you want to promote, then select Boost. Then, choose your budget, duration, goal, and audience. When you’re done, select the Boost post.

Zachary Quinn, founder of the foam roller brand Oceanfoam, discovered an unexpected benefit of boosting posts: it helped him find marketing opportunities such as influencer partnerships and brand collaborations.

“Boosting your posts on Instagram helps to get a lot of engagement back from people that are coming up with creative ideas for partnerships,” says Zachary. “You get more likes on your page, and then more businesses pay attention to you, and you find opportunities for collaboration through that.”

5. Curate user-generated content

Share social proof with your followers by reposting UGC to your Story or your feed. 

Skincare brand Starface regularly shares image carousels of influencers and celebrities rocking its pimple patches. 

“[The star-shape pimple patch] plays really well on social media,” former Starface President Kara Brothers says on an episode of Shopify Masters. “Our community takes a lot of pride in showing their looks with the different stars, and dressing it up as a fashion accessory, as a moment for them.”

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To encourage and find UGC, consider creating a branded hashtag and using social listening tools to discover where people are posting about your products. 

Gifting is another way to encourage UGC. “We give out as much product as possible to people who genuinely want it, and then those fans of the brand, those who kind of resonate with it, amplify it for us by wearing it and sharing pictures, and we just go right back and spread that love back to them [by re-sharing their content],” Kara says.

6. Use Instagram SEO

Instagram SEO (search engine optimization) is a set of tactics to improve post and profile rankings in Instagram search results and on external search engines like Google. It can also help users find your Instagram profile.

“[Instagram] search ranking is driven by intentional keyword usage—specifically within captions, on-screen text, transcribed audio, and relevant keyword-based hashtags,” says Leslie Ann Hall, founder and CEO of Iced Media. Leslie recommends using keyword research tools like Google Ads Keyword Planner to find terms relevant to your brand and products. Then, incorporate them naturally into your posts.

7. Engage with DMs

There are several ways brands use direct messages (DMs) to engage with customers. Customer service is a common one; promptly responding to customer requests is a strategy used to help increase brand loyalty.

Some businesses also use DMs for marketing. Take skincare brand Dieux. The company asks followers to comment “mercy” to receive a free product with their purchase of the Skin Mercy Recovery Cream. Dieux can then DM commenters with the code or link they need to receive their free item.

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Use social media AI chatbot tools like Manychat to set up a comment-reply automation like Dieux’s.

8. Start an Instagram broadcast channel

Instagram broadcast channels give you a direct line of communication to your most engaged followers. This tool is available to brands or creators with at least 1,000 followers.

Instagram broadcast channels let you share text, voice notes, and interactive features like polls and prompts. If you enable them to, members can reply and react to your messages. 

You can invite other creators to collaborate with you and create different channels for different groups of followers. A broadcast channel creates a community where you can share flash sales and product previews and gather feedback.

Lindsey Carter, Founder and CEO of athleticwear brand Set Active, maintains a broadcast channel (Linny’s Circle) on her personal Instagram in addition to her brand’s channel (BTS: Behind the Set). “If I go a day without talking to them, I miss them, and you can’t fake that type of connection,” Lindsey says on Shopify Masters.

Lindsey uses the channel to share behind-the-scenes content and solicit input on new products. “We ask customers to vote on colors and styles, we show them samples, and we share which colors are selling out first,” Lindsey says. “People like having a say in what they’re going to spend their money on.”