Instagram has over two billion users and high engagement rates, making it a great blogging platform with a focus on aesthetic pictures for people who want to start blogging and reach a broader audience of potential followers.
Whether you plan to use Instagram as the main platform for your blog or as a complementary tool to an existing blog page, Instagram has become a blogging platform within a visual platform that offers actionable marketing strategies to raise brand awareness and monetize your account, despite the follower count and blogging expertise.
About Blogging on Instagram in Brief
There are currently more than 65 million creators on Instagram. These are professional creators and influencers who have become full-time bloggers and use the platform to earn money. While blogging on Instagram can look wildly different from the traditional idea of blogging, every photo or video content you share, accompanied by a descriptive caption, can transform your Instagram page into a monetized tool for blogging.
The best way to earn as a blogger on Instagram is through partnerships, which means you’ll get paid on a per-post basis. How much you earn will depend on your following, popularity, and the product type you’re promoting.
If you’re starting out and have between 500 and a few thousand followers, you can get paid between $10 to $100 per post. The more followers you have, the bigger your chances of earning. Once you hit over 50,000 followers, you can earn thousands of dollars per single post.
Many will argue that your audience’s short attention span dictates that you need shorter captions and snappy content to capture their attention. However, many successful bloggers and Instagram accounts, like the Humans of New York (@humansofny), have garnered a huge following thanks to their long, story-filled captions.
Humans of New York’s continued success goes against the belief that Reels and short videos are the best formats for Instagram because it continues to receive hundreds of thousands of likes with just a simple photo plus caption combination.
There are no hard and fast rules to tell you what type of images, captions or content will work best for your blog. As long as you’ve found your niche and you have a story to tell, the followers should come.
Should You Start Blogging on Instagram?
Instagram is an excellent tool for blogging. With its diverse and engaged user base, you’ll surely find the target audience for your blog and have the potential to build a profitable presence.
No matter your blogging purposes, Instagram has a solid audience base who can help to reach readers for your blog and therefore boost your blog’s organic traffic. It also gives an opportunity to create a self-hosted blog that doesn’t require knowledge or investments. Those are the main reasons why Instagram boasts a great variety of successful blogs in broad niches.
10 Steps to Start Blogging on Instagram
Below are ten steps that can help you start a blog on Instagram and make money:
1. Select a Profitable Blogging Niche
In addition to being an expert in your niche and having an interest in it, you must choose something that’s profitable for your blogging business. Some popular niches may be too saturated, making it difficult to break through, while others might not get you the numbers you need. Once you’ve narrowed down your interests, you can:
- Understand what’s trending: Take a look at what type of content performs best on Instagram. Explore competitors within your niche to get post ideas and observe how their audience responds to their content. This can also help you target the right demographics and create content that works.
- Identify market gaps: Exploring trending niches doesn’t mean you have to settle with what everyone else is doing. Within trending general niches, you may find a sub-niche that isn’t as overcrowded. For instance, within the fashion niche, you may find that there isn’t much valuable content created for women who are of a specific size.
Fashion blogger and content creator Mollie Campsie posts outfit content made for mid-sized women like her. Specifying her size narrows down her audience and targets those who have the same body type.
Pro-tip: Don’t forget to optimize your Instagram bio to highlight your blog niche and help you rank organically in Instagram’s search engine.
2. Switch to Instagram Creator Account
Switching to a creator account won’t just allow you to monetize your page, but it can also give you access to Instagram’s full suite of advertising and analytics tools to help your blog grow. Instagram Creator Accounts were explicitly created for content creators who want to earn through their Instagram pages as this profile type has additional features that help to secure more collaborations and make money in-app.
Unlike a personal account, a Creator account gives you access to a:
- Professional Dashboard: Track your performance and view Instagram statistics to help you understand how your audience responds to your content. This includes valuable information such as promotions, Instagram insights, and content tools.
- Category information: You can set your category as “blogger,” which will be placed right under your profile photo.
- Secondary inbox: Organize your Direct Messages by category and manage your notifications.
3. Optimize Your Account for Collaborations
First, you should change a profile picture that represents you and write a descriptive Instagram bio where you can select your blogging niche and include a short description of your blog. Plus, it’s a smart idea to tell readers that you’re open to collaborations and include your dedicated email address which potential collaborators can use as a communication channel. However, consider the 150-character limit. What is more, you can make the most out of clickable links in the bio and include direct links (up to 5 at the moment) that provide potential collaborators with more information on landing pages (portfolio, case studies, other social media platforms, etc.).
Second, Instagram introduced partnership features to help creators get easily discovered by brands they’re interested in partnering with. Once you switch your account to a Creator Account, you can create a “preferred brand partners” list that gives you priority every time a brand on your list is searching for potential partners.
If you’re part of a brand’s affiliate marketing program, you also have the option to add a digital storefront featuring all the products you’re promoting. This makes it easier for creators who are juggling multiple affiliate links.
Further Reading: Instagram Influencer Marketing: The Complete Guide
4. Stand Out from the Crowd with Instagram Content
While you can go with the Humans of New York template and post the traditional photo and caption combination, taking advantage of Instagram’s tools and features can help boost your content and reach a wider audience.
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For instance, if you post more Instagram Reels, your content can get promoted in the Reels tab, while posting more Instagram Stories can get you more engagement than the typical in-feed photo. Changing up your content creation can keep your audience excited and help you understand what resonates best with them.
Food blogger Tiffy Cooks posts a combination of Reels, Stories, and high-quality photos on her Instagram page. All Instagram content creates connection with her millions of followers and leads to her website’s longer-form blog posts and recipes.
5. Create and Plan Instagram Content Wisely
When it comes to Instagram marketing, visual content plays a key role in readers’ perception, but it’s also important to put efforts into creating blog content that reflects your personal blog and audience preferences.
Planning out your content can ensure that everything you post is intentional and well thought out. With a content calendar, going day by day is not only stressful, but it can also cause you to miss out on trending opportunities.
If your content is planned out and scheduled, you have the flexibility to keep your nose on the latest pop culture news and trending industry topics so you can post while it’s hot.
There are many social media scheduling tools that can automate the posting process so you can focus on creating relevant content for your page.
Further Reading: 11 Most Engaging Instagram Post Ideas to Boost Your Algorithm Game
6. Leverage the Power of Ephemeral Content
Ephemeral content refers to content that disappears after a certain time period. On Instagram, these are your Stories. While Instagram Stories has been around for a while, it’s still considered one of the most popular content formats. This is because ephemeral content creates a sense of excitement and triggers the fear of missing out, or FOMO.
Instagram stories can be a powerful tool for promoting anything with a limited-time nature, such as sales or contests. For example, if you’re an art blogger and you make prints of your art, you can use Instagram Stories’ countdown feature to announce when it goes live. This allows your audience to get notified and alerts them of the limited nature of your product.
Additionally, unlike in-feed posts, which are more curated, Instagram Stories’ more candid content can make you seem more human and relatable. Plus, it can be more engaging as Instagram Stories offer different in-app features and therefore allow you to make engaging content and entertain your audience with polls, question stickers, and quizzes.
Artist Clari Q takes advantage of Instagram Stories’ limited-time nature to encourage her followers to ask her questions.
7. Team Up with Relevant Instagram Bloggers
One of the best ways to get your name out as a blogger is to collaborate with fellow bloggers and creators in the same niche or within a related industry who has the same online community. This way, you can tap into their community to reach a larger audience and attract more blog readers.
Instagram now has a collaboration feature, which allows collaborators to publish content on both their Instagram feeds, exposing your engaging content to both your followers.
Food content creator Made by Musashi collaborates with fellow food bloggers to promote each other’s pages. These types of content usually get more traction and engagement than regular posts.
Further Reading: 15 Best Ways How to Get More Followers on Instagram in 2025
8. Join Brand Ambassador Programs
Brand ambassador programs can help put you on the radar of reputable and popular brands, therefore giving you more opportunities to expand your network and grow your portfolio. Most ambassador programs will also come with perks, such as free products, monetary benefits, and training programs to help you enhance your skills and therefore produce high-quality content for their businesses.
For example, you can join Lululemon’s ambassador program for fitness blogs. The program’s perks include being one of the first people to test out the brand’s new products, networking opportunities, event invitations, and access to tools.
9. Spy on Other Instagram Bloggers
To succeed in any industry, you must be on top of what the competition is doing. Observing fellow Instagram bloggers can help you understand what type of content resonates with your target audience and therefore you may want for your own page and what works best for the Instagram audience.
Spying on competition is simple. You can follow your competition’s accounts to see what type of content they post and how they engage with their followers or just tap on branded hashtags and see influencer-made content. You can also use tools to track brand mentions and their overall impact within your niche.
Further Reading: 13 Robust AI Instagram Post Generators I Recommend
10. Rely on Word-of-Mouth Marketing
Word-of-mouth marketing and personal recommendations have always been an effective strategy for growing your blog on Instagram and attracting a broader audience of potential followers who can help to grow your blog. That’s why it’s important to rely on reviews and invest in personal brand advocates who are happy to spread the word about your blog.
Having regular collaborations and user-generated content (UGC) are Instagram’s version of word-of-mouth marketing. It shows that other reputable sources and loyal followers are willing to endorse your blog.
Start a branded hashtag campaign to encourage brand mentions and get your followers to tag you.
While likes are great, comments and actual recommendations are better. Use Instagram Stories’ interactive stickers to get more responses and UGC.
Further Reading: 11 Amazing Free Ways to Promote Your Instagram Account
In a Word
With Instagram’s powerful tools specially designed for influencers and content creators and the evidence of millions of successful bloggers on the platform, it’s clear that it’s an excellent channel for launching a blog.
Use the above-mentioned tips to understand how to create an engaging piece of content for your audience and start growing your blog’s audience to make money with Instagram.
