This post contains affiliate links. At Returns Rinse Repeat, we want out readers to be financially successful, so any reviews are honest and unbiased. Learn more here.
Making money through Snapchat is an increasingly popular side hustle for people. With the rise of social media influence, many people have turned to popular apps like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat to bring in extra income. While it does take work to build up a dedicated audience, establishing a platform is a great way to bring in passive income through sponsored posts and even transition to selling your own products.
What is Snapchat?
Snapchat is a massive social media platform that has on average 249 million people using it every day. Snapchat estimates that millennials and Gen Z have $1 trillion in direct spending power and the Snapchat community typically spends 30 minutes on Snapchat every day. That’s a lot of eyes on the app, and a good potential audience for making money on Snapchat.
Snapchat is a platform which was built on photo sharing between people and has now grown to including short videos, live video chatting, messaging, and advertising. Snapchat has grown into a massive platform that reaches millions of users daily. You can download Snapchat in pretty much any App Store and it is free to download.
So how do you make money on Snapchat?
1. Become an affiliate marketer
Many people make money on social media platforms like Snapchat by becoming affiliate marketers which means they get paid a certain commission to advertise a product or service to their followers. There are thousands of affiliate partnership opportunities out there like Amazon Associates and ShareASale where you can get paid to promote products on your platform.
Many social media influencers bring in big money just by signing up for programs where they take a cut of the products they advertise.
A lot of affiliate marketers will develop relationships with brand directly, this can happen by reaching out to the different brands to promote your marketing skills (ie the size of your audience, your success rate, etc). You can then promote those company’s products and receive commissions for clicks and/lor sales. This is how a lot of social media influencers make money and can be a great way to make money on Snapchat.
TIP: Make sure you’re picking products that are reputable and if you can, ones you would actually use. Your reputation is everything on social media, and if you begin promoting products with bad reputations, it can hurt your own.
First step: Sign up for a program that offers a wide variety of products/brands for you to choose from and start marketing. Amazon Associates and FlexOffers are a great place to start.
2. Promote and sell your own products
One step above making money off of other people’s products on Snapchat is using it to promote your own! Once you have an established a brand, you can niche that down to a specific expertise and use that to create and sell your own products. Influencers have created books, guides, merchandise, and even started their own business around their brands. Once you have a loyal following that supports your message, they are more inclined to buy the products you are selling. Just make sure you create a quality product.
A great way to draw people in is to provide free content through your Snapchat, i.e. giving tips or bits of information completely free. Then you can reference them to your own products that will ultimately provide more information, but at a cost. If they like the free content enough, they will purchase the additional information. This can be a great way to make money on Snapchat.
First step: Make a list of products you could create and sell. These could include planners, courses, productivity guides, jewelry, etc.
3. Create a geofilter to promote personal or brand awareness
Do you ever swipe over the filters on Snapchat and come across certain one’s advertising movie releases or restaurant openings? Well, you can create your own geofilter to promote your business or product.
A geofilter is a graphic overlay that can be added to your snaps. These geofilters are tied to your location. You can launch a geofilter to promote an event you are associated with or a product launch. Make sure to customize your geofilter using the Snapchat templates to make it unique and interesting to viewers.
Make sure to check back in to view the reports on your geofilters to see how successful they are. You can find this in the Snapchat app under “My Geofilters”.
First step: Determine what you’d like to promote, like an event or product. You can start with basic filters available through Snapchat that you can customize.
4. Use Snap Ads
Using Snap Ads is another easy way to make money on Snapchat. Snap Ads come in many forms including small videos that play in between snaps to shoppable ads that allow the user to click on the add and purchase a product. Another way to incorporate ads is through filters which advertise a brand or product.
You can find more information about using SnapAds here.
First step: Create a call to action that convinces users they need to click on your ad.
Tips for creating a successful ad:
- Have a clear objective
- Figure out your target audience
- Make the ad visually stimulating
- Utilize audio
- Make money through sponsored posts
5. Make money through sponsored posts
Through Snapchat, you can utilize sponsored posts that can promote partnership brands or your own services and products. To remain authentic to your brand, it is suggested you only promote sponsored posts you believe in. Utilize call-to-action buttons to have users follow the ad to a website.
How to build your audience
Engagement is super important when it comes to making money on Snapchat. It’s important to cultivate a consistent brand and engage with not only your own followers but with others in your field.
- Post consistently
- It is important to post every day, multiple times if possible. This will help your followers connect with you on Snapchat as well as bring up opportunities to engage.
- TIP: Post at least 5 times each day. Make sure your content is not repetitive.
- Have a consistent brand image
- Followers will have an easier time relating to you when you post with a consistent image and aesthetic.
- TIP: Use similar filters or colors in the same family to establish an aesthetic that users can associate you with.
- Engage authentically with other influencers
- It’s important to engage with the other brands in your marketplace in order to build your own foot print. Have relationships with others in your field can benefit through guest posts as well as partnerships for brand awareness.
- TIP: Aim to engage with three users in your field each day.
- Use other social media platforms to grow your wealth
- As you build up audiences on other platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram you can invite those followers to add you on Snapchat. This is a good technique to broaden your audience across all platforms. However, it’s important to try and offer different types of content across your apps and then utilize that to start making money on Snapchat.
- Make your Snapchat stories and Snapcode public
- By making your Snapchat public, you are able to cast a wider net and bring in more potential followers that you otherwise wouldn’t have reached. You can make your Snapchat stories public through your profile settings.
Want extra information?
Looking to find out even more information? Check out these books geared at teaching others how to make money on social media platforms:
- Freakishly Effective Social Media for Network Marketing
- Likeable Social Media: How To Delight Your Customers, Create an Irresistible Brand, & Be Generally Amazing On All Social Networks That Matter
Summary on how to make money on Snapchat
Making money through social media platforms like Snapchat can be a very viable way of making money, but it’s going to take active participation each and every day. The most important part of monetizing through Snapchat is building your relationships. Followers equal sales or clicks, so it’s important to create meaningful relationships through original and unique content.