By now, you must have heard a thousand and one thing about social media monetization. However, in this article, we’ll unbox not only traditional approaches, but also crack open the next-level ways to earn money from your social media presence. And how to do it with any size of following or type of social media.
It doesn’t matter if you call it the “incredible” social media monetization strategies or something like I-tried-and-it-actually-worked. What matters is if it tops up your bank account for your everyday needs and true dreams.
So, let’s explore how to leverage social media and make money in 2025.
What is monetizing social media?
Basically, it’s turning your social media followers into income, and it’s done in a totally legit way. No scamming. There are a handful of ways to do this, depending on what you’re selling, which social media platform you use, and the tools it gives you.
There is another delicate point! You need to know your target audience. If you don’t know what makes your online community giggle, cringe, stress or scroll all night long, you’re surfing with your eyes closed over your audience’s interests and pain points.
When you get it right and know exactly what your potential customers want, you can tailor your content, products, or services for them in an awesome way.
So, what is social media monetization? It’s a boundless win-win: when you invest your time and effort, the money starts piling in, and you’re streaming your vibe and doing what you love.
To Contents ↑Why monetize social media?
Social media has billions of people eager to connect on different platforms, and that’s why you can make money and untap your income streams. Of course, in the moment, it might feel like you’re endlessly posting, commenting, looking up metrics, and questioning yourself if it’s worth your time. Let alone, you have to play by the rules of social media platforms, and we’ll come to that in a minute.
All in all, monetizing social media is doable. A fact. If influencers can make millions by showcasing their morning snack, just the same you can turn your captivating posts into profits. All it takes is focus, creativity and curiosity to try new approaches, and a little patience for your social media marketing to work.
So, why to monetize social media? Your AI would probably tell you: “Because you can!” and add a few points beyond earning extra income:
- Transform your passion into profit,
- Get limitless possibilities,
- Get flexible and scalable,
- Acquire global reach,
- Raise brand awareness,
- Harness passive income,
- Grow credibility.
Sounds true to life, doesn’t it?
What we can add is real-life experiences, facts, and numbers from our successful creators and their social media audience. You can find many real-life stories of our publishers and bloggers as social proof with mutually beneficial collaboration with Adsterra.
Just like that, our aspiring content creator and a Partner, Sohan Siddiqui delves into his journey of earning $1000 a month using Adsterra’s Direct Link Monetization system and social media presence. It’s an authentic, power-packed case-study with Smartlink (Direct Link) monetization strategies, diagram metrics, and steps to achieve the first financial milestone.
To Contents ↑Expert tip
“Your social media channel is a warm audience plus employ extra ways. While Facebook has played a significant role in my monetization journey, I’m a firm believer in diversifying my traffic sources to maximize my earning potential. In addition to Facebook, I harness the power of platforms like Telegram to expand my reach and connect with a wider audience. Use the social media channels you are on to engage with customers”.
Social media monetization requirements
Monetizing social media the traditional way often requires a large, dedicated audience, genuine engagement, and strategic partnerships with brands or businesses.
In addition to that, understanding platform policies is way too impactful for your monetization strategy to miss out. Each social media platform has rules and guidelines for presence and ad revenue. Please remember to keep them close to heart to escape any predicaments.
Instagram eligibility requirements
There are a few media monetization rules to obey with your Instagram account when you employ in-app features, like subscriptions, reel ads, badges, IG shops, brand partnerships, affiliate marketing, etc. To meet the requirements for social media monetization, you have to be 18+ years old and adhere to overall IG policies and community standards.
Instagram shop. If you want to sell physical products, say, as merch directly from this social media channel, you need to get a pro (professional) account, qualify with an eligible market, and focus on meeting all the policies.
Reels. You can get paid for ads in your reels too, provided great performance of your social media following. You are required to possess a professional account, meet monetization policies, reside in the US, and receive an invite to post ads.
Instagram subscriptions rules. Followers pay a moderate monthly fee for your bonus content. For that, you need to maintain a pro-social media account with 10K+ followers, reside in the eligible country, qualify with all Instagram’s mandated guidelines, and motivate authentic engagement without bots or any other forbidden methods. If you are in the eligible zone, you’ll be able to set up the subscription in your settings.
Badges. For that, you need to open a pro social media account and have 10K+ followers. They can buy badges during your live videos to show their support. Creators earn the whole amount of this revenue from their Instagram accounts.
Affiliate marketing and partnerships for brand collaborations. If it’s getting hard or impossible to qualify, you can just monetize your social media account through affiliate links, brand deals, and influencer marketing, whether you are starting out or an experienced creator.
To Contents ↑YouTube monetization rules
To apply monetization for this social media and earn money from YouTube ads, you need to obtain a thousand followers. Plus, you require 4,000 hours of watch time. Alternatively, it can be 1 million Shorts views in 3 months. You can harness affiliate marketing and sponsorships without social media subscriber requirements.
Facebook group monetization rules
In order to get income from a group, you require to follow Meta guidelines, have an established social media presence, and reside in the eligible market. In this case, you can earn by charging fees for subscriptions or promoting one of the multiple affiliate programs.
To know more on how to monetize Facebook page, check out our guide on proven and little-known tactics.
TikTok monetization requirements
TikTok’s creator program has its own qualification requirements for TikTok creator fund video content, 10K+ followers, 100K+ video views in the last 30 days. The good news is you don’t require to meet the creator program requirements to benefit from affiliate marketing.
How to monetize social media accounts?
Let’s shake up our social channels and brush up on how you can monetize social media audiences in the traditional ways. Then, we move on to the next level of income accelerators on how to monetize your social media.
To Contents ↑1. Online courses
Selling courses can be an incredible way to make money with social media education and find your path as a teacher and guru. Coaching and online courses are emotionally rewarding activities as well as a viable business. You can teach your online community and share expertise within online courses.
Your online regular workshops or courses can cover what you are passionate about, something your local market lacks, or tap into a trend that is on and get the most out of it. For example, you can begin by selling courses to a closed, private community within your following and provide more practical experiences. Apply tools of your particular social media, like memberships or subscriptions.
To Contents ↑2. Premium content creation
Start monetizing social media with downloadable content or premium content. Ideas will usually come to you when you acquire a deep understanding of the audience’s interests to provide them with more value. Say you teach your community members some new skill or a foreign language. You can offer new content for a fee as gated content by introducing home tasks that you can check and give recommendations to.
3. Sponsored posts
Moving forward to collaborations with brands, you can write sponsored posts and provide sponsored content to promote products for other businesses. This is a great monetization incentive to adopt to your social media strategies. We’ll explain the golden rule you should stick to in order not to be to saley in a few paragraphs below.
Brand partnerships and brand collaborations usually require a media kit, which is a form of a digital document with details of your audience size, demographics, engagement, etc. With such metrics fitting to promote a particular brand, you can raise your creator economy substantially.
To Contents ↑4. Sell physical products and digitals
Let’s continue with another traditional way of monetizing: with a social media shop and online stores. For example, you can sell products to your target audience with Facebook shops.
You can go for merch or any other physical products. Alternatively, engage yourself with selling digital products, like e-books, printable products, digital templates and tools, planners and templates, graphics design, stock photography, memberships, and selling digital products of other kinds.
5. Social media influencer marketing
It usually implies that you are a well-known blogger with a great social media following and influence. If you are on your way to being a social media influencer, you can also collaborate with prominent bloggers with the same audience specifics but non-competing businesses. Build better engagement and grow your audience with influencers via exchanging posts in order to grow and monetize your social media.
6. Live events
Full-time creators implement posting content on a regular basis. However, producing engaging content is not yet a bingo. What they also do for authentic engagement is host events. Streaming sports matches and interviewing guests is another way to go. Live video content in the creator economy is also a profitable part.
7. Affiliate programs
As a social media blogger, you can monetize your content by joining relevant affiliate programs and naturally incorporating affiliate links into posts, reviews, or tutorials. Promote your affiliate links across the best social media platforms, using engaging visuals and clear calls to action.
8. Referral programs
Very similar to affiliate programs, it gives you freedom to maintain your activities and attract customers. We enclosed the in-depth knowledge base for best referral programs.
3 Next-level ways to monetize social media
Now, let’s speed up a bit and roll out the next-level monetization ways for your social media whatever it may be, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, etc. Generally, the more your social media audience, the more your earnings. However, these ways have no restrictions for your audience size to start generating income with any platform.
1. Direct Link
We believe the real monetization accelerator for social media can be Adsterra Smartlink. Also known as Direct Link it allows you to monetize traffic quickly and easily for social media accounts. It is a URL that directs your followers to a page filled with high-paying ads. You can place this Direct Link wherever it fits best.
To Contents ↑How to start monetizing your social media followings?
A. Sign in with Adsterra. Go through quick moderation.
B. Create Direct Link
- Click the green button ADD DIRECT LINK for direct access.
- Set your category and, if needed, remove unwanted adverts in the analytics dashboard.
C. .Copy and add your Direct Link
Paste it anywhere on a social media post or website. It works great with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (X), Telegram, and more. Here, it might be a good idea to use a link shortener tool. It creates a short URL for you to put on anywhere on to your account and helps for better and longer performance.
D. Monitor and adjust
- By clicking EDIT, you can easily change the link name or turn off the link ads that you don’t want to display.
- Monitor statistics data, tweak and enhance your settings.
How does it work?
Adsterra’s algorithms help to pick up ads at a given time with more chances of conversion success. It favorably links your social media audience to the advertiser’s landing page or website. To monetize:
- Scenario 1. You can place your Direct Link to your social media channel.
- Scenario 2. Alternatively, you can create a simple, one-page website and attach your Smartlink (Direct Link). You can drive your audience to your simple website where followers convert with it. It doesn’t take much effort to make a simple website or a landing page, and you usually don’t pay to create and launch a website with web hosting.
For example, Abdu Abubakar, our Partner and an X (Twitter) and Facebook blogger, shared his case study on monetizing social media with Smartlink (Direct Link). He started blogging in 2018, but succeeded in 2022 after he partnered with Adsterra and changed his monetization path with social media accounts.
To Contents ↑Expert tip
“It has been two years since I started using Adsterra, and no month has passed in between these years that I haven’t earned a stable $100 even before I learned about Direct Link. In the write up I will share my tips on how I achieved $1000+ per Month via Social Traffic Facebook.”
2. Popunder
Another way to make money from your social media audience is via Popunder. All you need is to drive your traffic to your simple landing page or one-page website. For example, you can create a curious post on your Instagram or Facebook and invite your followers to get perks on your landing page: an e-book, white paper, or value-packed checklist, you name it.
When visitors come to your landing page, they also see the adverts and you receive a money payout from Adsterra.
To place an advertisement code on your web page and start earning with Pounder is pretty simple. The minor tweaks you need to take depend on the particular content management system (CMS) you use to create and manage your site. If you want to add Popunder codes, the general way is:
- Sign up with Adsterra with quick moderation.
- Get an Adsterra Popunder code.
- Place the code on your site.
- Post an appealing piece on your media and invite your followers to your website for an e-guide, white paper, or other valuable content.
- Direct your social media to your simple website.
You can become Adsterra’s Publisher anytime. Go through quick registration to see how it works.
To Contents ↑3. Social Bar
Now, this is very important!
To face the phenomenon of ad fatigue among users, Adsterra has recently developed the Social Bar ad format. It is programmed to show a rotation of different ads, ensuring that each user sees a variety of relevant advertising offers. The “Social” element in Social Bar is key: the ads can appear as notifications, dynamic icons, chats, or stories, driving many clicks.
You can ask: so what?
That means it appears on websites as a notification bar or widget, drawing attention to the content without being overly intrusive. Social Bar can display various types of content, including promotional ads, icons, or custom lead forms. This format works seamlessly on desktop and mobile devices, and is in sync with all major web browsers and operating systems. It’s an effective way to engage users and a great monetization strategy for social media.
Please take these steps to use Social Bar:
- Register with Adsterra quickly and easily.
- Get the Social Bar code from Adsterra.
- Place the code on your site or landing page.
- Drive traffic from your social media to your site.
Ultra COMBOs
Another hack you should have up your sleeve to grow your ad revenue is to learn how to match various ad formats. We’ll dive into it a bit more.
To approach the ad format COMBO question in the most effective way, always focus on your user experience (UX). You don’t want to irritate your visitors. You want them to enjoy their journey. Here is what you can mix to accelerate your better monetization efforts and avoid consistently progressing ad fatigue among users all over the world:
- Popunder + Social Bar (especially for iGaming).
- Popunder + Native Banner.
- Try to avoid Display Banner + Native Banner (unless tested and showed great results with your particular social media traffic.
The great thing with Adsterra is that you can contact your Partner Care support team anytime from your publisher’s account and get expert advice via live chat on ad formats, technicalities, and anything you happen to get stuck on your way to monetization with social media.
Content tip for successful monetization
Monetization methods vary from one centralized platform to another. Your focus will pivot around a few standard things. However, let’s look into the most practical tip you can rely on.
Whether you offer exclusive content or paid memberships, make sure that you avoid regular salesy content not to crack deep connection with your audience.
Here, you need to have a delicate balance — you monetize with thought, nurturing your social media followers. The 30-60-10 golden rule of social media content monetization hints us to create content in this ratio:
- 60%+30% of your high-quality content should be devoted to educational and entertaining purposes for your target audience, including created by yourself or curated by other authors and reposted from helpful, prominent resources.
- 10% should be in the form of sales posts, sponsored content to promote products, new releases of products, brand partnerships, and affiliate program links with calls to actions.
Final words
Thank you, you made it to the end! Now, you can apply your valuable insights regarding not only the traditional ways you monetize your social media but also the new-level income accelerators: Direct Link, Popunder, and Social Bar and a simple one-page site. If you need more direction, please feel free to use our guide on how to monetize social media traffic.
Every time, you kick-start monetizing social media as your new undertaking, always make sure you learn all the policies to comply. This way, you safely leverage social media as a powerful sales tool for your big or small business.
Social media monetization FAQ
First of all, explore social media sites. Is that the right social media following for your content niche? If so, use what your social media site, aka platform, has to offer in the way of monetization social media tools. Create posts and build engagement, add sponsored posts, and sell physical or digital products, online courses, and membership for your private community. Grow your online business.
Every platform has its own rules for the number of followers for monetizing social media: a thousand followers for YouTube, 10,000+ followers for TikTok, and 10K+ followers to monetize Instagram subscriptions.
At the same time, you can start affiliate marketing and make money with social media, no matter how many followers you have.
The best social platform to make money is the one that will successfully match your target audience with the content you offer. For example, try and access the Facebook page and use the social platform tools like Facebook Shops, as this platform has the broadest general reach in the world.
For starters, create exclusive content for your social media following and capture their attention. Use a mixture of the traditional and next-level income accelerators we discussed in this article, including Direct Link, Popunder, Social Bar, and its high-converting paid ads with Combos. And just like that, you have an untapped new income stream.
With social media monetization, it isn’t just about making extra cash, it’s about transforming your personal, creative side into a legitimate business in a fantastic way.
