In 2025, the profiting potential from a solid social media presence is undeniable. More than ever, we’re witnessing how content creators and influencers have become some of the most sought-after professionals. E-commerce entrepreneurs aren’t left behind.
If you’re looking for opportunities to make money from your social media presence, you’re in the right place! We’ll talk about some techniques that offer profit potential on the leading social media platforms, such as Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and X.
There’s a world of opportunities for your business here in the digital world, and we’ll help you recognize and tackle them with real-life examples and actionable tips.
So, to know where to start, we first have to define the public that we’re aiming to connect with. Let’s get into it!
1. Define your target niche and audience
Learning how to make money on social media begins with knowing who your customers are. Before you start investing your time and resources into any strategy, it’s vital to identify the niche you’re selling to. The proper research will make a difference in how the public reacts to your posts, ads, and campaigns overall.
- Try short-form & vertical content on TikTok for the Gen Z crowd when you’re appealing to the younger generations.
- If your main public is millennial designers, then you may be better off targeting Instagram instead of TikTok.
- If your base audience is Gen X, building a strategy around Facebook will improve your chances of success.
- Gen Z frequently turns to YouTube as a primary source of information and learning. For this reason, many content creators and video marketing agencies target them through educational and how-to videos.
Beyond learning who they are and which social media platforms they use the most, find out how they behave online. This means understanding what kind of content they like to see: videos, images, long-form articles, shorter copy, or else.
Finally, you should know their needs and how your services can help them fulfill them.
To get deeper insights into each of these matters, there are some tips you can take into account:
- Use Google Trends to explore the different topics people are talking about in any given region, the relevant keywords for your posts, your audience’s interests, and your main competitors.
- Observe what type of content is doing well across different social media platforms. For example, Statista data shows that the most engaging posts on Instagram were Reels at 6.92% in 2024–up from 4.5% in 2023. However, according to Socialinsider, the top-engaging posts on Facebook are photo albums.
- Test your niche by experimenting with different types of content. Once you understand the platform that your niche is mainly based on, watch out for the kind of posts that they engage with the most. There are tools like Instagram and Facebook insights, TikTok Analytics, and YouTube Studio that can help you get that data on each platform.
- Last but not least, focus on a single niche – “Jack of all trades, master of none.” This doesn’t mean, whatsoever, that you can’t or shouldn’t wear many hats or try different things. However, committing your resources to a focused approach can help you get deeper and more meaningful insights.
2. Build a loyal community
Building a loyal customer and follower base is one of the most reliable ways to ensure consistent revenue on social media. The reason is that loyal customers are more likely to come back and buy, leave reviews, recommend your business to the people they know, and subscribe to any promotion or service you may offer.
A loyal community means that, rather than one-time customers, you get ongoing revenue from happy clients who love and trust your business. Also, they’re more likely to engage frequently with the content you post, helping you perform better through the algorithms of the social media platforms you’re on. More likes and comments will translate into your brand showing up more often on the screens of new potential clients.
Not to mention that such a loyal community provides consistency and stability to your business. Those who love and trust your brand will keep buying through the highs and lows of the market, so you have better odds of surviving the fluctuations of the industry than those without customer loyalty.
But how can you build such a community? You can try a system in which your clients earn points and rewards for making a certain number of purchases or for interacting with your brand for a certain period.
Hosting livestreams is another effective way to engage your community in real-time, answer their questions, and create a sense of connection.
You can also provide them with a platform that allows them to ask questions to one another, talk about what they like about your brand, and start conversations surrounding industry-related topics. Let’s dive deeper into this approach.
Give your community its own dedicated space
Take your customers’ engagement to the next level by allowing your online community to bond and discuss everything related to your brand in their own space.
There are different types of online communities that you can choose from. Take a look at some options, and feel free to try the one that resonates the most with your business:
- Event communities
- Learning communities
- Content communities
- Online forums
- Online brand communities
Go ahead and choose the hosting platform that best fits your audience. As we talked about in the previous section, each target niche and audience has its own preferred social media site.
Setting up the ideal social media for a business is no rocket science. If you have more followers on Facebook, try creating a dedicated Facebook group. If your company is more active on X, the X Communities may be the perfect option for you.
Learning how to make money on social media is, in essence, learning how to understand and take care of your brand’s community.
3. Prove your expertise and authority
There’s nothing wrong with bragging a little bit about the strengths of your business. Talk about what your company is good at and show off the way you’ve helped clients before. There are a couple of ways in which you can do this:
- Share your certifications, achievements, and any other proof of your expertise in the industry. You can do this on your website, through LinkedIn, or by placing badges on your social media banners: X, Facebook, and LinkedIn offer this feature.
- Ask your customers for reviews, and share the best ones on your website’s homepage, in occasional social media posts, and even as video testimonials shared by the clients themselves.
You can also let others do the talking. Partnering with brands that align with your objectives and values can be a great move in terms of authority. According to Forbes’ internal data, there are brands that are reaping over 28% of their total revenue through partnerships, and long-term commitment to the partnership economy has led some companies to a year-on-year revenue channel growth of over 50%.
Look at the outdoor gear brand Cotopaxi. It has found great success by expanding its online presence thanks to carefully chosen brand ambassadors. They range from content creators and influencers to even celebrities who use their favorite Cotopaxi gear on their expeditions. What could be a better review than a professional outdoor explorer using their products from one adventure to the next?
Another thing about partnerships is that they benefit both sides. Cotopaxi’s partners gain credibility too (and, most likely, followers) by collaborating with an established brand that has an excellent sustainability reputation.
Eventually, proving you have an established, reliable business can result in greater income. It’s a key aspect where you can stand out from your competitors since there will be potential clients that’ll choose you because of those reasons.
4. Try affiliate marketing and ads
In short, affiliate marketing works like this: a business pays a commission to an affiliated partner (an influencer, content creator, website, or brand) for the visits or sales they bring to its company.
Many online businesses earn commissions by promoting products and services of other brands they know and trust. If you choose to give affiliate marketing a shot, take two things into consideration:
- Make sure your business is a good candidate for this marketing approach—research whether other competitors have tried it and have had success.
- You have to be convinced that what you’re promoting is worth it so you don’t lose the trust of your valuable followers. Likewise, if another brand or creator wants to promote your products and services, make sure they’re trustworthy and can attract the kind of customers you’re after.
Now, how does affiliate marketing work on social media platforms such as YouTube or TikTok?
If you’re into, say, TikTok beauty tutorials, you’ll often see your favorite makeup influencers invite you to buy the products they’re using through a link on their profile. This is an affiliate link, and if you complete a purchase through it, they’ll receive a commission.
It’s also common to see this practice with photography YouTubers who talk about the newest gear for your camera and provide you with links where you can buy every item.
The brands behind the affiliate programs often offer promotions, like discounts on first purchases, to encourage users to buy through the affiliate link.
5. Monetize your content with subscriptions
If you’re one step ahead and have a strong base of clients following you on social media, try offering them a paid subscription in exchange for exclusive content such as giveaways, coupons, discounts, limited-time offers, online courses, webinars, and more.
Platforms like Instagram and YouTube have options for creators to charge a fee for these subscriptions. It’s easy for your followers to join. With this option, they don’t have to go to an external site in order to enjoy these benefits.
Take the SciShow YouTube channel as an example. They’re dedicated to sharing science-related topics in an entertaining and compelling way. For free, you can subscribe to their channel and watch all the videos that are available at no cost.
However, by joining one of the three paid membership tiers, you can access various perks, such as loyalty badges, custom emojis for comments and live chat, a quick questions inbox, a behind-the-scenes photo, access to an exclusive members-only podcast, and more.
If you do consider that an external site will improve your customers’ experience, there are platforms like Patreon and Medium where they can access content in different formats and have a more in-depth experience of your brand.
Following the same line of video creators, Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell does not offer a membership within its YouTube channel but does so through Patreon. Their followers can access a long list of benefits—the pricier the membership, the longer the list.
Now you know how to make money on social media!
These are the tips and techniques that you can’t miss if you want to start earning money from your social media presence.
Once you discover who your target audience is and how they like to move online, take care of them and keep them close by building a loyal community and offering them convenient perks. Stand out from the crowd by sharing and proving your expertise and authority, and reach more potential customers with a smart affiliate marketing program.
It all comes down to meeting the needs and preferences of your beloved customers. Use strategies that make sense to your business and that you’re comfortable with. That’s the best starting point for building a brand and learning how to earn money on social media.