How many followers do you need to earn money on Instagram?
Brand deals may call for a sizeable audience. Selling your own offer changes the calculation. Here are examples for different products and services.
Every so often, a business owner asks me how many Instagram followers they need before their account can earn money. They usually have a few hundred and sound resigned, as though the real work starts beyond some invisible line.
I understand the question. Most articles on the subject are about influencers paid by brands, where audience size does matter. Selling your own offer is a different calculation. I will compare what a small account might earn from a brand with what it could earn from its own product, then show you what to measure and how to start selling with fewer than a thousand followers.
The short answer
For paid collaborations with brands, you want to have around a thousand followers, with an audience that responds. You rarely get a proposal below that.
You don’t need that thousand for your own offer. A hundred people who trust you is enough to sell your first product. I have seen entrepreneurs with four hundred followers sell and entrepreneurs with twenty thousand followers complain that Instagram produces nothing. The difference was in the same place for both: what was behind their link.
What a brand pays for a small account
Shopify puts a price list per follower category on its blog about making money with Instagram. On September 22, 2026 it said that you can start with a thousand engaged followers and that an account with a thousand to ten thousand followers will receive between € 10 and € 100 per message. With ten thousand to one hundred thousand followers, this increases to € 100 to € 500 per message.
Write next to the amount of work that such a message costs. You consult with a brand, make the recording, submit, process comments and post it. For €40 you can spend half a day and then it’s gone. The following month it starts again from zero.
If you have your own offer, brand deals can be a detour: you send your audience to someone else’s product instead of showing them yours.
What your own offer yields with the same account
Get an account with nine hundred followers. A good reel gets two thousand views there. Of those two thousand, sixty tap your name and of those sixty, twenty-five open the link in your bio. These are realistic proportions for a small account that posts regularly.
If you sell a workbook for €29 behind that link and one in eight visitors buys, that is three orders and €87 revenue from one reel. If you post four per month, you will receive around €350 per month with nine hundred followers.
On the free Findori Links package, Findori withholds 5% of that revenue, so € 4.35 of that € 87. Mollie also charges its own transaction costs. If you go to Growth of € 10 per month, the percentage on digital products is 0% and you keep the entire € 87.
The number I keep instead
Follower count alone says little about revenue. Someone who never sees your work is unlikely to buy. I look at three numbers instead: visitors to your link page, the people who sign up or buy and the revenue those actions bring in.
That sequence tells you where to work. If you get few visitors to your page, it is in your content and your bio. If visitors come and no one buys, then it is in your page or your offer. Without those numbers, you’re guessing and usually making the wrong adjustment.
In Findori Links you can see the entire process per post and per campaign link, from display to revenue. That’s exactly why I built it this way: you no longer have to guess which reel brought you customers. More about that below statistics and optimization.
How many followers do you need per type of offer
The lower limit varies per thing you sell. Below are the four forms that I see working most often among entrepreneurs, with the number where it starts to become worthwhile.
A free giveaway: from the first follower
You can put a checklist, worksheet or short guide online today and ask for an email address in return. At twenty-five visitors and eight sign-ups per reel, a weekly reel could bring roughly a hundred subscribers in three months. That is an audience you can reach again. Here is how to set it up leads and newsletters.
A digital product from €19 to €39: from about 300 followers
A template, a preset pack, an e-book, a recording of a workshop. The price is low enough that someone doesn’t think twice and it won’t cost you any time after the first time. With three hundred followers you will get a few orders per month and you will immediately know whether your topic is popular. See digital products for how sales and delivery work.
An online course from €97 to €297: from approximately 100 email addresses
For a course, your list counts more than your number of followers. One hundred people who have downloaded your free giveaway and open your emails is a better starting point than five thousand followers who saw you pass by once. If you sell a course for €97 four times to those hundred addresses, that is €388 from a group you already had. On Growth, Findori withholds 7.5% of this, so € 29.10. On Course Pro that is 0%. How to build such a course is explained below online courses.
Your own service: from about 50 followers
If you work directly with customers, you may need less reach. One coaching programme worth € 750 can earn more than many sponsored posts. Put a booking or enquiry form at the top of your page so someone can contact you in two taps.
What you need before your numbers are worth anything
For all four forms, the outcome is in the same place: the link in your bio. That link is the only clickable point in your entire profile and everything you do on Instagram comes from there. If there is a homepage behind it, most of your visitors will disappear into a menu.
What you need is one link page that reflects the promise in your latest post and lets people take the next step on the page itself. They can sign up, pay with iDEAL or start a course without being sent through several pages.
That’s why I built Findori Links. The link page, the form with confirmation email, the digital product with payment via Mollie and the course with learning environment are in one account, in euros including VAT. You start for free with one page, one form and one product.
In what order you tackle this
- Create your link page and put what your bio promises at the top.
- Set up a free giveaway with an entry form and start your list.
- Add a digital product from €19 to €39 and see if your topic sells.
- Refer to that one link in every reel and story, every week.
- After a month, look at visitors, sign-ups and revenue per post and make more of what yields.
- If you have a hundred addresses, build your course.
The first three steps will take you an afternoon and work just as well with three hundred followers as with thirty thousand. Create your link page for free and place your first offer today.
Frequently asked questions
How many followers do you need to get paid by Instagram itself?
Instagram does not pay per view in the Netherlands like YouTube does. What there is are programs that vary by country and account and that come and go. Don’t count on it. The entrepreneurs I know make their money with their own offer and use Instagram to send people there.
Can I sell something with 500 followers?
Yes. With five hundred followers, you will get a few hundred views with a reel, and there will be dozens of people who open your profile. Place a product costing €19 to €39 behind your link and your first order will come sooner than you think. More about this can be found here Sell digital products via Instagram.
Is the number of followers completely unimportant?
No, more people means more visitors to your page and therefore more orders at the same percentage. Growth helps you. It’s only the last button I would turn, because a page that sells better already earns you more today and growing takes months.
How many followers do I need for a paid collaboration?
About a thousand, with an audience that responds. Brands look at your responses and your topic, because a small account in a clear niche is more interesting to them than a large account without direction. What such collaborations yield is stated above.
How much does it cost to get started?
Nothing. The Findori Links free plan gives you one link page, one form, and one digital product, with a 5% Findori fee per sale. If you want 0% on your products and your own domain, Growth is € 10 per month or € 72 per year. Explore the plans. Also read make money with Instagram for the ways in a row.