Instagram Subscriptions are a great way to nudge your followers deeper into your sales funnel.
And therefore, closer to becoming a customer- while making some extra cash on the side.
So if you don’t fully know what Subscriptions are or how to use it to your advantage, you will by the end of this post.
What Are Instagram Subscriptions?
“Instagram Subscriptions allow you to monetize by offering exclusive content and benefits to your most engaged followers at a monthly fee.
Your followers can subscribe through an in-app purchase on their mobile device, and you can manage your subscriptions in the Instagram App.”
So this is an account that we think uses Instagram Subscriptions beautifully. The username is curlvision and it’s a hair stylist that specializes in curly hair.
You can see any accounts’ subscriptions here under the crown if you’re subscribed, if not it’ll look like this.
This account’s reels consist of consultations of what they talk about with curly-haired clients when they come in, the process of how they’re going to achieve their hair goals, etc.
But, if you want to know the exact products they’re using or a step-by-step process of what they do to the hair, you have to subscribe and pay a $5 monthly fee.
So basically, Subscriptions allow you to draw people in with your public reels, and then gatekeep the REALLY good value for a fee that they can pay for.
“With Subscriptions, you can create exclusive Instagram content and offer benefits with:
Subscriber Lives, Subscriber stories, Subscriber badges, Subscriber posts, Subscriber reels, Subscriber social channels and Subscriber broadcast channels.”
So another good thing to note is that you can basically gatekeep any type of Instagram post.
If you get the most engagement with your Instagram Stories?
Then make some of them subscriber-accessible only! Here are some more tips on how to create engaging Instagram Stories.
If you get tons of people watching your Lives? Make the juiciest lives available for subscribers only! Check out these live streaming tricks you can try.
Your followers who are not subscribers will see that you have subscriber-only content available either in their stories or in their feeds.
And if you’ve provided enough value to date to make them curious, then they should want to subscribe to see it.
“Once you enable Subscriptions, your followers will see a notification in their activity feed and on your profile so they can subscribe to you.
We’ll feature your Subscription under the Subscriptions tab in the Followers and Following page. If they tap See all, additional Subscriptions are recommended to them.
You’ll be able to identify your subscribers with a subscriber badge, which will appear in comments and in your primary and requests folders.
Followers who are not subscribed can also see a subscriber’s badge when they comment on your feed posts. If they click on the badge, they’ll be prompted to subscribe.
Subscriber stories appear before regular stories for followers with an active Subscription.
Subscriber posts will be boosted in personalized feeds, but may not always appear before regular posts.
For example, all feed posts, including subscriber posts, in the Following and Favorites feed will appear in chronological order.”
So hopefully, that helps paint a picture of how you can start organically gaining subscribers and what things will look like on their end.
Some Things To Know Before You Get Started
“Subscriptions are available to creators who meet the eligibility criteria.
Creators must have 10,000 followers, be at least 18 years old, be located in the US, meet Meta’s Partner Monetization Policies.
And remain compliant with Instagram Community Standards and Content Monetization Policies.
Although you can continue to use music from our music library in non-subscription content, that music is generally not available for subscriber-only content.
For subscriber-only content, you can only use music from Meta’s Sound Collection or music that you own and are specifically authorized to use.
And lastly, Facebook Subscriptions are separate from Instagram Subscriptions, and are currently available on Creator Studio.”
So comment below if you’d like to see a future post on Facebook Subscriptions! And if you want to learn more about how to use Facebook Creator Studio, read this post next.
How To Set Up Your Instagram Subscription & How Payouts Work
“If you see Subscriptions appear in the professional dashboard, you can enable Subscriptions.
So you’ll click into your professional dashboard, click monetization, and then if you’re eligible you’ll be able to follow the prompts to set up subscriptions from there.
And YOU get to set up your monthly price.
Note that if you change your monthly price, it will only apply to new subscribers and existing subscribers will continue to pay the existing subscription fee.
In the professional dashboard, you can manage your list of subscribers and edit your payout account, and you can review earnings and invoices in the professional dashboard as well.
Instagram’s revenue share is currently at 0%. Google and Apple collect 30% in fees for in-app purchases.”
Once you set up your Subscriptions, “Your followers will automatically be notified in 3 days in their activity feed and will also see a Subscribe button on your profile.
If you don’t want to wait 3 days to notify your followers, you can tap Notify now.”
You can encourage more people to subscribe by tapping “See the next steps” on your profile to learn how you can promote your Subscription and create exclusive content.
Now we want to wrap up with best practices for subscriptions.
But first, let us mention really quickly that if you’d rather have a professional Instagram marketing agency just handle all of your social media marketing for you…
…so that you don’t have to worry about any of this stuff and you can focus on what you do best, we do that for small businesses every day!
So if you want a free, custom marketing proposal and quote, fill out our contact form today.
Best Practices For Instagram Subscriptions
In week 1 after setting up your Subscriptions, you want to:
Publish a promo video for followers to build excitement and prompt followers to subscribe.
Create a content preview to show followers the kind of exclusive content they get to see if they subscribe.
A Subscription Preview lets you make some of your exclusive, subscription-only content visible to everyone who visits your profile.
That way they can get a taste to see what they’re missing.
Create a welcome video for people who DO subscribe to thank them and share an overview of what they can expect.
And then create a content plan to set expectations with yourself and your subscribers and to test and learn what’s working.
After week 1, here are some best practices you can follow to continuously encourage more subscribers:
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Use subscriber chats.
Start a broadcast channel as a megaphone to share updates and social chat as a discussion forum to build community with subscribers.
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Engage with subscribers in messages and comments.
Use Subscribers badges to identify and prioritize responding to top supporters.
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Consistently survey your subscribers.
Use Q&A and poll stickers in Stories and Subscriber Chat to share content subscribers want to see.
You can also use the Subscription sticker in your story to promote your Subscription to your followers there too.
If after all this you’re still not seeing subscribers come in, here are a couple of other steps you can take:
You can encourage people to subscribe faster by offering a discount.
Or, you can reevaluate the public content you’re making. Are you giving away too much for free? Leaving little reason for people to subscribe?
OR are you making content they’re not really interested in? Giving them little value and therefore little reason to subscribe?
Asking yourself these questions will help you get to the bottom of figuring out why you’re not getting subscribers.
Once you do start getting subscribers, you can create subscriber-only content that not only brings in a little extra revenue…
…but also deepens the relationship with your followers, propelling them to take the next step in your sales funnel.
