Straight answer: yes, but engagement itself is not what you get paid for, it is the proof brands ask for before they pay you for something else, usually reach, sales, or content they can reuse. A creator with 8,000 followers and strong comments can earn more than one with 80,000 followers and dead comments, but only if they know how to price and pitch it. I have watched both happen with real clients, and the difference was never the like count.
Small following, real income is possible. See making money on Instagram with 1k followers.
Curious what the numbers look like? Here is what Instagram pays per million views.
What people mean when they ask this
When someone types “can you make money from Instagram engagement” into Google, they usually mean one of three things: can I get paid directly for likes and comments, can I turn a decent engagement rate into brand deals, or can I make a living posting on Instagram full stop. The honest split is this: nobody pays you a fee per like anymore. Instagram’s old Reels Play bonus programme, which paid creators a lump sum based on views, was pulled from the US market back in 2023 and was never rolled out widely in the UK or Israel to begin with. What is left is a mix of brand sponsorships, affiliate commission, Instagram Subscriptions, and shoppable tags. Every one of those routes uses your engagement rate as evidence, not as the payment itself.
A real example, with real numbers
I worked with a fitness coach based in Tel Aviv a few years back. She had 41,000 followers and an engagement rate sitting around 6%, which is good for that niche. A supplement brand offered her 150 pounds for a single Reel. Around the same time, a friend of hers with 9,000 followers and a much smaller, tighter audience got offered the same fee from a different, smaller wellness brand. Same money, ten times fewer followers. The difference was not the engagement rate on paper, it was that the smaller account’s audience was almost entirely local Tel Aviv women in the exact age bracket the brand wanted, and she had sent over a one page media kit with screenshots of her Reels reach, her story poll results, and three lines about her audience demographics. The bigger account sent a follower count and nothing else.
That is the part most people skip. Brands are not scrolling your grid counting hearts. They are looking for proof their money will reach the right eyeballs, and the creators who hand them that proof in a clean, specific way get paid faster and more consistently than the ones relying on a big number to speak for itself.
The three actual ways engagement turns into money
- Brand sponsorships: the most common route. Rates for nano creators, 1,000 to 10,000 followers, tend to run 20 to 150 pounds per post in the UK. Micro creators, 10,000 to 50,000, sit around 100 to 400 pounds per post depending on niche, with finance, beauty, and parenting paying at the top of that range. A rough starting formula agencies use is followers divided by 1,000, multiplied by 10 in dollars, then adjusted up or down for engagement rate and niche demand.
- Affiliate and commission links: using the LTK app, Amazon Associates, or a brand’s own affiliate programme, where you earn a cut of sales, usually 5% to 20%, tracked through your specific link or code. This rewards conversion, not engagement, which is why a quieter but more trusted account can out-earn a louder one here.
- Instagram Subscriptions and Badges: fans pay a monthly fee or tip during Lives for extra access. This only works once you already have a engaged, warm community, because you are asking people to pay on top of following you for free, and most audiences under about 15,000 real, warm followers will not sustain it.
The part other posts on this topic tend to skip over
Here is the uncomfortable bit. High engagement does not automatically mean money, and plenty of brands do not check engagement rate at all before paying. They check follower count first because it is the easiest number to quote in a budget meeting, and they check whether the account looks professional and safe to be seen next to. I have sat in on brand briefing calls where the marketing manager asked for “someone with 50k plus” and never once mentioned engagement rate. This means an account that has quietly bought followers, or one whose numbers are inflated through engagement pods, can still get booked and paid on the first deal, purely on the follower count. The catch is it rarely survives past that first deal. Brands that run proper affiliate tracking or ask for screenshots of Insights see through it fast, and word travels between marketing teams in a niche faster than creators expect. So the strategy of chasing vanity numbers over real, responsive followers works exactly once, then quietly stops working, and by then you have spent months building the wrong thing.
How much can you realistically earn
Based on rates I have seen quoted to UK and Israeli creators over the past two years:
- Under 5,000 followers with strong niche engagement: 20 to 80 pounds per sponsored post, or 50 to 200 pounds a month combining two small brand deals with affiliate commission.
- 5,000 to 20,000 followers: 80 to 250 pounds per post, often 300 to 600 pounds a month once you add affiliate links and the occasional Story-only paid mention, which typically runs half the price of a feed post or Reel.
- 20,000 to 100,000 followers: 200 to 800 pounds per post, with creators who post consistently and pitch actively landing 1,000 to 2,500 pounds a month across multiple brands.
- Above 100,000 with a clear niche: this is where full time income starts, often 3,000 pounds a month upward, but it is a small fraction of accounts that ever get here, and most of that income comes from repeat brand relationships, not one off posts.
Notice engagement rate is not a column in that list. It is the thing you show as evidence at each of those tiers, it is not the tier itself.
Step by step: turning engagement into your first payment
- Week 1: pull your last 90 days of Insights and note your top three performing posts by saves and shares, not likes. Saves and shares tell brands people found the content useful enough to act on, which matters far more in a pitch than a like count.
- Week 2: build a one page media kit. Name, niche, follower count, average reach per Reel, top three post examples, and one line on who your audience is, for example “78% women, 25 to 34, mostly UK based.”
- Week 3: pitch five small, relevant brands directly by email, not by DM, with your media kit attached and one clear ask, a fee plus product, or a straightforward affiliate arrangement.
- Week 4: set up one affiliate account, either Amazon Associates or a brand specific programme in your niche, and start tagging products you already talk about anyway, so the income runs alongside content you were making regardless.
This is a realistic 90 day path to a first payment, not a guaranteed one, but it is the actual sequence, not a vague “post consistently and grow your audience” line that gets repeated everywhere else on this topic.
Where people waste months of effort
The biggest time sink I see is creators obsessing over the engagement rate percentage itself, chasing comment pods, follow-for-follow groups, or engagement bait captions like “tag a friend who needs this,” all of which inflate the number on a dashboard without moving a single brand closer to paying you. If you are testing content formats to improve reach and real interaction, it is worth knowing which content types pull engagement, and I have gone deep on what hashtags move the needle on Instagram Reels after testing 200 of them, because hashtag strategy still matters more than most creators assume in 2026. If your account has a technical problem sitting underneath all this, shadowbanning, a broken link in bio, Insights not tracking, it is worth working through a proper Instagram troubleshooting guide before you spend another month blaming your content for a settings problem.
The other time sink is treating this as a side hustle with no schedule. If you are doing this around a day job, it works far better with a fixed weekly block, the same way any part time work from home income stream needs a real time boundary or it quietly eats your evenings for months with nothing to show.
What I would do differently if I were starting today
I would stop treating engagement rate as the goal and start treating it as the receipt. I would pick one platform’s worth of content tools that save time rather than add another app to check, something I cover in more detail in my rundown of content creation tools worth keeping in your stack in 2026, and I would send five direct pitches a week from day one rather than waiting for brands to find me. Waiting is the single most common reason engaged, talented creators earn nothing for a year, not lack of talent, not lack of followers, just nobody sending the email.
If you are running this alongside a small business rather than as a personal creator brand, the maths shifts again, because you are usually monetising engagement to drive traffic and enquiries rather than collecting brand fees, and that is a different strategy entirely, closer to the kind of work I describe when I talk through hiring an AI marketing consultant who understands social platforms rather than one selling a generic package.
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Frequently asked questions
Does Instagram pay you directly for likes and comments?
No, not in the UK, US, or Israel as of 2026. Instagram removed its direct Reels bonus payment programme from most markets, and there is no live feature that pays you per like or comment. Any income comes from brand deals, affiliate commission, or paid subscriptions, all of which use engagement as supporting evidence rather than the payment itself.
What engagement rate do brands expect before paying?
There is no fixed threshold, but a rate above 3% is generally considered solid for accounts over 10,000 followers, and above 6% is strong for smaller accounts. That said, many brands never ask for the engagement rate figure at all and judge purely on follower count and audience fit, which is exactly why smaller, more targeted accounts sometimes get paid the same as much bigger ones.
How many followers do you need before brands will pay you?
Some brands will pay creators with under 5,000 followers, often 20 to 80 pounds per post, if the audience is a tight match for their product. There is no minimum follower count set by Instagram itself, it is entirely down to individual brand budgets and niche demand, which is why nano creators in specific niches, like local food or a particular hobby, can get paid before larger generalist accounts do.
Is affiliate income more reliable than brand sponsorships?
It tends to be more consistent month to month once set up, because it does not depend on you being booked by a new brand each time, but the per sale commission, usually 5% to 20%, means it takes a warm, buying-ready audience to add up to meaningful money. Most creators who earn well from Instagram engagement run both brand deals and affiliate links side by side rather than relying on either one alone.
