Laura has more than 50K followers on her bookish account, but even she has her doubts about making bookstagram a career. Is this you too?
There is a lot of questions about if it is possible. But your confusion will be magically erased when reading this article. Maybe?
Social media marketing is the way to make Instagram a career. This type of marketing is all about creating and sharing content on social platforms in order to achieve a marketing goals: selling a product or selling a service.
Chelsea Lee Rock, Instagram influencer and marketing assistant says:
In bookstagram this may be a little tricky since the only services are promotions, reviews of books and/or selling bookish items: for more info on this please check out my brand deals article.
This article will deal more with a simple plan to achieve career status on Bookstagram and if it is even possible to reach such a goal:
Make a plan
Branding is one of the most important steps to career goals on social media.
You need to be a unique and super concise brand otherwise your audience will not stick around. So before starting to think about follower numbers, brand deals and money: think about branding. For more info on branding here is an article.
This is an illustrative map of how many people post on Instagram. This is competition. But don't be scared, this is also part of the audience that you want to attractive which makes it that numbers opportunities.
How to make a plan?
1.Write down your marketing goals. How much income would you need to survive only with bookstagram; do you want to bring other platforms such as blogging or youtube to the table?; do you want this to be part of your income or all your income?
2.Research! Google how much of your goal is achievable, how many people have succeeded and what was their journey. Type "book bloggers income" or "bookstagrammers income" ta get better results.
Is it possible to survive only with bookstagram income?
Laura, @whatshotblog, is a bookstagrammer and book blogger with more than 50K followers and she doesn't believe that you can make it only on bookstagram: "I don’t think bookstagram by itself will ever be a career as there aren’t many sponsored opportunities from publishers"
Booktube (Youtube for and from readers) is something that is changing the reading game because it is becoming extremely popular. The biggest booktubers to date have more than 1 million subscribers. Read this article for how the industry is changing with booktube: here
"With book blogging and bookstagram together, you have a better chance as from a website you can earn advert and affiliate revenue. However even then it would be very difficult", Laura added.
But even with other platforms, is it possible to survive by only focusing on books?
Laura disagrees. Although it may be possible, diversifying content with beauty or fashion will raise your opportunities for brand deals and sponsorships:
"Most book bloggers who are making enough money to live off their platforms have diversified their income so they either post about other subjects too or they sell courses, do other freelance work, etc"
Maybe the sentence, "don't put your egg in the same basket" is somewhat truthful in this situation?
Internet work is often super unstable and having more diversify content, and more services/ platforms is a good idea for a career wise-goal but always stay in brand.
Maybe, the biggest question of all is:
How important follower numbers really are?
It looks like that for bookstagram, not that much. Several sources, in a survey, confirmed that even with a small following they were able to have brand deals, which is often free product for review.
I made £80 with only 600 followers via author contract and book promotion. Now this doesn't make it viable as a career since it was the only income I had for 5 months.
"No matter how many followers you have, if you're a bookstagrammer, the only thing you can get with the follower number is free books. Free books don't pay bills, and food, and water and electricity", said Gonçalo who is also a bookstagrammer.
Laura, that has a substantial number of followers said: "I don’t think you could do this with books. Unless if you have a huge amount of followers you will probably need other income streams".
Maybe it is possible?