Instagram - Finding Influencers - Clueless newbie - help please!

Hi all,

My first post here. I'm sorry if this question sounds REALLY dumb! But I want to know how this works before I start pouring money into it.

I'm just starting out my journey as a dropshipper. I've spent a few weeks researching and learning and I'm pretty much ready to jump right in and get started. However...

I've been trying to get my head around Instagram from a business owner's perspective and, while I get the gist of it, I'm still not quite sure how it REALLY works. I've been going round in circles for 2 days now and my brain hurts! I'm pretty tech-savvy but until now have never been interested in Instagram, so it's a massive learning curve for me. I'm hoping to get some advice from you guys in here. This is what I did (and it didn't work!)

I decided to play around with an item that I thought would probably be quite popular, just to see how I would get Influencers and how they would promote my stuff. So, I looked for mugs with cats on, because everyone loves cats... right? I guess if I were the owner of a Shopify store that sold mugs with cats on, I would find Instagram Influencers that also loved cats, by typing "cats" into the search bar. Up comes "cats_of_instagram", so I click on their page. They have a massive 9M followers and loads of engagement on their page. But I can't find any photos of items they might be promoting... No mugs. No t-shirts. No, well, ANYTHING. So, am I right in assuming that not all people on Instagram with a huge following will promote your stuff??

Next, I tried to use an Instagram Influencer Marketing Platform. I searched for cats_of_instagram and... they didn't even appear. So I searched for "cats" instead and a load of Influencers came up. I clicked on a few of these and there were just lots and lots of photos of their personal lives. No mugs. No STUFF of any kind. There must be a LOT of people wanting to sell cat mugs on Instagram, so where are all the ads??

I'm so confused. What am I missing? Do Influencers even promote your stuff on their Instagram account or does it work some other way? Why can't I find hardly any STUFF people are dropshipping, when Instagram is supposed to be one of the best ways to promote your store?!

Again, sorry if I sound like a dummy but I guess I have to start somewhere!

Any advice will be very gratefully received!

 

If you still want promotion on a cat niche account, you can check @cutecatskittens

 

Most stores build their following first and grow their account on instagram because most influencers won't look at your account if you have an extremely low following. A lot of influences get tons of dm's a day for people to advertise their stuff so a lot of it isn't in their best interest. What I would recommend is following different cat hashtags that have a lot of views, engage people by leaving comments that are more than one word answers and reaching our to people who have around 2000 followers and offering them free product and maybe they will advertise it. It's better to catch as much of the people who will want your product and share them with their friends over a big influencer.

 

Grow your account first then think of monetizing

 

You must first determine how your profile will look, what text cap and what content it will fill. These are the first steps to success.

 

It's too hard to make money from Instagram especially when it's new and it's something unknown for you. You should understand that any idea that will come to your mind was already realized for hundreds of times. You have to be unique, creative and have a power of will, then you'll succeed for sure.

 

Is it possible to monetize instagram? sorry newbie here.