If you’re interested in growing your Instagram channel or profile, you’ve probably tried all the obvious approaches: hashtags, lots of updates, paying for shoutouts, etc, with little to no effect.

If you’re serious about growing your channel, you need to invest in it. And I don’t just mean in the actual content you're using. No, you need to invest in skills that will help you market your channel.

Instagram is all about marketing; this is basically what it’s all about at a professional/brand level. There are plenty of people using Instagram to make big bucks – people like you and me.

How they do it simple: find a niche, exploit that niche, make money through affiliate sales.

This formula is very simple, but it is basically how people make money with Instagram.

Another way is to turn yourself into a guru. Ever notice how many fitness people there are on Instagram? This is because health and fitness are two of the hottest niches on the planet right now.

An example of how a good fitness channel works is Vitruvian Physique, which is a channel run by a Canadian chap called Igor Opeshansky. He also has a YouTube channel, which is also very popular, and a website.

These “channels” are a means of connecting with and communicating information to his followers. All these channels are designed with a couple of things in mind: 1) increase his profile (brand) through free, useful content and 2) drive clicks through to his core business (personal training and affiliate sales).

Fitness is a great niche because you can give away a lot of free stuff, but then charge a fee for access to “premium” content which, in this context, is one-on-one training and nutrition advice.

This is just one example of how normal people, people that want to do something they’re passionate about for a living, are leveraging tools like Instagram to develop a brand and then, once the volume is there, create a business around it.

If you’re serious about doing something similar you need to educate yourself in what it takes to run a successful Instagram channel. And the only way to do this is to listen to people that have already done it.

One of the best online courses you can do right now is Benjamin Wilson’s Instagram Marketing Course on Udemy. It’s not free, good things never are, but you can pick it up for $10 – down from $200 – for a limited time.

Mr. Wilson’s course will tell you everything you need to know about creating successful marketing campaigns on Instagram, how to grow your brand and what to do once you have a solid base of subscribers.

And for 10 bucks, this course is simply too good to pass up.