Meta announced today that it’s rolling out Instagram subscriptions to all eligible creators in Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Spain and the United Kingdom over the next few weeks. The expansion comes as Meta first launched Instagram subscriptions in the United States in January 2022.
Instagram subscriptions allow creators to offer their followers paid access to exclusive posts, Live videos, Stories, reels, highlights and more. Subscribers also receive a special badge that helps them stand out in the comments section and creators’ inboxes.
To be eligible for Instagram subscriptions, creators must be at least 18 years old and have more than 10,000 followers. Creators are able to set a monthly price of their choice for the exclusive content. There are eight price points to choose from, starting at $0.99 per to month to as much as $99.99 per month, depending on how much a creator believes their content is worth.
The idea behind subscriptions is to give creators the opportunity to earn recurring monthly income based on support from their fans. Meta plans to continue rolling out access to Instagram subscriptions globally in the coming months.
“With Instagram subscriptions, you can develop deeper connections with your most engaged followers and grow your recurring monthly income by giving subscribers access to exclusive content and benefits, all within the same platform where you interact with them already,” Meta wrote in a blog post. “We will continue to invest in tools that help creators earn money and will have more updates to share in the coming months.”
Meta first launched subscriptions on Facebook back in 2020 before bringing the offering to Instagram. Subscriptions on Facebook are available to Pages in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom and the United States.
Instagram isn’t the only social media platform that gives creators the option to charge fans for exclusive content. Earlier this year, TikTok launched a new feature called “Series” that allows eligible creators to post content behind a paywall. Series enables eligible creators to post collections of premium content that viewers can purchase access to. One Series can include up to 80 videos, each up to 20 minutes long.
Similarly, Twitter offers a subscription feature that lets users purchase access to exclusive tweets from creators. Like Instagram’s and Instagrams offerings, creators sets the monthly price of their subscriptions.
