Instagram will soon allow users to subscribe to their favourite creators in order to gain access to exclusive content. The social network is trialing this experience with a small number of creators and influencers - 10, to be exact, including basketball player Sedona Prince and Olympian Jordan Chiles.

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In a blog post, Instagram said it’s launching a test of subscription on 19 January 2022, with more creators being added in the coming weeks. Creators can select the price of their subscription tiers, ranging from $0.99 to $99.99 per month. Essentially, users will pay this monthly fee to access content such as subscriber-only Lives and Stories. They will also get a purple badge by their username that shows their status to creators. Instagram told TechCrunch that it will not take a cut of creators' subscription revenues until "at least 2023".

Instagram head Adam Mosseri has described Instagram subscriptions as "one of the best ways" for influencers to generate income. Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, which owns Instagram, wrote in a Facebook post that he's "excited to keep building tools for creators to make a living doing creative work and to put these tools in more creators’ hands soon".

Instagram launches subscriptions to help creators earn income from followers photo 2

Keep in mind Facebook also has its own version of subscriptions for creators. But it wasn't the first to offer a subscription program. Twitter recently launched Super Follows, for instance, and there are also platforms such as Patreon and even OnlyFans, all of which allow creators to charge their followers in exchange for exclusive content.