Open your inbox and you might see an invitation titled “Referrals.” If you’re one of a small group of U.S. creators, Instagram is offering real money—up to $20,000—for steering people to the app during a six-week pilot that began in mid-May.
Meta lets participants earn two ways. Some get $100 whenever a new user signs up after clicking that creator’s unique link, while others earn $100 for every thousand qualified visits those links deliver. Either path tops out at twenty grand, and both are handled through payments partner Glimmer.
Instagram instructs participants to scatter links beyond its walls: drop one on a TikTok clip, paste another into a Substack newsletter, tuck a third into a Discord chat. The message is blunt—bring outsiders inside—and it flips an earlier strategy that focused on keeping audiences in app.
Dog-influencer manager Courtney Canfield shared screenshots showing her offer fell under the “visits” branch: she must generate 1,000 qualified taps per $100 credit. She told Business Insider the cap feels reachable if her canine star, Rambo, leans on cross-platform memes that already trend on TikTok and YouTube Shorts.
Meta pairs this referral push with other carrots. January’s “Breakthrough Bonus” dangled payouts to TikTok users willing to post first on Instagram. Separately, exclusive-reels packages promised between $2,500 and $50,000 monthly for a three-month stretch to a smaller circle of high-reach personalities.
TikTok launched its own referral-rewards scheme last year, and YouTube’s Partner Program already shares ad revenue on shorts. Instagram wants to keep creators from drifting toward platforms that appear friendlier to smaller accounts. The test runs while Meta squares off against the FTC in an antitrust case that questions how the company treats rival platforms and independent creators. Any new incentive program will become fodder for arguments over market power, so Meta is framing Referrals as a “limited experiment” rather than a permanent policy shift.
Meanwhile, many mid-tier influencers still make under $500 a month across all platforms, so even a modest referral bonus reads as welcome income. Whether the average participant can reach the $20,000 ceiling in six weeks depends on how aggressively they promote off-platform links without alienating existing audiences.
