How To Make Money With Your Cat - 5 Proven Methods

Did you ever wonder whether it's possible to make money with your cat? Because it is! In this article, we will go through five proven methods that you can follow to bring in a few extra dollars with your kitty.

Disclaimer: Before we jump into the article, we want to state that none of these methods annoy, hurt or abuse cats in any way. That being said, all cats are different, and you should always be aware of your cat’s mood towards you and your actions.

Enough with the talk now, let’s get right to it!

1. Make Money With Your Cat’s Instagram Page

Instagram is a huge social media platform with over 400 million daily users. The platform is great for sharing your content, interact with people from all over the world and build up a fan community.

The platform shows content to their users on a following basis. Meaning, if you follow a certain person and said person posts a picture of him or herself, you will get to see that picture. Easy right?

Now, in addition to people having personal pages where they post media about themselves, there are all kinds of Instagram pages that share whatever they feel like sharing. Here is where it gets interesting:

To bring in money with your kitty via Instagram, you create a page dedicated to showing the world the cutest, funniest and most amazing pictures of your cat.

This isn’t exactly easy to do and requires a good amount of work! However, there are heaps of people already doing it successfully and you can be next.

Now if you figured out on how to make your cat’s Instagram look great and appealing to the public, it’s time to get in the followers!

There are great resources out there on how you can gain followers on Instagram, so we suggest you start by reading the following and dig deeper by time: Buffer’s guide on growing your Instagram.

Why are followers so important, you ask? It’s because they will indirectly bring in the money for you!

It’s simple, if your cat is famous (like these cats are for example) and you have a big enough audience, brands will be interested in working with you to show their products to your audience.

Think about it: If 50.000 people regularly see your posts, you have the potential to put any related product in front of 50.000 possible buyers!

Brands recognized this marketing channel a long time ago and they are willing to pay such Instagram pages good money for a cooperation. This is what we want, right?

The following overview summarizes how you can earn money with your cat’s Instagram:

1. Create an Instagram page dedicated to your cat
2. Learn how to make it look interesting
3. Grow the page to at least 30.000 followers
4. Enjoy brands coming to you asking for a collaboration!

2. Make Money With Your Cat’s YouTube Channel

The details of this method may vary from the one we have presented you before, but the principle of making money with your feline’s YouTube presence is the same.

After creating a YouTube channel dedicated to your cat, you will want to shoot and upload videos that are appealing to the cat community.

YouTube has a different format than Instagram and you won’t get away with posting a picture or short clip though, so you better get to know what the community likes.

If people then search for some quick mood boost in the form of a cat video, you will want to appear in the search results of the exemplary search: “Cat talking with human”. Check out this YouTube guide on how you can optimize your videos for that.

But what happens if people start watching your videos because they follow you or see your videos in the search results?

You have two options, and both are a great financially speaking.

The first is pretty much the same than the Instagram method: You gather enough Subscribers to your channel, so brands want to with you professionally for a fee.

The second method is quite different but equally (or even more) financially attractive: You start showing ads before or in between your videos.

Here is a quick overview again to summarize this method:

1. Create a YouTube channel dedicated to your cat
2. Make appealing videos to the cat community
3. Optimize your YouTube channel and videos to the point where a lot of people watch your videos
4. Become a brand ambassador of interested brands or show ads before your videos to make money

3. Make Money With Your Cat Being a Model

Brands are always on the lookout for new faces for their marketing campaigns and there is a chance that you can capitalize on that.

No matter what breed your cat is, it has the potential to be a model and get a good amount of money for it.

The first thing you should do in this regard is search for cat beauty contests in your area and sign up for them. There is a lot to take into consideration when trying to win a cat contest, but we will not be talking about that here.

The reason you will be doing the contests is not the (rather slim) prize money you will get if your cat wins, it’s the qualification you and your cat will get by winning.

Think about cat modelling like a job interview: If you never worked in the area, never gotten approved in a similar job and nobody knows you for your skills that you seem to have, why would anybody hire you?

With cat beauty contests, you (or rather your cat) will get that qualification, experience and reputation of a healthy, well-behaved and handsome cat that companies are looking for in model candidates.

Note: Our cat photo contest  is currently open to new submissions! You can win $120 worth of personalized cat jewelry! 

Apart from our contest, you can check out this comprehensive list of online cat contests that you can enter as well.

So, when you have participated in a cat beauty contest and placed fairly on the top, you can use that positive result to reach out to brands and ask for a collaboration!

Reaching out and pitching your cat to other companies can be a lot of work, but that one company responding positively out of a hundred can change your life!

We recommend to check out this general guide on how to pitch any idea before you start writing those emails.

Now in contrast to cat beauty contests and their low prize moneys, a cat model contract is super lucrative.

Think about your cat being on the face of a magazine cover or even a new Purina product packing. Sounds like a lot of fun…and a lot of money.

4. Make Money With Your Cat Testing Products

This method brings in the least amount of money of all we have presented you with - but it’s also the easiest to achieve.

How do companies know whether a recipe for a new treat is good? They don’t. At least at the start.

No human can tell for sure whether cats like a certain dish or toy. Therefore, they need a substantial amount of cats that test their products.

Signing up for a testing program with most companies means, that you usually get products for free in exchange for an honest review about the product. You won’t get money though.

However, by receiving free food, toys and accessories, you are saving quite some money because you usually must pay for all these things.

Companies like Catit and we here at KittySensations are known for these kinds of partnerships.

5. Make Money With Your Cat Participating In Studies

Similar to the one we have just presented you, there are companies, universities and research foundations that need cat participants for their studies.

These studies can involve anything from new medication to talking to your cat in a certain way, so don’t be too negatively biased and approach them open minded.

If you think certain study doesn’t suit your cat because you don’t want to expose it to something potentially harmful, then don’t do it. Simple as that.

There are great alternatives to participating in medication- or nutrition-based studies! A lot of research foundations simply want you to record your cat in a particular situation. Sounds fun, right?

Since these studies limited and are filled rapidly, we thought it wouldn’t make a lot of sense to link to some that are open for new applicants when this blog post is written.

Instead, we recommend you check out universities and research foundations near you! They usually offer plenty of cat related studies to participate in. While mostly unpaid, they are open to small compensations like Amazon gift cards. 

Conclusion

Let’s wrap up the blog post by going over the five methods of how you can earn money with your feline again:

1. Dedicate an Instagram page to your cat, grow it and make it so big as well as appealing that brands recognize you as a potential marketing channel for their products.
   
   
2. Build up a YouTube channel featuring your cat that is large enough to make you good amounts of money by either presenting products in your videos or by running ads before your videos.
   
   
3. You can apply for a cat model job at thousands of cat companies out there and make your cat be the face of their new product or service.
   
   
4. Sign up to make your cat become a product tester for one or multiple brands. This way you enjoy free food, toys and other cat related articles.
   
   
5. Participate in cat related studies and regularly report the behavior and effects of the aspect of the study to the researchers. Get paid by doing so.

I hope you enjoyed this guide and if you have any questions or recommendations, please tell us down below! We will gladly read through all of them and reply to every single one of the comments.

Thank you again for reading and have a great day!

Maria Schneider,
Content Creation and Customer Communication at KittySensations.