In our current series “building an income using social media” we have previously gone over how to start making revenue from Instagram and YouTube. Today we will dig into how to build income using your Facebook account.
Facebook statistics 2021
To fully understand the possibilities that lies within your Facebook account, let’s first have a look at some statistics Oberlo recently published, showing where Facebook stands on the market today.
- 2.80 Billion people worldwide are active users on Facebook every month.
- 1.84 Billion people worldwide are active user on Facebook every day.
- In Q4 last year Facebook brought in $27.2 billion.
- 200 Million + small businesses are using Facebooks tools.
- The average time Facebook users spend on the app every month is 19.5 hours.
There are currently roughly 7.9 billion people in the world and you have to be at least 13 years old to create a Facebook account. Therefor, the odds that your target group wouldn’t be on Facebook are pretty low…
Facebook algorithm
The Facebook algorithm decides what posts will be visible in higher versus lower rank when you enter the Facebook feed. It functions as multiple layers of machine predicting what will be most valuable to the visible audience of Facebook, what will be most meaningful for the longest of time. Having a post receive a high ranking of the algorithm gives the opportunities of the post reaching more people. If the post reaches more people there are higher chances of more engagement, likes, shares, follow, potentially sales if the post has marketing purposes and so on.
Why does Facebook have this algorithm?
The short video below explains why the algorithm exists and how it operates.
Source: Facebook, Adam Mosseri
What matters to the Facebook algorithm when posting images and videos?
Several so-called “signals” matters to algorithm that is important to be aware of when you want to improve your ranking. The short video below explains it all in a few minutes.
Source: Facebook
Building an income
Now you are aware of the potential there is of you reaching plenty of your specific clientele on Facebook. You also know what you need to consider for your posts to reach as many people as possible. Let’s begin to look at how to build an income via the platform. Firstly, what would you like to sell? Secondly, who is your target customer?
Influencer Marketing
When becoming an influencer, you are your own brand and will in most cases have to make your marketing posts personal. Once you’ve built a steady following, brands who’s target group are similar to your followers, often gives you products free as well as several discounts to use yourself and for your followers. You need to then frequently promote the brands products on your Facebook and there is often a % commission involved from the sales that you generate. Sometimes sales targets that can even earn you an invite to the brands “traveling weeks” and company events.
Affiliate marketing
Being an affiliate marketer is also a form of partnership very similar to being an influencer, you don’t however need to show your identity in public at all. You will in most cases need to buy the products yourself then you will receive a special code from the company/brand. By marketing the products using your code, your customers real purchases on the brands online site will equal revenue for you. Your personal code will enable you to earn a percentage of the sales that you can claim (most commonly) monthly. This way, the more quality you put into your posts, research your target customer and learn how to use the Facebook algorithm, the more chances are there for you to earn a great size amount of money.
Tool 1: Facebook Groups
By creating an open or private Facebook group you can make sure the people you reach have a direct interest of what you are selling, otherwise they simply wouldn’t join. When creating Facebook groups you can also set boundaries future members have to accept when joining such as “no spam” or “must follow X Instagram account in order to be accepted into group”. You as a moderator can that way be in control over the feed and interaction that is going on in the group in the group and keep your members talking about your product.
Tool 2: Facebook Fan Page
Creating a Facebook fan page has lots of further advertising abilities than creating a Facebook group. You can inside your fan page get a number of statistics tools. The tools will show how many people your posts are reaching and give you details such as how many people that are clicking on your links. Having a Facebook fan page also enables you the opportunity to be able to pay Facebook for advertising services. Their paid advertising services includes for example making sure your posts and videos gets seen by thousands of more people. You can also decide your own target groups of who you are wishing your posts will be promoted to by choosing age groups, countries etc. for the ads.
Recommended next, Building An Income Using Social Media: YouTube