April 3, 2024
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A Facebook group provides a space to communicate and share interests with like-minded people. You can create a group for almost anything and customize your group’s privacy settings for visibility and member selection. Facebook group admins can also make money with their groups. In this post, we’ll review how to monetize a Facebook group.
Facebook Groups are critical to its long-term success. The company’s five-year goal is to amass 1 billion “meaningful” group members, which are communities vital to a user’s experience.
Facebook announces updates and enhancements to Facebook Groups at developer conferences and in the Facebook Newsroom. Facebook also offers education and monthly workshops for admins.
In 2014, I created my first group, Free Online Courses, which grew to 40,000+ members (I’ve since passed the group to someone else). The group helped me expand my digital marketing reach, connect with like-minded people, and generate passive income. I liked my group so much that I acquired two more, managing 120,000+ members at one point.
How to Make Money With a Facebook Group
Many Facebook group owners monetize their groups, which is legal. First, you can earn money from a Facebook group as an admin, moderator, and member. Secondly, you don’t need to own a group to make money. However, owning a group has many benefits, including controlling settings, activities, and announcements. By contrast, when a user posts in a group he doesn’t own, his efforts could be wasteful. For instance, some group admins review every post. In those groups, users are subject to delays and declines. Now, let’s understand the various ways to monetize a Facebook group.
Sell Products
Admins can create “buy and sell” groups by choosing that group type. A buy-and-sell group allows members to list items for sale, mark items as sold, and search for things to buy. For example, a post will display sales and price details, which may appear in Facebook’s marketplace. Buy and sell groups come with different features compared to regular groups.
A buy-and-sell group with the right niche could yield profits for you and your members. For example, suppose you’re interested in purchasing, selling, and trading Hollywood movie memorabilia. You could create a group or join one to sell your products.
Users with Facebook business pages can use groups to cross-promote and build communities. Page owners can also use their pages to manage groups. Alternatively, Shops in Groups enables admins of Facebook groups to set up online stores on their associated Facebook pages. This feature extends Facebook’s ecommerce functionality with a group-first focus.
Promote Products and Services
Social media marketing is an excellent way for individuals and businesses to reach prospects and customers. People use social media websites and networks to promote their companies, brands, products, services, and crowdfunding campaigns.
Facebook groups are another promotional channel to market your business, goods, content, etc. For example, I regularly promoted my blog and YouTube channel, leading to ad revenue, affiliate commissions, and ecommerce sales.
Grow Marketing and Sales Funnels
Many admins promote their websites and landing pages to members. Users who enter your marketing and sales funnels become leads and subscribers. A sales funnel seeks to convert a prospect into a buyer through several stages. Case in point: I send multiple emails to my subscribers over several months. Those emails are sent automatically using an autoresponse sequence. My emails cover my favorite affiliate programs, business ideas, ways to make money, and more. The goal of my autoresponse sequence is to generate affiliate commissions. Here is the series of events:
Group Members > Website/Landing Page > Marketing and Sales Funnels = Revenue and Profits
Earn Affiliate Marketing Commissions
Affiliate marketing is one of the most practical ways to make money with a Facebook group. An affiliate (publisher) promotes a product/service online and receives compensation for achieving a specific objective or action. A merchant (advertiser) specifies the goal, usually a valid sale. For example, a merchant will pay an affiliate a 30 percent sales commission. A merchant may use one or multiple cost-per-action models, including cost per sale (CPS), cost per lead (CPL), or cost per install (CPI).
My group targeted free online courses, so I promoted free classes and trials from Coursera and Skillshare. I also occasionally promoted unrelated goods that could help my members, such as TubeBuddy, a top-rated YouTube tool for growing channels.
Some affiliates go wrong by promoting goods with minimal or no relation to the group’s objective or theme. For instance, it doesn’t make sense to advertise flight deals in a group for app developers. Furthermore, overpromoting an item can decrease interest and make the group appear spammy. Learn more about how to promote affiliate links on Facebook.
Drive Traffic
Marketing and selling items in posts are standard. However, more creative admins use their covers to direct users with links and coupon codes. For instance, one group owner added a shortened affiliate link with a call-to-action to trade cryptos. This Facebook group monetization method may not be a massive moneymaker because links won’t be clickable. However, it’s one more way to profit.
Get Customers and Clients
Facebook groups are excellent for developing relationships, and many people use online communities to generate new business and find marketing partners.
Engaging and contacting members can help fill your sales pipeline, but how might prospecting work? For example, suppose Joe and Thomas belong to the same WordPress group. Joe posts a question about SEO plugins and wants to know which one he should use and why. Tom, an SEO consultant, comments on the post and recommends several plugins. He also sends Joe a private message introducing himself, his services, and a link to his post about the best SEO plugins.
If you send a message to someone out of your network, your message will appear as a request. Unfortunately, it will not go straight to the user’s inbox. Therefore, you should tell the person you’ve sent them a private message in the comment thread. You might also contact the person through another social media website, e.g., LinkedIn.
Monetize Facebook Group How-To Content
Facebook’s help center provides standard information about groups. As a result, content creators can make money by creating insightful how-to content about groups, pages, profiles, and other Facebook features.
This post is about Facebook groups, and hopefully, it will generate money for me somehow. I have a video on YouTube about monetizing Facebook groups, which generates advertising revenue. In addition, I previously offered an online course that made nearly eight hundred dollars.
Earn Advertising Revenue
Admins of sizeable groups, 25,000+ members, can solicit advertising and sponsorship revenues. For instance, I pinned posts to the top of my groups and generated advertising income from instructors and marketers with featured posts like this:
Advertise in This Group
Advertise your:
– Online course
– Blog or YouTube video
– Website or landing page
Rates
– $25 for one week
– $40 for two weeks
– $60 for one month
Your advertisement will appear as a featured announcement/pinned post.
Private message me to arrange it. Your campaign is subject to approval.
Charge Membership Fees
My groups were free to join, but many content creators and marketers have private groups for paying customers. A private group could offer exclusive content, live streams, events, webinars, Q&A sessions, and direct access to admins and guests. You could charge monthly fees of $0.99 to $9.99 and offer discounts for annual payments, for example. In addition, various apps and plugins enable you to charge and collect recurring fees. Alternatively, Facebook has a subscription group feature, but it’s only available to some groups in certain regions.
Partner With Brands
Facebook’s Brand Collabs Manager (BCM) is a tool to help brands and creators find, learn more about, and engage with each other. Admins with public groups can collaborate with brands to create and monetize campaigns that resonate with their members. In turn, brands can connect with relevant audiences in spaces people trust. BCM posts will feature branded or sponsored labels to help users identify promotional posts.
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Earn Income as a Group Admin
Groups need managing, and time is money. So, you can combine those two realities to make money as a Facebook group/community manager. In addition, Facebook offers a Community Manager Certification to improve your job prospects.
Contact group admins to find work. I recommend contacting admins who manage large, active groups, for instance, 50,000+ members. Also, you could list your services on freelance marketplaces like Fiverr and Upwork. Alternatively, you could get a non-paying admin or moderator role to gain privileges and influence, like the right to post content or affiliate links daily.
Admins and moderators have different controls, so you should understand them before becoming a community manager.
Sell Your Group
Although Facebook bans the sale of groups, its terms of service (TOS) are ambiguous. (Even if it were crystal clear, users would still buy and sell groups without Facebook’s permission.) Therefore, if you sell your group, be discreet and keep the details private between you and the buyer. Also, avoiding discussing matters on Facebook platforms like Messenger makes sense. I recommend using Escrow.com, an online payment and transaction service provider, to complete your sale.
How much is a Facebook group worth? One valuation method starts by assigning a cost to each member and multiplying that value by the number of members. In my experience, members are typically worth a penny or less.
Let’s say a group member is worth $0.01. One cent multiplied by 40,000 members yields a price of $400. Another pricing method is to conduct price experiments by asking around and gaining a consensus.
Buy a Group
Building a large group can take years, so you might consider buying a group to monetize it quickly. You would start by contacting users to see if they want to sell their groups. Additionally, consider how long it will take to recoup your expenses. For instance, if you buy a group for $100, you should want to earn that amount back within months, not years.
More great content:
- 11 Ways to Earn Money From a Facebook Page
- How to Buy or Sell a Facebook Group
- 7 Ways to Make Money on Fiverr
- 20+ Best Tools for Marketers & Businesses
Monetize Other Social Profiles
Do you make money on YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, or TikTok? If you do, add your profile links to your group’s About page. Also, post your new content and encourage members to subscribe, connect, and follow to increase your profits on other social media platforms.
Explore New Business Ventures
No matter the group, users will stumble upon posts about the latest and greatest money-making opportunities. Unfortunately, most of those posts direct members to scams and get-rich-quick schemes. However, some offers are legit and could make you money or lead to something profitable. So, keep an open mind and explore potentially lucrative business opportunities.
Sell Event Tickets
Promote your online or offline event in your group to increase ticket sales. The more relevant the event is to the goal and theme of the group, the higher the sales conversion rate.
As an affiliate marketer, you can promote events, conferences, festivals, concerts, webinars, networking events, etc., for commissions.
Crowdfund
Crowdfunding is raising small amounts of money from many people, typically through the Internet, in exchange for rewards, products, or equity. Many entrepreneurs use Kickstarter and Indiegogo to raise project capital. Promote your crowdfunding campaign in your group to support your funding goals.
Collect Donations
It’s unlikely that member donations will earn you enough to retire early. However, many users request contributions from others and use links from PayPal and Wise to facilitate money collection. A platform like GoFundMe also allows people to gather funds for social good and charitable causes.
Facebook Group Management Tools
Third-party Facebook Group management tools don’t exist. However, Facebook gives admins many tools to manage their groups efficiently, including the following:
Group owners can add admins and moderators to support them. Also, badges highlight various user roles and engagement, such as a group’s top contributor.
Group admins can automatically approve pending members to join their group if they meet specific requirements, like location or completing all the membership questions.
Group admins can designate members, admins, and moderators as group experts to help people find content.
Group Insights offers real-time group stats that reflect growth, engagement, and membership, such as when members are most engaged.
Admin Assist helps you automatically manage posts, comments, membership, and more in your group based on criteria that you set.
Units allow group admins to organize and share content and resources with members. They work like an education module and are an excellent tool for onboarding new members.
Group Quality shows you actions Facebook has taken to enforce its Community Standards in a group you administrate.
Start Earning
Are you ready to profit from Facebook Groups? You now have various methods for monetizing your online community, including selling, marketing, attracting clients, and monetizing content.
Be mindful of your activities on Facebook and include relevant details, disclosures, and disclaimers in posts. The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has guidelines about affiliate marketing, ecommerce, disclosures, hashtags, and social media posts. For example, in my group description, I informed members that posts containing “#Ad” represented the use of affiliate links.
The more righteous you are, the more members will trust you, increasing your revenues. Also, you’ll avoid hassles and legal issues from Facebook and others.
