With a daily active user base of 1.28 billion and a monthly active user base of around 1.9 billion, Facebook continues to be the social media powerhouse of the world. India has contributed the most to the success of this platform and the younger generation, especially people in the age range of 18-34, forms the core user base of Facebook in India. Users spend a significant amount of time on their Facebook profiles sharing updates, family photographs and other interesting content to people in their network.
There are several innovative ways in which users can leverage their time spent on social media platforms, specially Facebook, to generate extra income. The key to success to this strategy, however, remains in the network reach and the type of content the user shares. We have collated here some ideas based on their simplicity for users to start leveraging the power of Facebook usage more productively.
1) Facebook Instant Articles
This option is suited best for users who have creative writing skills and are capable of writing and publishing articles that are interesting and have mass appeal. Facebook has opened up Instant Articles to publishers of all sizes since Feb 2016. The first thing you are required to do is to sign up to join this program. You can do this at instantarticles.fb.com. From there you can sign up, choose your Facebook page, claim your URL and create your article. Besides the WordPress plugin, Facebook has joined hands with lots of publishing platforms to create seamless integration with Instant Articles. Facebook’s Audience Network offers publishers the opportunity to leverage the power of Facebook ads to monetize their content, and when you get started with Instant Articles, you have the opportunity to opt-in to Audience Network ads. If the content one publishes is appealing and is able to generate user interest, Facebook will share the revenues that are generated by placing ad’s on the content published by the user.
2. Create Facebook Content
In the world of social media, content is king and if one has the knack to create innovative content, then there are several easy ways to monetize your content. The content can be in the form of audio files, interesting videos, a pdf file explaining a concept, or other things that may be of interest to Facebook users. There are several sites where you can monetize your content. 22social is one of such sites that you can use. For this, you should have a Facebook page, a free 22Social account, a verified PayPal account, and a free or paid account to digital hosting, including Dropbox, Vimeo, YouTube, Google Drive and SoundCloud, among others.
3. Affiliate Marketing on Facebook
Affiliate marketing is a system that can help you earn money by promoting a product, brand, service or company through a Facebook page or groups to your contacts. There are lots of reputed companies, including Amazon, Flipkart, VCommission, Shaadi.com, and many others, which pay you to promote their products. All you need to do is to join affiliate marketing programs offered by these companies and post their content on your Facebook page. Every time an interested party looks up the advertisement or content you have posted and becomes its customer, you stand to make some money.
4. Facebook Marketplace
If you have some products or services that you are selling, then Facebook Marketplace is a free facility through which you can market your product or service to a wider audience. It allows you to list various items, services and deals, and promote them directly within the Facebook community as per Facebook Community Guidelines and you can reach thousands of people through your own social network while allowing Facebook friends to notify others about what you are selling. Similar to classifieds, the buyer can contact you, inspect the goods and finalize price, shipping and other details.
5. Facebook Sponsored Posts
If you are an active Facebook user with a lot of followers, then Facebook sponsored posts are the easiest way to monetize your follower base. Companies are always on the lookout for influencers for their products and services; users with a higher number of engaged followers are in great demand. One just has to enable Facebook-Sponsored Posts on their Facebook page and every time a company displays content that appears as a sponsored post on your page, the user gets paid a certain portion of the ad revenue. On the part of the user the only effort he/she needs to make is to expand their follower base and keep them engaged with interesting content.
The time spent on social media sites, especially Facebook, does not necessarily have to be a wasted effort. As we have listed above, these are a few of the ideas that users can follow to monetize their time spent on Facebook. It should, however, be remembered that an active follower base and creative content that has the potential to go viral are the key to be successful in this endeavor.
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