More than a decade ago, social media kickstarted a chain reaction that resulted in social media platforms becoming some of the world’s biggest marketplaces. Facebook is one such platform.
Every day, millions of products are bought and sold on Facebook. This incredible exchange of goods every day indicates to people that making money on this platform is possible.
Facebook ads, Facebook groups, and Facebook Live webinars have become some of the most powerful tools currently used to earn money.
Some of these features are free, and others have a fee attached. Have you ever wondered how people make money on Facebook? Is it a lot? Can you also make money using Facebook?
We will try to answer these questions below.
Is it Possible to Earn Money through Facebook?
Yes, it is possible to make money with Facebook, and you don’t have to be an expert at Facebook marketing or exceptionally tech-savvy to do so. Using Facebook to sell products is a quick way to start making money. But, just like other things in life, you cannot achieve success without consistent hard work.
Social media platforms have provided us with more opportunities to make money online. The ability to do something doesn’t equal success. Millions of small businesses market their products on Facebook every day, but only a few make it to the top.
The reason behind this is that selling on Facebook requires thorough research and careful planning. Anyone can sell on Facebook and start making money. To succeed, you need to invest time into the enterprise. Like any other way to make money, you will not get results overnight (unless you are selling something everyone is crazy about!).
Let’s learn some of the best ways to make money on Facebook through hard work and patience.
Best Ways to Make Money through Facebook
You can make extra cash on Facebook in a number of ways. You can make and sell goods yourself or feature and advertise products and services produced by other businesses. It doesn’t matter if you are a student looking to make some extra cash, an influencer, or an entrepreneur. Facebook allows you to market your product to your audience easily.
There are many ways to make money through Facebook; listed below are some of the best and most efficient ways to market your products and make money on Facebook.
1. Using Facebook Marketplace to Sell Products
We live in the age of eCommerce – where everything can be bought online with just a click. Therefore, traditional business models such as B2B, C2C, B2C, and C2B have evolved over the years to meet this ease of access. The best thing about Facebook Marketplace is that you only need small capital investment to start your business. The low capital investment combined with the social outreach offered by the platform helps you create a sustainable business and earn higher returns.
Now that you know the advantages of marketing your business on Facebook, you may be wondering how to start selling? Simple, you start with Facebook Marketplace. Facebook Marketplace is a digital platform that connects sellers to buyers. It allows sellers to trade their goods and make a steady income online.
The thing that makes this platform ideal for eCommerce businesses is the massive number of users. In October 2018, over 800 million people were using the Marketplace each month. When you upload your products, you showcase them to a vast audience interested in buying them. Millions of people see your products, making it easier to secure sales and maintain a profit even during times of low activity.
We have listed some of the steps you need to follow to start selling Facebook Marketplace:
Search for Facebook Marketplace on Facebook.com.
Find the “Listing” or “Sell” option and click it.
Select the listing type from the provided options.
Enter the required information in the provided sections, upload the product photo, write a title, list the price, select your category, add your location, number of items available, delivery method, and shipping charges.
Click the “Publish” button.
Press the “Close Sale” button and proceed to communicate with your audience through Facebook Messenger.
Benefits of Using Facebook Marketplace
Transparency and Accountability
Using Facebook Marketplace to sell your products is more profitable than using other social media marketing platforms. On Marketplace, the seller and buyer are connected to a Facebook account. This makes the entire process more transparent between the two parties. Facebook can also keep an eye on their activity and can flag any suspicious activity easily.
Affordability
Facebook Marketplace is one of the most affordable options currently available for small business marketing. It allows buyers and sellers to connect instantly through Facebook without splurging on massive marketing campaigns.
Target Intended Audience with Relevant Ads
With Marketplace, you can target your audience without any problem. Marketplace ads are displayed to your intended audience all the time. Not only do they appear on the user’s timeline, but they also pop up on any recently viewed item page. This targeted marketing increases the chances of generating more leads and converting them into paying customers.
Massive Audience
Facebook Marketplace provides you access to a massive audience. More than 800 million people use Facebook Marketplace to buy, sell, and browse items. Exposure to this audience increases your chances of getting more customers.
Product Categories Offered by Facebook Marketplace
Listed below are product categories that can be sold through Facebook Marketplace.
- Bags & Luggage Items
- Gardening Items
- Apparel (Men & Women)
- Home Furnishings
- Electronics
- Accessories
- Property
- Vehicles
- Entertainment
- Beauty (Women)
- Children’s Items
- Video game units and games
- Gardening tools and equipment
- Pet supplies
- Custom and costume jewelry
Product categories you are not allowed to sell through Facebook Marketplace are:
- Alcohol
- Animals
- Adult products or services
- Event tickets
- Weapons, ammunition, or explosives
- Lost and found notifications
Practical Tips to Sell Using Facebook Marketplace
Certain tips can help you boost your sales on Facebook Marketplace. These can include:
Extensive Research
Extensive research is necessary before you create any listing. Visit top-performing business pages with an online store that is similar to what you envision for inspiration. You will get to learn the average price of goods, their market demand, and the online shopping behavior of your intended audience.
Use Facebook Ads
Creating Facebook ads is another great technique to get more customers to follow your Facebook page. Facebook ads can help you reach your exact audience. They can also be used to broaden or specifically target your audience, boost FB posts, drive traffic to your page, create brand awareness, increase revenue and sales, and the best thing is that Facebook ads are one of the cheapest forms of advertising—it doesn’t cost much to reach a huge number of audiences. You can literally spend $10 and reach over 2,000 people.
Upload High-Resolution Pictures
There is nothing that compels a customer to purchase something more than a stunning product picture. An image serves as a deciding factor for many buyers. Blurred or pixelated product images disappoint customers. You need to provide them with quality product photos to sell your goods. You also need to display your best angles to lure in potential buyers, and you can’t do that with blurry pictures.
Hire a professional photographer if you can. If that’s not possible, just use your smartphone. Take some online photography courses and take photos in ways that show your product to the best of its advantage. Adjust brightness, lighting, and background. Use a tripod to eliminate blurriness.
Write an Engaging Product Description
Your audience won’t have time to read lengthy product descriptions. Provide them with a to-the-point description of the item they are interested in. Explain product features using bullet points. Ensure your product description matches the product image and use proper grammar because improper grammar can give the wrong impression. Also, don’t forget to mention the shipping method and delivery charges.
2. Try Affiliate Marketing
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is an effective way to make passive income. It allows you to earn a commission by promoting the products of other sellers.
Why Should You Try Affiliate Marketing?
There are various reasons why people have been using affiliate marketing to make money online, but the main reasons are:
- Affiliate marketing is cost-effective.
- It is a hassle-free way to make money online.
- It offers you the comfort of working from home.
- It can be used to create a secondary stream of income.
- It is flexible and convenient. You work on your terms and time.
- When powered with SEO, this strategy takes your business to new heights of success.
- Affiliate marketers are rewarded handsomely by the brands they work for.
How Are Affiliate Marketers Paid?
The job of an affiliate marketer is to connect the intended consumer to the right seller. The marketer is paid in the following ways.
- Pay per sale (PPS): You get a certain percentage of the sale price when a customer buys a product.
- Pay per click (PPC): You get an incentive for linking customers to the seller’s website.
- Pay per lead (PPL): You get paid when a lead is converted.
How to Do Affiliate Marketing on Facebook?
To earn through affiliate marketing on Facebook, you need to create a Facebook page or group. Choose a niche that interests you or one you know plenty about. Select products your intended audience is interested in, and start promoting them through affiliate marketing. Conduct proper research and create an affiliate marketing strategy to gain the best results.
Access the Right Audience
After choosing a niche to work with, it gets easier to identify your intended audience. Once you know your target audience, it’s time to find ways to access them.
Facebook groups provide you access to the intended audience for affiliate marketing. Join as many of these groups as you can and post affiliate links in strategic ways to earn commissions.
Authentic Online Representation Is Necessary
Trying to spam Facebook users with affiliate links can get you banned. Before using Facebook ads, you need to create an authentic online representation. It will help you access sellers, attract more followers, and give you the ability to generate more leads.
Power Your Affiliate Marketing Strategy With SEO
Update yourself and know the latest SEO marketing strategies to grow your following on Facebook exponentially.
Value Your Intended Audience
Valuing your intended audience is the key to success when it comes to affiliate marketing. You need to work hard to:
- build an authentic relationship with your audience;
- create a friendly atmosphere on your Facebook page by engaging your audience; and
- try to solve your audience’s problems through tried, tested, and authentic products.
How to Plan for More Profitable Facebook Affiliate Marketing in 2021?
Here is how you need to plan your affiliate marketing strategy for success in 2021.
Build Trust With Your Audience
Get familiar with the product or service you are about to market. Remember, trust is the foundation of affiliate marketing. Your audience will only buy the products you are promoting if they trust you. That’s why only suggest to your audience the products you are satisfied with or personally believe are good. If a potential customer approaches you, make quality recommendations. If they like the product, they will come back for more recommendations.
Use Tools to Track Your Performance
Tracking your performance is crucial if you want to excel at affiliate marketing. What works for one business may not work for another. You need to identify the techniques that produce the desired outcomes to create more effective affiliate marketing strategies.
You need to test and improve your strategies to boost conversion rates and get better results without extensive effort. Identify the flaws in your plan, improve it with effective landing page optimization strategies, and improve your call to action.
Know Your Audience to the Bone
You need to know everything about your intended audience if you want to grow as an affiliate marketer. You can use Facebook analytics to learn the location, gender, and age of your audience. You can also become aware of the time of day most of your audience is active and the devices they use to interact with your Facebook page. If they use more smartphones, you can adjust your marketing strategy and page settings accordingly.
3. Sell Your Talents on Facebook
One of the best ways to make money through Facebook is to sell your services. You can advertise your talents on Facebook and attract the right clients. You can use this platform to expand your network and find people who are interested in the services you offer.
Listed below are some of the services you can advertise to make money from Facebook.
Graphic Designing
IT companies are always on the lookout for full-time or freelancing graphic designers to hire. By marketing your services on Facebook, you can connect with those companies and websites that hire graphic designers to work for them.
Editing
Since visuals and music have become one of the most significantly used marketing tools across many industries, companies need professionals who can edit photographs and videos. You can market your video, photo, and sound editing skills on Facebook to create a stream of income for yourself. If you are good at writing, you can also edit written content for different businesses.
Data Entry
If you have experience with MS Office and good typing speed, you can work as a data entry associate. You can market your skills on Facebook to meet the right clients.
Bookkeeping
If you are good at accounting, you can work as a bookkeeper for individuals, businesses, or organizations. You can connect with those in need of a bookkeeper through Facebook.
Social Media Management
Effective social media management skills are necessary to excel as an e-commerce business these days. If you are social media savvy, you can cash your skills by advertising them on Facebook. You can create, schedule, analyze, and engage with your client’s audience to make money on Facebook.
Virtual Assistance
Virtual assistants are needed by every business nowadays. If you have good management and administration skills, you can connect with relevant employers to virtually manage office and business operations for them. Facebook is one of the best social media platforms to advertise your skills and land a virtual assistant job.
Freelancer
If you want to earn money from the comfort of your home, you should work as a freelancer. Various Facebook groups connect freelancers to potential clients. You can also create a Facebook page to stay in touch with your customers.
Companies from various industries are always on the lookout for freelance services. These industries include:
- Information Technology
- Teaching or Tutoring
- Web Development and Designing
- Legal Services
- Copywriting
- Editing, Proofreading & Writing
- HR & Talent Acquisition
- Accounting & Finance
4. Reselling Products on Facebook
The significant rise in inflation over the past few decades has made reselling a mainstream phenomenon. Many people now sell their used, well-loved items on Facebook. You can also make a passive income by reselling the items you no longer use.
People sell well-loved clothing, utensils, electronics, and much more through social media. If you own stuff with a high resale value, you can sell it online to make money. Listed below are some tips for you to resell products online.
Join a Facebook Group That Promotes Reselling
The best way to resell products on Facebook is through Facebook groups. You will find various local groups that promote reselling. They can link sellers to their desired audience. You can create a post with product pictures, product descriptions, price, mode of payment, and delivery charges to attract customers. Interested group members will comment under your post, and your products will be sold in a matter of time.
Create a Facebook Page
You can create a public Facebook page that resells items. You can also work as an intermediary between resellers and customers. You can ask people to share the description, price, and pictures of the things they want to resell with you to share on your page.
You can decide the percentage of the price you will get as a commission. You can even make money by reselling items your followers want to sell on Facebook.
5. Join a Reselling Platform and Promote Products on Facebook
Various reselling apps serve as handy social commerce platforms. Almost everyone can earn money with zero investment by reselling products through these apps. These apps work in partnership with suppliers who offer these items at a cheaper rate. You can select the items you think your Facebook followers will love and sell them on your Facebook page or group.
Some of the best apps for reselling goods are:
- MEESHO
- SHOP101
- Glow ROAD
- Resell ME
- We MORE
The best thing about using these apps is that you only need to market these products on Facebook. The reselling platform will take care of inventory management, shipping, order processing, and more.
6. Create Facebook Ads
You can make money through Facebook by creating Facebook ads. To do so, you need to create an account on Facebook Ads Manager. Once done, go to Facebook Ads Manager and choose settings. Name your campaign and choose the goal you are trying to achieve through this ad.
Keep the following points in mind when creating an ad.
Choose the Right Products to Sell
Make a list of the trendiest products customers are splurging on these days. If people search enough for something, it starts trending on Google. So, you can use Google Trends to find out what is trending at the moment. You can even use search engines such as YouTube to find the best new products in your niche. You can filter the results for a specific time period to catch new highlights and trends in your business category. You can review social media hashtags on Instagram to find out what products are trending. You can search the ‘popular’ category of Pinterest to find out what is trending. Using social media platforms to conduct market research for the FB marketplace is one of the best ways to find the right products to sell.
Design the Right Ads
The success of a Facebook ad is determined by the number of users it engages and converts. You should design your ads creatively so that users stop scrolling and contemplate buying your product. A great way to make your ad more interesting is by addressing the problem your intended audience faces. After that, you can introduce your products as the solution to the problem. To achieve maximum conversion of leads, you need to design an attractive thumbnail that compels the audience to click on your ad.
Target the Right Audience
No matter how creative your Facebook ad is, it will not convert any leads unless it reaches the right audience. You lose revenue if your ad campaign falls flat. You can prevent that from happening by using Facebook Audience Insights tool. This tool allows you to create an audience who will be interested in your offering. Using this tool, you can ensure that your ad will be served directly to the right audience.
Choose a Budget to Work With
Facebook gives you various budget options to choose from. Facebook requires a minimum of $1.00 per day for ads. There are also options as to how long you wish to run the ads. If you select a lifetime budget for your products, this will assist you to keep pricing down versus the other option of choosing a week or month, etc. However, your ad’s success doesn’t depend on how much you spend on it. Rather the success depends on the creative potential and execution of the ad.
7. Make a Website or a Blog
The best way to earn money through Facebook is to create a blog or website. Facebook ads work the best in combination with a website or a blog. If you are selling something on Facebook, Facebook ads may direct your audience to your website or blog.
The Market Website through Facebook
You can add the link to your website or blog in your Facebook page description. You can also share the link to your new products or blogs as Facebook posts. Create a beautiful and professional online representation for your business with a combination of blog, website, and Facebook marketing.
Market Your Blog through Facebook
A blog is an informational web journal. It helps businesses achieve their desired marketing goals. Personal blogs are also very popular these days, and they can also be used as a source of generating income online.
But to generate income from blogs, you have to create engaging content regularly and optimize it to reach the right audience. Once you have developed a large fan following, you can create a Facebook page for your blog and update your audience every time you write something new.
8. Become a Social Media Influencer
Social media influencers are all the rage these days. If you have the confidence to wear branded outfits and have an engaging social life that you can share with the world, you should become a Facebook influencer.
If you have the skills to convince people and influence their decisions, social media blogging is the right profession for you. Facebook influencers are followed for their knowledge, skills, and experience in specific niches.
Celebrities, bloggers, and industry leaders set trends and influence the buying decisions of their audience. This is the reason why influencer marketing is one of the most popular digital marketing trends of 2021.
But, like any other profession, it takes much effort and hard work to make your mark in your desired niche. Listed below are some of the tips that can help.
How to Become a Successful Facebook Influencer?
Choose the Right Niche
People follow influencers for their knowledge and experience in a specific niche. You will fail to make your mark if you choose a niche or an industry you know nothing about. Choose the niche that interests you most and the one you are most familiar with.
Target the Right Audience through Your Facebook Page
Facebook analytics tools allow you to identify the right audience. However, it is up to you to engage them. Now that you are aware of your audience, you should research their preferences, tastes, and personalities to create content to their taste.
Constantly Update Your Content Strategy
When it comes to social media, trends change like seasons. To excel as a Facebook influencer, you need to stay up-to-date with the latest trends. Make your content more engaging and exciting by adding articles, pictures, and videos to your social media platform.
Build a Fan Following
Brands will only contact you if you have a large fan following. You can attract more followers by constantly engaging with them through Facebook. Post regularly, hold live video sessions, and actively reply to your followers’ comments and messages.
Ways to Monetize Your Facebook Presence
If your motive behind becoming a Facebook influencer is to make money, listed below are some tips that can help you monetize your Facebook presence.
- Create sponsored content to earn money through Facebook.
- Build a big fan following to access a wide audience.
- Create high-quality content that represents a brand and its offerings positively.
- Influence Facebook users with paid promotions.
9. Create Facebook Groups
Facebook groups are created to link together people with mutual interests. You can make money as an FB admin as well as a non-admin. Here is how you can earn through Facebook groups:
As a Non-Admin
Various Facebook groups allow people to sell their products and services online. These groups are created to link sellers to their potential buyers. Some of these groups are created to sell clothes, artifacts, handmade items, and more, whereas the other groups sell cars, spare parts, electronics, and more. Some groups connect freelancers to the right employers.
On Facebook, you can choose the group that suits your product the best. Follow the group rules and upload the pictures and details of the product you are trying to sell. But beware of spam groups. Only sell through a group with secure payment options.
If you are a small business owner, you can connect with the right talent through dedicated Facebook groups.
As an Admin
If you are a small business owner, you can create a Facebook group to entice potential customers. You can promote the products or services you are offering in this group. Interested members will comment under your post.
You can earn money by per-click quick and indirect advertising to Facebook group members. You can also earn an income by allowing other companies to advertise on your Facebook group. You can charge your group members a weekly or monthly subscription fee to avail the services you provide. You can also help these businesses by sharing useful information and expert insights through Facebook Live webinars and online events for group members.
10. Start Making Money Through Facebook Jobs
Facebook has turned from a platform that was created for socialization into a one-stop-shop for all your needs and wants. Today you can search for jobs posted by recruiters on Facebook groups easily. If you want to stay up-to-date and aware of the latest job opportunities in your field, you should start using Facebook Jobs.
Open the Facebook menu, find Jobs, and click it. Select your niche or desired position and receive alerts for the type of jobs you have selected.
11. Participate in Facebook Competitions
Various brands hold competitions on Facebook for their active audience and Facebook community. The winners of these competitions earn cash prizes and other expensive rewards. You can earn some extra cash through your Facebook account by entering these competitions. Follow all rules and make multiple entries to increase your chances to win.
Conclusion
Facebook has turned from a socializing platform into one of the biggest online markets over the past few years, and digital marketing is getting more competitive with time. This means that you need an effective Facebook e-commerce strategy to get successful and earn from Facebook. Success doesn’t come overnight; it comes through diligence, hard work, and patience. Identify your audience, choose the right niche, select the right products, and create effective marketing strategies if you want to make money from Facebook.
We at Ontario Business Central hope you found this blog resourceful and informative in the pursuit of starting or adding to your entrepreneurial experience. Our mission is always to support entrepreneurs in Canada.
If you wish to register or incorporate, we would love the opportunity to assist you in getting your business off the ground.