16 Ways to Monetize Facebook Groups in 2022 (2023)

June 13, 2022

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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, let’s review how to monetize and grow a Facebook group.

Facebook Groups are critical to Facebook’s long-term success. Facebook has a five-year goal to amass 1 billion “meaningful” group members. “Meaningful” groups are communities that become vital to a user’s experience. Facebook announces updates and enhancements to Facebook Groups at developer conferences and Facebook Newsroom. Also, Facebook 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. At one point, I was managing 120,000+ members.

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 the ability to control 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 monitor and control 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. Buy and sell groups come with different features compared to regular groups. 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.

A buy and sell group paired 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 buy and sell group for that objective or join a group to sell your products.

Create a Shop

Users with e-commerce Facebook pages can use groups to cross-promote and build communities. Also, page owners can use their pages to manage groups. For example, if you want to sell products from a Facebook page, Shopify and BigCommerce are excellent solutions. Alternatively, Shops in Groups enables admins of Facebook groups to set up an online store on their associated Facebook Page. This feature extends Facebook’s e-commerce functionality with a group-first focus.

Promote Products & 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 one more promotional channel to market yourself for revenue and income purposes. For example, I regularly promoted my blog and YouTube channel, leading to ad revenue, affiliate commissions, and e-commerce sales.

Affiliate Marketing

One of the most practical ways to make money with a Facebook group is through affiliate and referral marketing. Affiliate marketing is a performance-based advertising model. 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). See my post on the best affiliate programs to get your juices flowing.

My group targeted free access to online courses, so I promoted free classes and trials from Coursera and Pluralsight. In addition, I occasionally promoted unrelated goods that could help my members, such as TubeBuddy, a top-rated YouTube tool for growing channels.

Some affiliates go wrong 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 appear spammy. Learn more about how to promote affiliate links on Facebook.

Promote Your Cover Image

Marketing and selling items in posts are standard. However, more creative admins use their covers to market goods with links and coupon codes. For instance, this bitcoin group owner could add a shortened affiliate link about where to trade cryptos. This activity may not be a massive moneymaker because links won’t be clickable. However, it’s one more way to profit.

Grow Marketing & Sales Funnels

Many admins promote their websites and landing pages to members. A landing page aims to capture contact information, such as a person’s name, email address, phone number, company name, etc. There are many free and paid landing page software providers.

A typical landing page strategy encourages visitors to submit their email address for gifts or “exclusive” content, such as a checklist, video, webinar, report, or e-book. You could also promote contests and giveaways. For example, I use this landing page for free through MailerLite, a top-rated email marketing service.

Group members that become subscribers and leads enter your marketing and sales funnel. A sales funnel seeks to convert a prospect into a buyer through several stages. Case in point, I send multiple emails over several months to my subscribers. 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:

Facebook Group Members > Website/Landing Page > Marketing & Sales Funnel = Revenue/Sales

Get Customers & Clients

Facebook groups are excellent for developing relationships, and many people use groups to generate new business and find marketing partners. I had developed several relationships with marketers that led to joint ventures.

Engaging and contacting members can help fill your sales pipeline. How might prospecting work? Suppose Joe and Thomas belong to the same WordPress group. Joe posts a question about SEO plugins. He wants to know what SEO plugin he should use and why. Thomas, an SEO consultant, comments on the post and recommends several plugins. Also, he sends Joe a private message. In the private message, James introduces himself and his services and provides 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 that you’ve sent them a private message in the comment thread. You might also contact the person through a different website, e.g., LinkedIn.

Charge Membership & Subscription Fees

My groups were free to join, but many content creators and marketers run 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.

Monetize Facebook Group How-To Content

Facebook’s help center provides standard information about groups and their platform. As a result, content creators can make money by creating insightful how-to content about groups, pages, profiles, and other aspects.

This post is about Facebook groups, and hopefully, it will generate money for me in one way or another. I have a video on YouTube about monetizing Facebook groups, which generates advertising revenue. In addition, I previously offered an online course that cost nearly eight hundred dollars.

Earn Advertising & Sponsorship Revenue

Admins of sizeable groups, 25,000+ members, can solicit advertising and sponsorship revenues. I had pinned posts to the top of my groups and generated advertising income from instructors and marketers with posts like this:

Advertise in This Group

Advertise your:
– Online course
– Blog or YouTube video
– Opt-in or landing page

Rates
– $25 for one week
– $40 for two weeks
– $60 for one month

(Video) How To Make Money With Facebook Groups in 2022 [Beginner Friendly]

Your advertisement will appear as a featured announcement/pinned post.

Private message me to arrange. Your campaign is subject to approval.

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. On the other hand, brands can connect with relevant audiences in spaces people trust. BCM posts will feature branded or sponsored labels to help users identify. Hopefully, monetization for private groups will follow soon.

Earn Money as a Group Admin

Groups need managing, and time is money. So, you can combine those two realities to make money as a Facebook community/group manager. In addition, Facebook offers a Community Manager Certification to improve your job prospects.

To gain work, inquire with group admins. 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 proceed with selling your group, be discreet and keep the details between you and the buyer private. Also, avoiding discussing matters on Facebook platforms like Messenger makes sense. To transact the deal, I recommend using Escrow.com.

How much is a Facebook group worth? One valuation method starts with assigning a member a cost 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. You might offer different amounts until you understand what a buyer is willing to pay.

Buy a Group

Building a large group can take years, so you might consider buying a group. You would start by contacting users to see if they’re interested in selling their groups. Also, consider how long it will take to recoup your expense. For instance, if you buy a group for $100, you should want to earn that amount back within six to twelve months. Learn How to Buy a Facebook Group Step by Step.

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, 5 to 10 percent of these business ideas are legit and could make you money. If nothing else, some might be worth exploring to see what else is out there or get your creative juices flowing.

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. Additionally, you can promote your crowdfunding campaigns to raise money.

Be Transparent

Transparency is critical in online marketing and e-commerce. It helps to create a fair marketplace and educate consumers. The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has guidelines about affiliate marketing, e-commerce, disclosures, hashtags, and social media posts. For example, it recommends adding “#Ad” to posts containing affiliate links.

Be mindful of your activities on Facebook and include relevant details, disclosures, and disclaimers in posts. For example, in my group description, I had informed members that posts containing “#Ad” represented the use of affiliate links. The more above board you are, the more users will trust you. Also, you’ll avoid hassles and legal issues from Facebook and others.