My Facebook page income report (1st month monetized)

Early last year, I started a Facebook page with the goal of getting into Facebook’s invite-only Content Monetization program (which is similar to earning ad revenue on YouTube, except this is for creators on Facebook).

I also had a goal of driving visitors from Facebook to my website, which would also be monetized with ads.

Well, I’m happy to report that my Facebook page finally got monetized as of one month ago. Almost a year to the day since I started it.

How I grew the page

At the start, I tried growing the page organically. Nothing happened though. No post interactions, very few views. This is just the reality for a brand-new, 0-follower page. I know it’s possible to grow from nothing organically, but I wanted to move quickly and grow predictably. So, I decided to run “page like” ads.

I’d heard from people who have done this before that you want to aim for 12,000 followers, and at that point, the Content Monetization invite is much more likely to come.

I ran the ads until my page reached 1,000 followers, and then my payment method was restricted out of the blue. I tried everything to fix it. I even got through to a real Facebook support rep, but even he couldn’t solve the issue. So at this point, I gave up.

But 6 months later, I decided to check, and my payment method was no longer restricted! So, I began running ads again, until the page had more than 12K followers. At that point, I stopped running ads and just posted new content to the page 10-12 times per day (up from 2 times per day while I was running ads).

By the time I got invited to the Content Monetization program, my page had 17,000 followers.

The ad format I used to get 1 cent page likes

Early on, each page like cost me 4-7 cents on average. I thought this was as low as I could get it in my niche.

The ad creative I used was the typical “Do you like ___?” “Press follow” format. Like this:

But then I saw another page running a very different format, and decided to try it out myself. This new format is a choice-based engagement creative, contrasting what my followers like vs something they DON’T like (in the same industry).

Using the same Beatles example, here’s what that would look like:

This is the format that started bringing in likes at 1 cent each.

I spent $300 on ads using the first format to reach 8,000 followers. If I had run the second format from the start, $300 would get me 30,000 followers!

Testing different formats can save a TON of money. For all I know, there’s an even better format out there. If you know of one, please share. 😏 

1-month income report

And now the big reveal.

In the first 30 days monetized, the page has earned $180.53 (so far… today’s not over).

Nothing crazy, in fact, this is much less than everyone else I’ve seen who’s shared Facebook income, but I’m pretty happy with it. Mainly because it’s almost 100% passive income.

Which brings me to the next point…

How I post 12 times/day passively

It’s simple. I saw what was working for my competitors. Mainly image and text posts. Then, I spent a few days creating hundreds of image posts in Canva, and hundreds of text posts (with some help from ChatGPT). That was the non-passive setup part. But now that I have those posts, I just re-post them in a regular cycle. And that’s how it’s mostly passive.

I also occasionally create a new batch just so my page doesn’t get too stale, but honestly, I’ve never had a single complaint from any follower about posting the same thing a few weeks apart. I don’t think anyone notices. Most followers probably don’t even pay attention to what page the posts are from. They see tons of posts scrolling through their feed, so duplicates aren’t a big deal if they even notice them at all.

To schedule the posts automatically, I use Post Planner. I just upload the posts in bulk, set the schedule, and refill the schedule whenever I run out. Super easy.

Can I increase the earnings?

Like I said earlier, my page’s earnings are peanuts compared to most. So what’s the problem?

I think the main thing is that my niche is too narrow for any post to go mega viral. My most viral post got just over 200,000 views, and most fall in the 5K-20K range.

Just like I experimented with different ad formats, I think the key to higher earnings will be experimenting with more post formats. I’ve tried just about every format so far, and text posts are by far my biggest earnings. Which is nice because they’re the easiest to create.

Aside from continuing to test other formats, another thing I can do is increase the posting frequency. I don’t want my reach to be throttled, so I’m hesitant to increase, but I’m going to start experimenting with 16-18 posts/day to see what happens.

What about my companion niche site?

As I said earlier, I started a niche site along with this page. The idea was to write viral-style articles and drive traffic to the site from Facebook. This can easily double the income, as you make money from ads on the site as well as from the content monetization program.

However… I haven’t quite cracked the code with this. I’ve written some viral-style articles and shared them on my Facebook page, but those posts never reach more than a couple hundred views. I tried link in the actual post, and link in first comment, but it didn’t seem to matter. I’m going to continue experimenting with this, as I see it working for some of my competitors. If I can get it to work, I’ll share how in this newsletter. And if you have any advice that you want to share, I’m all ears.

(sidenote: I just saw an email from Andy Skraga about his updated Facebook course, which I went through awhile back… So I’ll need to take a look at it again as I’m sure there’s some gold I’m missing! and btw, I highly recommend his course - it saved me so much time not having to learn certain things the hard way).

Some more details you’ll want to know…

If I were the one reading this email, I’d have a few questions about my page… so I’m sure you do too! I didn’t know where to fit this in, so I’ll awkwardly put it right here.

1. I paid for Meta Verified several months before I got the content monetization invitation. It’s $12/mo. I have no idea if this helped. The reason I got it was because it promised better reach on my posts. I think that’s worth paying $12/mo for.

2. My page’s niche is a subset of the “cars” niche. In hindsight, I wonder if going more broad and simply being in the actual “cars” niche would’ve been better!

3. My page is “faceless”, meaning my face isn’t in any of the posts (the page isn’t attached to my identity at all). Someone who has a bunch of huge Facebook pages was surprised I got mine monetized, so apparently it’s easier to get monetized if your page isn’t faceless. This is exactly what this person said about it: “How were u able to differentiate urself and get monetization faceless? theres no 'rule against faceless', however the 'established presence' requirement is most definitely still a thing which makes it tougher for faceless pages”. So there ya go.

4. I rarely interact with my followers. No idea if this matters. I think I’ve replied to 3 or 4 comments total. I’ll occasionally like users’ comments too.

5. I get 20-80 new page followers every day, completely organically.

6. Daily views range from 50K-150K. 80%+ are from non-followers:

The opportunity on Facebook is incredible

It’s not a zero-sum game like Google, meaning there can be thousands of competitors in the same exact niche who can all earn great money. Unlike Google/SEO, where you have to rank on the first page, and ideally top 3.

It’s also MUCH easier than growing a website, and I say that as someone who loves to build and grow sites. Facebook pages are super easy once you figure out a good content format. And they’re fun too if you like the niche!

With every post, there’s a chance of virality. You never know what will happen. Most of my posts earn around 50 cents. But every so often, one will hit $5+. Perhaps tomorrow, I’ll have a post hit $100. Improbable, but certainly not impossible.

With all that said, Facebook is NOT the world’s best business model. Don’t rely on it. Your page can get banned or demonetized. You don’t “own” your audience (like you do with an email list). Relying on Facebook would be like relying on Google. We all know how that turned out in September 2023. Just keep the risk in mind if you decide to start a Facebook page.

On that note, I’m starting a new Facebook page lol. This one is in a much broader niche. There are pages earning $100K/mo in this niche. Nothing to report so far, but you’ll hear from me when there is!

Hope you enjoyed this newsletter. Thanks for reading! Let me know if you have any questions - I’ll do my best to answer!

Ian

P.S.

Most of my time these days is spent on improving Publish Owl. I’m currently overhauling the layout and flow to make it easier to use. And I’m adding a few new features that will make it the most powerful content generation tool on the planet (I may be bit biased tho).

P.P.S

If you’re curious about Publish Owl and if you should try it, here’s a 100% raw, unedited testimonial:

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