If you’re just using Facebook for maintaining your personal profile and staying in touch with old friends, youcould be missing out on a money-making opportunity.Here’s our guide to making money on Facebook.
Let’s start with the basics. If you’re doing some spring cleaning and have found lots of items you are no longer using, you already have a store or you want to make a little money on the side, you can sell items on Facebook. If you already have a business that sells goods you can enable visitors to your business’s Facebook page to click through to a Facebook store.
To start selling goods, you’ll have to set up a Facebook page for your business, even if that business is just you selling items you no longer want. This business page will be different from your personal Facebook profile. Make sure that your business’s Facebook page is appealing and includes eye-catching pictures. If you have a brick-and-mortar small business you can include its address and business hours. If you have an e-commerce site or sell somewhere like Etsy you can include a link.
If you want visitors to your business’ Facebook page to be able to buy products from you right on Facebook, you’ll have to put a little time and effort into enabling that feature. One option is to use a service like Shopify. If you set up a Shopify store you can add a free Facebook Store app to your Shopify store.
How to Make Money on Facebook: Selling Goods in Groups
Another way to make money on Facebook is to sell items within Facebook groups that have sale features turned on. These could be Facebook groups for your block, your bowling league or your circle of friends, for example. They look like regular groups, but they let members list items, search for items, buy and sell. Facebook has added new features that make these groups and the existing “For Sale” Facebook groups easier to navigate for buyers and sellers.
To turn on the sale feature of a Facebook group, click the three dots in the top-right corner of your group and select Edit Group Settings. Click Pick a Group Type, Select Buy, Sell, Trade and click Confirm. Save your changes at the bottom of the page. You can remove the sale feature at any time by revisiting your group’s settings.
Once you’ve found a Facebook sale group that has the sale feature enabled, you can go to it and click Sell Something. Enter the item’s details and click Post. When your item sells, you can return to the original post and click Mark as Sold. If the sale falls through or you re-stock an item, you can click Mark as Available for that item.
Facebook Selling Tips
Whether you’re selling via your business’s Facebook page or through a Facebook sale group, there are some general tips that can help you make more money. For one thing, it’s a good idea to take the time to make sure the photos of your items are appealing, honest and of high quality.
Next, you’ll want to include catchy and accurate descriptions of your items. Some items, like designer purses with their tags still one, sell themselves. Others require a little more creativity from you to attract buyers.Choosing an appropriate price for your items will go a long way toward ensuring a successful sale. It may sting a little bit to list an item for half of what you paid for it originally, but remember that if you’re selling a used item you’ll generally need to knock a little off the original price.
If you’re an artisan selling goods you made yourself, these rules don’t apply. But it’s still a good idea to keep your prices competitive. That means doing research into how other makers are pricing their goods. Some good old-fashioned Facebook stalking can help you do this competitive research into the pricing of comparable goods.
Finally, it’s always important to provide good customer service, even if your “customers” are your neighbors who are coming to pick up your old lawn mower or your extra tools. Be responsive to messages and easy to work with and you might get repeat customers.
Facebook is not responsible for items sold in sale groups. Buyers purchase items at their own risk, and disputes are between buyers and sellers. As a seller, it’s your responsibility to abide by Facebook’s Community Standards and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities.
Facebook Ads
Sometimes you have to spend money to make money. That’s where Facebook advertising can come in. With Facebook ads you can target specific demographics that you think will be interested in your business, product or service. You can narrow your Facebook ad campaign so that it’s only reaching users in a certain age group, for example.
You can also use location targeting to make sure your ads reach potential customers in your area. You can set the radius around the city whose residents you want to target. This is a great option for brick-and-mortar shops but may not be necessary for e-commerce sites.
With Facebook ads, you can reach users whose interests align with what you’re trying to sell. When you use Facebook’s ad creation tool you’ll be able to select the interests you want to target.
To get started with Facebook advertising you’ll use the Facebook Ads Manager. The first step is to choose an objective for your advertising campaign. You can select an objective from a range of options, such as: to boost your business page’s posts, send people to your website, increase conversions on your website and more. Then, you’ll choose your audience based on the factors described above (demographics, interests, etc.)
Next, you’ll set the budget and schedule for your advertising campaign. You can either set a lifetime budget for the lifetime of the ad campaign, or a daily budget. You’ll be able to choose a start date and end date for the advertising campaign and decide whether you want to run ads all the time or run them on a certain schedule.
You have two options with Facebook ads. You can either tell Facebook how much each click, engagement or other goal is worth to you and pay for ads accordingly, or you can tell Facebook to optimize your ads for you.
In the latter case, you’ll be directing Facebook to get the most engagements at the best price and charge you for impressions. The option you choose will depend on how much control you want to have. Then, once you upload an image you’ll be ready to create your ad. To learn more about the details of Facebook advertising, you can head here.
You can also use location targeting to make sure your ads reach potential customers in your area. You can set the radius around the city whose residents you want to target. This is a great option for brick-and-mortar shops but may not be necessary for e-commerce sites.
With Facebook ads, you can reach users whose interests align with what you’re trying to sell. When you use Facebook’s ad creation tool you’ll be able to select the interests you want to target.
To get started with Facebook advertising you’ll use the Facebook Ads Manager. The first step is to choose an objective for your advertising campaign. You can select an objective from a range of options, such as: to boost your business page’s posts, send people to your website, increase conversions on your website and more. Then, you’ll choose your audience based on the factors described above (demographics, interests, etc.)
Next, you’ll set the budget and schedule for your advertising campaign. You can either set a lifetime budget for the lifetime of the ad campaign, or a daily budget. You’ll be able to choose a start date and end date for the advertising campaign and decide whether you want to run ads all the time or run them on a certain schedule.
You have two options with Facebook ads. You can either tell Facebook how much each click, engagement or other goal is worth to you and pay for ads accordingly, or you can tell Facebook to optimize your ads for you.
In the latter case, you’ll be directing Facebook to get the most engagements at the best price and charge you for impressions. The option you choose will depend on how much control you want to have. Then, once you upload an image you’ll be ready to create your ad. To learn more about the details of Facebook advertising, you can head here.
Bottom Line
Your strategy for making money on Facebook will depend on what you have to sell. If you’re just looking to unload some items you already have, a neighborhood Facebook sale group could be a perfect fit for you. If you have an established business or you’re a professional artisan, you may decide to set up a Facebook page for your business and enable purchases from that page. Want to splash out? You can pay for Facebook ads to drive customers to your e-commerce page.
