12 Ways to Make Money on Facebook

How to make money on Facebook?… If you are a Facebook user and have been using the giant social networking site to keep up with friends and family, you’ve probably wondered if there was any way to earn money using Facebook, whether through Facebook ads, Facebook pages or perhaps one of many Facebook apps.
Well, you are not alone. Lots of people are scratching their head trying to first of all figure out how Facebook makes money and secondly, how they can use the social networking giant to cash in.
But is it really possible to make money with Facebook? How would you go about making money on Facebook? What are some ideas to make money with this social networking site?..
Well, thanks to some very useful and user-friendly applications, today almost anyone who has a Facebook page, can make money in a variety of ways. With one simple installation, you can be on your way to making money on Facebook.
Of course, like any other method of making money, especially making money on the Internet, it takes hard work and persistence to be able to make a decent amount of money on Facebook.
Although, these applications make it very easy to get started on the path of making money with Facebook, it’s the strategy and a well thought out plan, combined with persistence and hard work that ultimately factors in your success or failure in making money with Facebook.
More than anything, to make this opportunity a profitable one, you will have to promote your Facebook page and get as many fans as you can. If you look at people who make money with Twitter, their biggest concern is to add as many followers as they can. Obviously, the more fans and friends you have, the more money you will ultimately make with these apps on your Facebook page.
With that said, let’s find out how to get money from Facebook. Here are some applications you can use to make money with Facebook:

1- Radical Buy This is almost like a Facebook-made eBay. You can sell anything on your Facebook page using this unique app. List an item and have it visible to all Facebook users instantly. Now, the cool think is that you can offer commission to others who will sell your items on their Facebook page, allowing you to reach more potential buyers. Of course, that means even if you don’t have any item for sale, you can show other people’s item on your Facebook page and make money with the commission you get for selling their stuff.

Sadly, RadicalBuy has discontinued its widgets and apps and doesn’t work any more. I will try to find another good app that can be help you make money with your Facebook account, as soon as I can.

2- My Merch Store Zazzle is an innovative website where you can make money selling T-shirts and other customizable items. It allows you to create and design any product on their site (which is free) and sell them on your Facebook page. Think about the potential buyer base for customized T-shirts, hats, etc, specially if you have a lot of Facebook friends. You can also sell products created by other artists and earn a commission on those. So, even if you don’t want to deal with designing, you have a way to earn extra cash using Facebook with the help of this app.
3- Cafe Press It’s the same idea as Zazzle, but with a much bigger and well-known online store. CafePress lets you easily sell any product from anti Obama Shirts to pro Obama Shirts and everything in between on your Facebook page and make money, whether it was created by you or someone else.
4- Ether Ether is a website where you can make money answering questions asked by different people. But now, you can use their new application on Facebook to make money while giving advice to people over the phone. If you’re good at giving advice, this may be the way for you to make some extra money on Facebook. Also if you know a second language, this app makes it easy to teach others and make money. You set the rates and Ether provides a number that individuals can call. The call will then be forwarded to your personal telephone number.
5- Music Blaster With MusicBlaster you can put a simple little music store on your Facebook page and sell music from BlastMyMusic.com. You earn 5% for each song sold. The cool think about this app is the fact that you can help your favorite band or singer sell more of their music and gain more exposure while you earn some extra money.
6- Garage Sale The name says it all, it’s the good old Garage Sale, but a Facebook style Garage Sale. Simply add Garage Sale to your profile page and list everything you want to sell. When someone buys something, Garage Sale automatically bills the buyer’s credit card and lets you know when to ship the item. Your money is deposited directly into your PayPal account, or if you prefer, you can request payment by check. However, they do charge a 5% commission on the total sales price, but that’s all. No other fee for setup or anything like that.
7- Shopit Shopit is a free Social Commerce Network that gives users the ability to buy, sell or trade any product or service. Simply add a free store to your Facebook account and sell anything you like.
8- FlameTunes FT was founded in 2007 by an Iranian-American named Nima Khakpour. This app is geared more towards artists as it helps them sell their music. So, if you are an artist, FlameTunes enables you to sell your music on your Facebook. You can also use it to make money on MySpace as well.
9- Lemonade Remember when you setup your first lemonade stand in your community?… Well, this app allows you to use the same concept, combining commerce and community and have a lemonade stand in a digital (Facebook) neighborhood. Basically, you add what you want to sell to a lemonade stand and put it on your Facebook. It’s free and easy.
10- eBay Who knew that was coming! Yep, you guessed it, you can now have eBay on Facebook. This application allows you to add eBay auction listings to your Profile. Sell things to your Facebook friends, from crafts and jewelry to diary pages, undies and dinner dates to whatever else you’re selling on eBay! You also have the option to add an auction where the proceeds go to a charity of you choice. I think it’s a very smart way to combine eBay and Facebook. The best part is that you don’t even need an eBay Account to get this app going on Facebook.
11- Lending Club It’s almost like prosper where you land money to others and make money with the interest you make from the loan. Not to worry though, lending club has all the details covered. It’s completely safe and the whole legal and trust issues are taken care of by lending club. If you can use it safely, it can be a good way to make money with your Facebook.
12- e3Buy Auction Buy, sell or trade anything. Auction your used or new stuff. With e3Buy you can open a customized store, upload your logo and start selling things. Unlike eBay, there is no commission or fee to be paid. It’s completely free to use and it is also fully integrated with PayPal, so you can get paid fast.

If you know of any app that makes it possible for one to make money using Facebook, let me know and I will add it to this list. There you have it, 12 free applications that turn you Facebook page into a money-making machine! You better start getting fans and friends to that page, now that you know how to make money on Facebook!

How does Facebook Make Money?

2012 was a busy year for Facebook. They introduced the Timeline, crossed the billion users mark, set out to delete all fake accounts, and acquired Instagram for $1 billion. For a site that lets you sign up for free, you can't help but wonder exactly how (and how much) they earn their money.

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Did You Know?

Mark Zuckerberg, the chairman and chief executive of Facebook, Inc., is currently worth $13.3 billion. His annual salary, however, is just $1 per year.

The rise of Facebook has been blindingly fast and unnervingly trusted. It's actually the amount of personal data that Facebook has on its users that allows it to generate revenues so effectively. Not too long ago, rumors that Facebook was to become a paid membership site were flying thick and fast. However, Facebook denied these rumors, and stated that they would always be a free site. So if Facebook does not make money from membership fees, where is all the money coming from? Obviously Facebook is making money, and lots of it at that. Looking at the amount of money they are making, makes it seem like they have struck a gold mine, however, Facebook's money comes from far simpler sources.

Here's a brief look at some of the money they made for some part of the previous year, after which we will take a look at how they managed to do that.

Total Revenue for 2013 Q1:
$1.46 billion
That's a 38% growth since 2012 Q1.

Here's where all those billions come from. Facebook makes an astonishing 85% of its revenue from advertising. Of that, around 30% comes from mobile advertising. The rest 15% of Facebook's income comes from various sources, which have been further explained below.

Web Advertising

Facebook earned $2.6 billion in 2012, of which $1.25 billion was earned from advertisements, of which almost 80% came from web ads.

The biggest reason for the success of Facebook lies in advertising. Like I already mentioned, Facebook has access to all the information that you post on the site. They then publish ads on your screen that are directly related to where you are, what you do, what you're interested in and everything in between. Updated your status that you're going jogging, you'll start seeing Nike and other brands on your home page. Like drinking beer, you'll find an ad by the closest microbrewery.

Here's what actually happens:

• Facebook and a consumer brand, let's say Nike, enter an agreement called the Facebook Exchange or FBX.
• Now, Facebook will sell its user information to Nike, who will use it to target a more specific Facebook database.
• Let's say you made a purchase of a pair of new Nike shoes, and you gave them your email or contact number in the process. Nike can then refer to Facebook's database through FBX and you will instantly get Nike ads on your Facebook pages.
• Facebook does claim to keep a user's personal information strictly protected. The importance of FBX is that any brand can use the information to target specific users, instead of a vague demographic, and pay Facebook to post their ads on that user's page.

Mobile Advertising

95% of American citizens own a Facebook account, whose personal information is basically a giant part of Facebook's biggest source of revenue.

If you take a look at the details, you'll see that Mark Zuckerberg has been slipping down on the Forbes List. Why? Because it's difficult to post advertisements on the mobile version of Facebook due to the small screen space, making it difficult to post ads without annoying the users. Considering the fact that mobile users have grown by more than 60% (total users: 1 billion, with more than 600 million mobile users), it is certainly a big concern for Facebook. Don't get me wrong, they've been quick to respond to the rise in smartphone users. Facebook's mobile version looks cleaner than the conventional desktop one for the same reason: smaller screen space to fit ads into. Another reason includes ad-blocking software.

Despite that, Facebook managed to garner a satisfactory 30% of their total income for the first quarter of 2013 in mobile ads. This is one of the best benchmarks for human culture; it signifies that the larger companies are set to make big money off the huge population of smartphone users around the world.

Payments and Other Fees

In the first quarter of 2013, 15% of Facebook's income, or about $215 million, came from sources other than advertising.

Other methods make less money for Facebook, but enough to fill the top. Q1 2013 for Facebook revealed an income of $213 million, which is barely 15% of the total income. Facebook sells collective data to other companies like Google, who then use it to compile statistical data and tweak their own workings, like changing the ads you see on Google.com and so on.

Other non-advertising revenue includes games and featured apps on Facebook, namely, Zynga. Facebook takes a hefty cut from all revenue earned by Zynga through Facebook games.

Yet another source of income is from the Facebook Gift Shop, and Facebook credits. At first, the Facebook Gift Shop was just a place where you could get cute cards for people's birthdays and other occasions. The gift shop now serves as a more aggressive campaign to keep the stock afloat. You can buy small items like dolls, cards, or vouchers for anyone you want. Facebook will then deliver that item to them if it is material, or send it to their email immediately if it is virtual. Facebook earns quite a bit through their gift shop, and intends to continue as well as expand it.

Facebook credits is virtual money that you can use to buy in app items, or just currency to use for their various applications. You buy credits using regular money; $1 gets you about 10 Facebook credits. This also adds to the revenue that Facebook generates.

Facebook stock is now at $26 - that's $12 less than their debut $38 price. They have had problems since going public, but have managed to earn more points after their third-quarter earning. Other reasons include the expiration of lock-up agreements and Facebook reaching out to a record 1 billion users. With all the three lock-up expiration dates already over (the third and final one was on May 18^th 2013, also the smallest one), the company will have to do something fast to maintain their top rank, with the likes of Twitter and Pinterest close behind.

So for all those of you who were wondering where those billions came from, the answer is advertising. The use of smart advertising tactics is what is helping Facebook to rake in the moolah. Of course, to keep making so much money, they will have to diversify, and they are in the process of doing that. Their 2011 advertising income was more than 90% of their total income, which has shrunk to 85% in 2012. This indicates that they are slowly moving from dependency on advertising as the main part of their income. However, for the foreseeable future, you should know that most of the money that Facebook makes comes from advertising.

By Arjun Kulkarni
Last Updated: 5/21/2013

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How to Make Money Using Facebook

Facebook isn't a secret money pile just waiting to be found, but it can be a reliable source of extra income with some work and a clever approach. Read the steps below to learn how to make money using Facebook.

Steps

The Basics

1. Make great posts. The foundation of any successful plan to make money with social media is good content, and lots of it. On Facebook, that means a stream of interesting links, images, and updates every day.
   • Search for a niche and fill it with quality content. It doesn't have to be a niche nobody else is filling, but it should be specific enough that it's clear to the casual observer. For example, maybe you'll post content for cat lovers, mothers, or people with a certain political affiliation. If you plan to market a product with your account, be sure to link the product to your posts in some way.
   • Consider opening up another Facebook account and keeping it separate from your personal account. Use this account for your posts, and link them on your personal Facebook account to let people know about them. Depending on the approaches you use, you might even consider using multiple extra accounts.
   • Give it time. Let your account build up interest over time by continuing to provide fresh and relevant content every day.
2. Make a commitment to earn. The only way to reliably make money using Facebook is through persistent work. Like any job, setting a schedule and sticking to it is the key.
   • Organize. Whatever strategy you plan to pursue, you'll probably have to take care of several things every day to make it work for you. Plan out the order and times you'll do them in advance.
   • Saturate your market. Making money with Facebook is more of a numbers game than anything else. Since marketing on Facebook costs nothing except time, you can market as much as you want – even to a point that would be prohibitively expensive any other way – and let the percentages and statistics work their magic one penny at a time.
   • Add aggressively. One of the best ways to increase the number of people looking at your page is to simply add people as friends as often as you can. Most won't accept, but some will.

Making Money Through Affiliate Advertising

1. Find an affiliate program. Affiliate programs provide you with a unique ID and marketing materials, and then pay you a commission based on how much business you generate.
   • Most websites you've heard of offer such a program. Since there's no cost to the site for letting you do this, practically anybody can become an affiliate for as many sites as they want.
   • Start with well-known brands. Amazon offers a competitive affiliate program that pays a percentage of any purchase a person makes after clicking through from your post, even if it's not anything you advertised. Apple's iTunes program has an affiliate program as well.
   • Add in smaller programs. Though less likely to generate money on a given day, you can diversify and gradually increase your affiliate revenue by offering a wide range of advertising services to many different businesses.
2. Sign up. Once you've decided to market a company as an affiliate, search the company's site and fill out the required forms. This should always be free, and usually only takes a few minutes.
   • Don't ever pay to become an affiliate.
3. Add accounts. Make a Facebook account for each affiliate program or group of programs you sign up for. This allows people to follow your pages based on the things they're interested in, rather than having to sign up for one page full of all different kinds of ads.
   • As mentioned previously, you can use your primary account to repost things from the other accounts periodically, exposing those pages to the audience you've built.
4. Promote your programs. Make posts for each of them daily, and maintain your accounts fastidiously. With luck, and a good central account with a lot of followers, your affiliate accounts will begin to get followers as well. Whenever anyone clicks your posts and buys something from one of your affiliates, you earn money.

Making Money With an E-book

1. Write an e-book. E-books are just book-format publications that are distributed electronically, rather than printed on paper. Because there's basically no cost to publish an e-book, pretty much anybody with an idea can do it.
   • Take it easy on yourself. Unlike a paper-and-ink book, your e-book doesn't have to be any particular number of pages. In fact, most e-books that are written to generate income are more like e-pamphlets than whole books.
   • Choose a subject that will generate interest. Nonfiction is almost always a better choice than fiction. Oddly enough, e-books that tell people how to make money selling e-books are a popular option, and they apparently sell enough to at least offset the trouble of writing them.
   • Write in an area where you can claim some kind of authority. It'll add cachet to your book. You don't need to show credentials, but you should write about something you're better at than the average Joe.
2. Pick a publishing option. There are a few free ways to get your e-book published.
   • The most basic option is to save the book as a PDF file, and lock it with a password that you send to people who buy your book. Once the password is out there, anyone with the password can open the book.
   • Createspace is an Amazon.com service that allows you to publish e-books for free on the Amazon website. It offers better usage protection than the PDF method, but can't be directly distributed from anywhere other than Amazon's website. Createspace also has a number of paid services and options available. To maximize your Facebook profit, avoid using them.
   • ReaderWorks is a program that easily formats and published e-books in Microsoft Reader format, one of the most common e-book formats on the web. The Basic version of the program doesn't offer any security, but it's free and easy to learn. There's a paid version of ReaderWorks that adds digital rights management (DRM) protection. Only opt in for the paid version if you're going to be making a lot of books with it.
3. Get your e-book online. Createspace will post your book automatically. If you published it on your own computer, you can sell it a few different ways:
   • Amazon will let you upload and sell your e-book as a Kindle book for free. (Kindle is the brand name of Amazon's popular e-reader product line.) This option is called Kindle Direct Publishing, or KDP.
     • On the plus side, KDP is fast and very flexible. You can publish your book in about 5 minutes, and set sale royalties for yourself as high as 70% (with Amazon taking the other 30%).
     • On the other hand, KDP does not publish your book for download outside of the Kindle marketplace. Readers who don't use Kindle won't be able to browse and purchase your book.
   • eBay will let you list items for sale at a set price. By offering a stock of “copies” of your e-book available for purchase on eBay, you can turn the venerable auction site into a de facto bookselling hub.
     • The advantage of eBay is its simplicity. Anyone with access to the site can potentially purchase a copy of your book – no special gadgets or software required.
     • The downside is the cost. eBay sets fees for just about everything; they only get worse when you set a fixed price point for purchases. Some of the fees are percentages, but others are flat, which can really bite into your profit margin if you're not careful.
4. Sell your e-book on Facebook. If you were wise and wrote a book that caters to the audience you've been building up with your primary account, you've got a receptive, ready-made audience for your sales pitch.
   • Advertise it several times a day, both blatantly and at the end of other posts. Be creative and try to engage your readers. Get them excited about reading your book.
   • If you have other accounts (such as affiliate accounts), advertise your book there, too.
   • Always provide a link for readers to click to visit the page where they can purchase your book.

Edit Tips

• There's no substitute for working hard. If you take time to cultivate and maintain a readership, the rest will take care of itself; on the other hand, if you just make a bunch of affiliate pages and sit back to wait for the money to roll in, you'll never succeed.
• E-books aren't the only thing you can sell to your fans, they're just one of the most likely things. Be creative and think about what else you might be able to make for little or no money that you could advertise to your readers.