How to turn your passion for Facebook into profit

Imagine spending your day on Facebook searching and sharing the things you love and then going to sleep at night and money keeps rolling into your bank account. Sure, it might be small amounts at first, but over time this grows.

Sounds great doesn’t it, but how can you do this when Facebook doesn’t pay you for the ads in your news stream? That’s right Facebook uses your news stream to generate income for itself and doesn’t share any of the profits with you.

You are the one creating and sharing content, and Facebook thanks you by flooding your news stream with paid ads. I know this because I am one of those advertisers taking advantage of a one-way business transaction.

What existed before Facebook?

How did people share and like content before Facebook and other social media platforms? They started a blog and began blogging.

That’s right blogging was the old social media. I way to inform your friends what was happening in your life, gave you the ability to share crazy content you found on the Internet and enabled you to comment on other people’s creativity.  Sounds a bit like social media today doesn’t it?

So what’s the difference?

Bloggers Make Money from Blogging

Yes, the fundamental difference between someone spending their day on Facebook and someone Blogging is, one earns money and the other does not.  If you fall into either of these categories I probably don’t need to tell you which person earns extra money as a reward for sharing and liking great content.

While you spend hours a day writing to your facebook wall, sharing content and liking content that comes your way, bloggers are doing the same things on their blogs and earning money from it. But how is this possible?

Fundamentally the difference is they own their blogging platform and can make money from it anyway they choose.  Most bloggers start with a few Google ads and when people visit their blog and see something of interest in the ads they click through and the blogger gets a small monetary reward from the advertiser.  And yes, this money continues to roll in while they sleep. Neat isn’t it?

Social Proof that Bloggers Earn Money

Ok, so you are probably thinking this is smoke and mirrors and if it’s that easy then why isn’t everyone doing it. Well, actually they are. You see a new blog is created every 3 minutes and there are millions of blogs already on the Internet. Just have a look at these WordPress stats on Wikipedia, impressive hey?

WordPress is the blogging platform I use for my blogs and so do these people who share their monthly income reports with the world.

Pinch of Yum – Lindsay and Bjork share their love of food with their readers. They create, share and link to the recipes they think their friends and readers will enjoy.

Sounds familiar doesn’t it?

Just a girl and her blog – Abby is just your average woman, mother and wife making sense of blogging and sharing her experiences with others.

Yes, it’s that simple and yes she is earning real dollars.

Miss Bizi Bee – Kaitlin loves working with craft and has a successful Esty business, but also maintains this blog. More recently she has decided to spend more time blogging as the extra income she earns is greater than her craft projects generate.

Making extra money and having fun, sounds alright doesn’t it?

Are you ready to get started?

But notice none of these bloggers are using free blog hosting, and they still all have a presence on Facebook and other social media platforms.

Why aren’t all bloggers successful?

Although it’s really easy to start a blog, the path people choose isn’t always the right one.

You see there are many different blogging platforms available such as; WordPress, Blogger, Medium, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Wix, HubPages and the list goes on but what separates the successful people from the also-rans is successful bloggers have their own internet domain name. Yes, a real website.

Of course, a free blogging platform has a low barrier to entry, but that in itself is a problem. When something is free, you play with it for a while and then get distracted by something else, knowing you never paid money helps lessen the guilt of abandoning it.

Seriously, either get real and own your own website or don’t waste your time helping big companies to get rich.

Need more convincing? Then just search for your favorite ‘thing’ and look at how many free blog sites appear in the search results. You’d be lucky to find any on the first few pages in Google and no one really bothers to look further than the first page, do they?

There are over 3 million searches performed on Google every day, so don’t waste your time and creative talents on free blogging sites. Grab a piece of that search traffic and start your own blog in less than 10 minutes for just the price of a large coffee per month.  Then you can get serious about turning your Facebook passion into profit.

Turning your Facebook Passion into Profit

So are you interested in making little extra money on the side while still spending way too much time in Facebook? Well, the truth is you can still share what you love with your Facebook friends, you just need to add in another few steps.

Step 1.  First publish to a BLOG

Step 2.  Share your blog to your Facebook Fans

Step 3. Now share to your Facebook timeline

It’s actually quite that simple and will take you a little more time than you are used to, but you’ll be able to monetize your blog any way you see fit. Most bloggers start with a few ads or recommend products they love and take a small finders fee if someone buys through a link on the site. Here are the other ways to make money blogging.

Most people think they have nothing of value to share although they are happy to share and like on Facebook or other social media platforms all day. And you know those likes, retweets and shares you get back. Well, that’s your social proof that people like what you have to say about the cool things you find.

The only difference is you’ll share them on your blog before resharing again to your Facebook friends and fans.

Yes, you’ll have fans too! Whoohoo!

The way bloggers connect with their fans is via a Facebook Fan page and you should set one of these up to keep your blog fans and Facebook friends separate as you might like to share only things they each enjoy.

So you’ll write your Blog Post then Publish to your Fan Page and finally share the link to your Facebook Friends.

Hang on this sounds way too easy, maybe I’m missing something. Nope, it’s as easy as that and when you’ve been posting like this for a while it’ll become second nature.

Pro Tips: You might like to write longer posts on your blog or curate lists of cool things to get the attention of Google Search. But either way, get creative and tell the world you exist.

Are you ready to start a blog? – How to Start a Blog in under 10 minutes

or

Need a little hand holding to get started on your journey?

The Future of Facebook

At the time of writing this, Facebook had not released a way for you to earn money on your Facebook profile, but profits from you sharing your experiences with your friends because that’s how they learn what you like, so marketers can target you with ads.

You may have noticed more and more ads appearing in your newsfeed and sponsored ads are replacing the content your friends are trying to share with you. This system is broken and Facebook is being ruined by marketers just like they ruin everything else.

I’m not about to predict the demise of Facebook in a similar way to mySpace and Friendster, but they are walking a fine line and may just be left with people who just can’t be bothered to leave.

A lot of my friends are no longer really active users of Facebook, and just check-in once in a while to keep updated with what’s going on. How active are your friends?

Where to Next?

Well, I could literally talk about this all day, because I turned blogging into my full-time job. Well actually doing something you enjoy can hardly be considered a job, can it?

I’ve got plenty of useful information on this blog so take a look around and I’m always available on twitter if you have any questions. My twitter handle is @DIYBlogGuy

I wrote this blog post because I see all the great content on Facebook and feel people need to understand they can make a little extra money for themselves if they apply themselves and follow the simple steps I’ve outlined here.

Now who wouldn’t like a little extra pocket money, to buy that ‘thing’ you’ve always wanted, or holiday you didn’t think you could afford.

Feel free to write in the comments below and share on Facebook if you know a person who needs to do this.