The Ultimate Guide To Growing & Monetising Facebook Pages

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Introduction

Welcome to the Ultimate Guide to Growing & Monetising Facebook Pages. This is a free resource that is designed to help you achieve the following:

Create high-quality, niche-targeted Facebook pages built around passionate audiences.
Grow those pages to give you the potential to reach hundreds of thousands, potentially millions of people.
Monetize your pages to generate anything from extra beer money to a significant income.
Grow a burgeoning empire of pages.
Manage this all in the easiest, most time-effective manner possible.

Who Am I?

My name is Sam Frost, and I’m a digital marketing enthusiast with over 10 years’ experience building and monetising websites.

I started out making money online back at high school, and have been in the marketing industry since leaving university.

Currently I am the marketing manager for a sales software startup, and I also offer consultancy services to businesses looking to improve the efficiency of their digital marketing efforts.

Why Should You Listen To Me?

Because I am actively building, growing and monetising Facebook pages every single day. I’m not going to claim I’m a millionaire from my ever-expanding empire of pages (and groups) but I am making useful extra income every month, and that amount is consistently growing.

I am out there at the coal face, “doing it” with my Facebook pages and groups. I don’t just read what gurus say and regurgitate it, or anything like that.

Because of this, you can feel safe in the knowledge that I only recommend methods I have actually tried and seen results from myself.

I believe that within the next 18-24 months I will be able to consistently make 5 figures per month from Facebook pages and groups – and managing this should only take me an hour or so a day.

Hold Up – That Doesn’t’ Sound Like I’ll Be Getting Rich Quickly?

No, and it shouldn’t. This is not a way to “get rich quickly.” It is all about steadily and consistently expanding your audience and monetisation efforts.

If you are looking to make a fortune overnight, then I suggest you look elsewhere!

Why Is This Guide Free?

Rather than make up some nonsense excuse about wanting to give lots back to the community or whatever, I’m going to be honest here:

I’m giving this guide away for free for a couple of reasons:

I am working on a video version of the guide (with significant additional content) and I hope to up-sell you on it. However, I still promise that this free, text + picture version only will still have more value in it than 99% of paid info products you can find online.
One of my business goals is to grow the consulting work I do. Providing this guide for free will help me get my name out there and grow my authority, hopefully leading to more consulting gigs!

BUT IN ALL SERIOUSNESS – FINISH

Why Facebook Pages?

Before we get started, there’s one thing I want to cover that is important. That is why I think growing and monetising Facebook pages (and, to a lesser extent, groups) is a good way of making money online.

Here are the top reasons why I think Facebook page & group marketing is well worth your time and effort:

Low barriers to entry. All you need is a computer (Mac, Windows, Linux or Chromebook), a Facebook account, a Paypal account or credit card for Facebook advertising, and a cheap app I’ll mention shortly that will cost you less per month than a couple of coffees. You don’t need programming knowledge, you don’t need graphic design skills, you don’t need to be super clever (although all these things help). Provided you can follow instructions and think outside the box on occasion, you can do very well with this method.
Easy to get started. You can have your first page started within 5 minutes of finishing this guide. You can start driving likes to that page within the next 30 minutes.
Easy to manage. Through the use of a few simple apps and tools (that don’t cost much money at all) you can easily manage dozens, potentially even hundreds of Facebook pages. I have around 10 pages that I am actively growing at the moment (with a number of others waiting in the wings) and I spend no more than 1hr per day on this, including moderating linked Facebook groups.
Loads of fun. Seriously, of all the techniques, tactics and methods I have tried over the years to make money online, this is easily one of the most enjoyable. I hardly feel like I’m working at all. In fact, it feels like a hobby that I get paid to do.
Bring joy to peoples’ lives. This sounds dumb, but honestly it’s one of the best things about running good quality Facebook pages that are built around peoples’ passions and interests. I’ve received dozens of private messages from people, thanking me (well, technically thanking the page) for giving them something to look forward to when they open up their Facebook app in the morning. Bringing meaningful escapism to people is a great feeling.

How Much Money Can I Make?

Ah, the age-old, all-important question.

I’m not going to do the usual thing and claim that you’re just moments away from 6-figure paydays and push button profits.

However, I do believe that building, growing and monetising Facebook pages (and groups) is a great way to earn at least a useful extra side income in a fun and interesting manner.

What would an extra $250, or $500, or even $1000 per month mean for you and your family? What if you knew you could scale that income by expanding your existing pages, and adding more to your empire?

Of course I’m not the only person making money from Facebook pages either.

Here are some links to other people doing well (in fact, far better than I am) with Facebook pages:

Realistically, I think you should be able to clear $250 per month profit within six months. That’s a conservative estimate, with you having three or fewer pages you actively manage, spending no more than 10 minutes per day in total managing them.

If you get into the swing of things, or get good at monetisation, or “go viral” or invest more, then the potential earnings are significantly higher than this.

Basically, I want you to understand that you probably won’t get rich from Facebook pages. But you can make a large amount of extra income that will be helpful for you and your family, and you can have fun doing it at the same time!

What Do I Need To Get Started?

Not a lot, really. The following are essential:

A Facebook account
Internet access (somewhat obvious, or you wouldn’t be reading this).
A credit card or Paypal account, and at least $100 to spend on ads to get started – the more you can start with the better.
FPTraffic – technically this is optional as you can do everything without scheduling software (or use free options) but I am building this guide around FPTraffic as it’s cheap and very good, and what I have been using for a couple of years now.
- Go here to read my review.
- Go here to sign up for FPTraffic.

Optional extras:

Scrapebox – makes finding content to post on your pages much easier and faster, but not necessary until you’re a bit more advanced.
Buzzsumo – this is for advanced users, but is very helpful for finding “click bait” content ideas for when you get a viral media site up and running.
Photoshop,

What Is The Basic Process?

Before we get too in-depth, it’s time to take a high-level look at the process we will be following, to grow and profit from Facebook pages.

Obviously, I will be breaking down each step further. But for now, here’s the overview:

Pick a niche
Create a page
Grow the audience
Engage that audience with great content, so you get more reach and more engagement (and more growth)
Start monetising
Scale that page up
Grow a network/empire by branching out in to related pages
Automate the whole process as much as possible to make it manageable

Step 1. Choosing A Niche

Now comes the fun part. We can roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty, starting with choosing a niche.

For this particular guide, I’m actually going to “live build” a page that will be public and visible so anyone can check it.

Basically, this means you can follow along with the entire process I would usually do, from start to finish. I’m also making sure that my page I build up in this guide is in a totally different niche to any in which I have already built pages and groups – that way you know I’m not just piggybacking off past successes to get ahead.

WHAT WORKS – FINISH

Broad niche list:

Popular TV shows
Movie franchises
Game franchises
Sports
- Be careful with specific sports teams – there were cases of Facebook cracking down on sports team-specific pages, e.g. “All Blacks fans”.
Bands or artists
Brands
- Make sure you list that you’re unofficial
Pets
- Breeds of animals
Hobbies
- Musical instruments
Personal development

NOTE ABOUT GENERAL NICHES

Niche Picking Tips

It always helps to pick a niche you’re passionate about, or that you know a lot about. Your knowledge and passion will result in a page that appeals better to its audience, meaning higher engagement and more results.
- But check that there is monetisation potential (see the monetisation chapter for info about this)
Always think about the potential to pick a niche that can then be used as a springboard for growing other pages in tangentially-related niches.
- For example, my biggest page is about a popular TV show. I have then used this page to jumpstart the growth of about 6 other pages, saving me huge money on page like ads etc.

Niche For This Case Study

For this particular “live” case study, I’ve chosen to go with pets. I’m going to build up a page about Labrador dogs.

Here’s why I chose this niche:

I have two Labradors. Here’s a photo of Winston and Daisy. I have always loved Labs and they are my favorite dogs by a country mile. This passion will help me to “get in the mindset” of Labrador fans.
I know for a fact that many Labrador owners are obsessed with the breed!
I know there are other pages out there on Facebook that focus on this topic. Competition is a good thing as it means there’s a market. I will just do my page better than the competitors do theirs, so that I can “win”.
There are heaps of “passion products” for Labrador owners (and dog owners in general). This means solid monetisation potential.
Heaps of content out there that I can scrape up and repost using FPTraffic. I should be able to get several YEARS’ worth of content in a few minutes using Scrapebox and some other tools.
Can branch out into other pet niches (e.g. other dog breeds) using this page a springboard.

Step 2: Creating Your Page

By this point you should have a niche selected. I’m going with Labradors (the dog breed) but your niche could be a TV show, a popular character, a hobby or something else altogether.

Now it’s time to do the basic creation of the page.

Here’s the process you need to follow. I’ve tried to make this as easy as possible to follow, by using lots of pictures and simple explanations.

FINISH

Step 3: FPTraffic

Now you’ve got a Facebook page, it’s time to get set up with FPTraffic. I believe this simple tool is essential for being able to manage your page(s) without spending much time.

FPTraffic is a web-based application that costs $10 USD per month. It allows you to link up your Facebook page(s) and then you can find and schedule content from within FPTraffic.

For example, you can say to FPTraffic “post 2x daily on ‘For The Love Of Labradors’ at 7am and 8pm’ and then the app will pull posts from your content queue for that page.

What this allows you to do is schedule large quantities of content in advance, meaning that you could spend a few hours setting up a couple of months’ worth of content and then let your page run on autopilot.

I manage about a dozen pages (and counting) using a single FPTraffic account!

Here’s how to sign up for FPTraffic:

FINISH

Step 4: Finding Content

At this stage, you have the bare bones of a Facebook page set up and ready to go. Now it’s time to find content and get that content posted on our page so that you have something to use to attract an audience!

FPTraffic Content Options

FINISH

FPTraffic Chrome Extension

Another super-speedy way of finding content is using the FPTraffic Chrome extension.

Here’s how to use it:

FINISH

Google Image Search

To be honest, the best place to find good image content for posting is Google Image Search. It really is the best image search engine by a long shot.

However, because of API restrictions (or at least this is my understanding) FPTraffic is unable to link into Google Image Search.

This means you will need to find and download images manually. However, my next point covers a tool that can scrape Google Images results and download the results:

Scrapebox

FINISH

Scraping Competitor Posts Using Python

FINISH

Facebook Groups

FINISH

FAQs

Whew, this has been a massive effort. But before I sign off, I want to cover a few key frequently-asked questions.

Comments

Got a comment about this guide? Please leave it below and I’ll do my best to answer ASAP. Feel free to ask any questions you have