Ranking the 35 best ways to make money with Facebook ads in 2019

You probably ended up here because you heard Facebook ads are a great way to make money online. Maybe you even heard it from me.

Here are the facts: Facebook has over 2.3 billion monthly active users. More than Instagram and Snapchat combined. One-third of those users engage with brands on Facebook regularly. A whopping 93% of social media advertisers use Facebook. (1)

If there was ever a time to jump on that Facebook ads action, this is it.

Don’t forget to check out the best ways to make money fast, ways to make money online, and online business ideas.

Now, let’s move on to the top ways to make money with Facebook ads in 2019.

35. Psychology

How many times have you mindlessly scrolled through Facebook for an entire hour? Refreshed your notifications three times in a minute? Facebook is the master of using subtle psychological hints to get users addicted, and leveraging this psychology is the best way to create effective Facebook ads.

There are four main psychological triggers that keep users interacting with Facebook content: fear, outrage, pity, and aspiration. (2) The 4th one – aspirational content – is a big motivator. Social media is notorious for hooking people by presenting ideal forms of the lives they could be living (just look at all the “make money online” ads with Lambos and beaches).

34. Copywriting

Copywriting is a huge pain point for most advertisers – 86% of content out there isn’t even relevant or aligned with sales goals. (3)

Nicholas Kusmich, a self-made millionaire thanks to Facebook ads, claims that the simplest, most effective copywriting formula for Facebook ads is the feel-felt-found formula. Create feeling around a problem, build a connection by explaining you’ve felt that way too, and finally, explain that you’ve found a solution that works. (4)

Part of copywriting is psychology (see above), but part of it is also writing. Learn your psychology, practice a lot, use the formula I mentioned, and you should be good.

33. Photography

Facebook may not be as visual as Instagram, but visuals are still king when it comes to advertising. Images make up a massive 75-90% of advertising performance on Facebook, and the most effective Facebook ads have titles that are only 4 words long and descriptions that are only 15 words. (5) A picture is almost literally worth a thousand words in the Facebook ads world.

32. Consulting

Over 3 million businesses are advertising on Facebook, and most of them are failing miserably. (6) If you’ve got some Facebook ads skills but don’t want to deal with starting up your own company, offering Facebook ads consulting or management services can net you some decent cash.

It’s remote, and once you’ve locked down some clients, you can start creating training and e-courses, making it scalable too.

31. Video

Forbes called video marketing the future of content marketing for a reason: it’s expected to claim 80% of all web traffic but 2019. (7)

Whatever your methods for making money off Facebook ads, they should include video. Keep in mind that 47% of the value of Facebook ads happens in the first 3 seconds. (8) Short and sweet grabs their attention.

30. Blogging

Obviously I think blogging is a great idea, lol. It’s worked for me. But I also think that leveraging unpaid marketing methods like guest blogging and SEO is ideal for growing your blog.

That being said, paid advertising can be incredibly powerful for growing a subscriber list if you know what you’re doing. On ShoutMeLoud, they managed to gain over 5k new subscribers in just 60 days, at the cost of only .25 cents per subscriber, using Facebook ads. (9)

29. Lead magnet

Whether it’s a free eBook, a discount, or a giveaway, you’ve got to offer people something in order to get their likes and email addresses. It can be simple – people love free stuff – but you have to give something to get something.

Three of the most effective lead magnets on Facebook are also three of the easiest: offer an invite to a private, closed Facebook group, a free PDF – a short eBook, checklist, or one of your favorite blog articles converted to PDF using Web2PDF, or a free email series/course. (10)

28. Landing page

The fact is that people come to social media to relax and scroll mindlessly, not to make decisions and buy things. If your ad is going to take people away from Facebook, your landing page needs to be on its A-game.

I’ve said it before, but video content is kind right now. Size matters, folks. The video should be 400-600 pixels wide and 300-450 pixels tall, according to research from Wistia. Make sure your video is “above the fold”, too…aka people don’t have to scroll to see it. Videos in the top 250 pixels of the page get played twice as often. (11)

27. Daily ads

Facebook gives you the option to spend all your ad money at once to get a huge following upfront, or to stretch it out over time. While spending $2/day on an ad might sound like nothing, stretching your campaign out over time is hands down more effective.

Here’s the thing: 81% of sales happen after 7 or more contacts. SEVEN. (12) If you want people to convert, to even like your page, you’ve got to infiltrate their daily life. You’ve got to get your ad in front of their face 7 times.

26. Carousel ads

Carousel ads are great if you’re running a business with several products or services. They can display up to 10 different products in image or video format, along with product descriptions, pricing information, and calls to action.

This adds up pretty well: a social media agency called Kinetic Social found that carousel adds convert nearly 10 times as much as regular Facebook ads do. (13)

25. Canvas ads

Canvas ads let you cram a bunch of different types of media (video, image, text, other interactive types of media, etc.) into one space. The theory is that viewers will be drawn to the eye-catching, interactive stuff in the ad and gain a better understanding of your brand, leading to more conversions.

If you look up examples of canvas ads, you might think they look like a jumbled mess, but they work: on average, over half of Facebook users that view a canvas ad look at at least half of the ad. They stay on the ad for an amazing average of 31 seconds. (14)

24. Discounts

Would you like a yogurt fanpage on Facebook? Probably not. That’s why YoCrunch had only 1,000 likes on Facebook…until they started offering dollar-off coupons for their yogurt. In about 6 months, they shot up to 150,000 likes. (15)

They probably got some good sales numbers out of their 149,000 new fans.

23. Ad monitoring

If you’re not experienced enough yet to go into consulting, offering a Virtual Assistant or Ad monitoring service is a good place to start. They create the campaign, you post and monitor it daily. If performance drops, you tweak the campaign. If an ad is underperforming, you end it. At the end of the campaign, you deliver reports on what performed well and what didn’t.

Sounds easy, but people like Andrea Vahl have built up clients that run hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of ad campaigns on Facebook. (16) Even the smallest commission off that would net you some good money.

22. Facebook marketplace

Using Facebook ads will drastically speed up the time it takes you to sell your junk on the Facebook marketplace. People there are looking to buy something, so you’ve already got a semi-warm audience.

Running ads to the Facebook marketplace is simple, too. All you have to do is select “Automatic Placement” when you’re making your Facebook ad, and Facebook will stick your ad everywhere it makes sense, including the proper Marketplace category. (17)

21. Fitness videos

Kayla Itsines, a personal trainer and social media star, has leveraged Facebook ads to grow a colossal following of over 16 million likes on her page. (18)  She offers various personal training programs and videos with monthly subscription fees to a built-in audience in the 7-figures, so you know she’s bringing in good money.

There are two things that Kayla did really well here: she narrowed down her target market and advertised only to them, and she built a memorable brand and name for herself. If you’re big into fitness, talented, and ripped, this could be a good route.

20. Crowdfunding

Got a genius idea for a new product but you can’t get investors? Crowdfunding your new idea on Kickstarter or Indiegogo can bring in money for your new project, as well as spread awareness about it (meaning more money down the line).

You’ll have to be more careful about your ad budget since you don’t have any cash flow from your new product idea until it’s out there selling. Watch that cost per click closely. Once it begins to rise, create and test new ads again to keep your ad costs low.

19. Influencer

Instagram is influencer-heaven, but you can make money with Facebook ads as well. As an influencer, you could be a part of your favorite brand’s Facebook ads campaign. No need for a huge following, either – many brands prefer micro-influencers (between 1,000 and 10,000 followers, roughly) because although their audience is smaller, they tend to be more loyal and thus convert at a higher rate. (19)

18. Events

Hosting a paid event that’s coming up? Hopefully, you’ve got a Facebook page for it, and if you do, you can run ads to that Facebook page to increase attendees.

To boost event attendees, try to partner with a larger brand in your niche so you can use the Branded Content feature (your partner has to be verified on Facebook, aka have the blue checkmark). This feature lets you share the larger brand’s posts as your own Facebook ads as long as you tag them in it, increasing your brand credibility and awareness.

17. A/B testing

The reason so many entrepreneurs either don’t venture into paid advertising or fail at paid advertising is that they run ineffective campaigns. The #1 method for selecting an effective campaign that’s not going to waste your money is A/B testing.

Come up with an ad template. Create two ads, both exactly the same but with different images, and run each one in the exact same way with $5 or $10. Pick the image that performs best, and then run two ads again with that image but two different versions of the copywriting. Take the winner, and create two identical ads, but run them with two different target audiences. The ad campaign with the most conversions gets your spending.

16. e-Courses

Websites like Teachery let you create e-courses and webinars (learn Facebook ads well enough and you could make a course on Facebook ads, ha), which you can then market and sell for a pretty nice profit. One guy used the platform to create a webinar on landing sponsorships and netted $32,680. (20)

Because of Facebook’s powerful targeting tools, you can easily hone in on your target market with a Facebook ad for your e-course. Just make sure to offer a lead magnet, like a 10-minute seminar for free. And get at those emails, don’t forget an opt-in form.

15. Facebook instant articles

Facebook Instant Articles is a platform on Facebook that allows businesses and people to publish articles on Facebook that load instantly. Think LinkedIn’s native articles, but optimized to load quickly and convert – they load 10 times faster than regular mobile articles. (21)

The Facebook Audience Network then pays its publishers an eCPM rate that’s calculated based on your traffic volume and the countries your traffic comes from. That rate fluctuates, but it usually starts pretty high at around .35 cents and can go all the way up to $5 if your traffic is coming from the U.S. This adds up fast, with some people bringing in over $10k/month.

14. Affiliate marketing

Amazon is the usual go-to, and for good reason. It’s easy to set up and affiliates bring in a 10% commission, plus it’s a trusted website that most people already use. Plus, cookies last 24 hours, so if someone clicks your link and then buys something the next morning, you’ll still get a commission.

You can grab affiliate links from other sources as well, such as Clickbank or individual courses/products you use from other places.

Make fan pages for various niches and grow them via Facebook ads. Post great content and memes daily and throw in your affiliate links here and there.

13. Webinars

Facebook ads are a crucial tool for marketing webinars, and webinars are critical for growing your following. If you look at Leadpages’ top 12 highest converting pages, 9 of them are webinars. It is easily the best one-to-many sales and marketing tool. (22)

Use Facebook ads to promote a small free webinar, and leave your audience hanging at the end. Offer the option to upgrade to a paid plan for more extensive content and one-on-one access.

12. Facebook live

In a similar vein to webinars, you can run Facebook ads to your Facebook Live videos. Facebook live lets you earn money by placing ads at natural breaks in your live streams through a feature called “ad breaks” if you meet certain requirements (23), but you can, of course, use your Facebook live stream as a marketing tool (like a webinar) to direct followers towards your business or make them aware of a new product you’re launching.

11. YouTube videos

Your YouTube earnings (at least in the YouTube Partner program) are heavily dependent on video views and channel subscribers, two things you can acquire more of using Facebook ads.

Targeting your video correctly shouldn’t be difficult if you know your YouTube audience well. As for your ad, write two ads, each with different copy (A/B testing, as always). Throw a short teaser clip from your new video into the ad, then write a call to action to get your audience to click through to your new YouTube video.

10. Mobile app

Mobile apps are hot: Candy Crush, the silly little Bejeweled clone, earned nearly $1 billion between July 2017 and July 2018 through in-app purchases and in-app ads. Not bad when you consider that Candy Crush is free. (24)

You could do same thing. Learn to code for free at Codeacademy or somewhere similar, then build your app. Once it’s built, Facebook has a cool mobile-app specific ad format that lets you plug in an “install now” or some other relevant call-to-action button right on the ad.

9. Email list

If you’re marketing something, the ultimate goal is to get into their email – email marketing has a 4400% ROI, after all. (25)

Use Facebook ads to build an email list that’ll make you rich by creating an ad campaign with a compelling lead magnet. When people click the campaign, it goes to a landing page optimized for email capture (there are hundreds of landing page creators out there, try Leadpages, Optimise Press, or Unbounce). (26) (27) (28) They put in their email to get your lead magnet, and you build a list.

From there, you just gotta send them valuable, entertaining email content to build rapport, and of course, you gotta sell too.

8. Podcast

Podcasts are exploding in popularity because they fit neatly into everyone’s busy lives. Just look at Joe Rogan, who makes nearly $30,000 per Joe Rogan Experience episode, give or take. (29)

Find something unique you like to talk about and make sure there’s some market demand for it. Get the proper equipment, decide if you’re going to do an interview-style podcast or if it’ll just be you, and get to it. Then monetize through sponsorships, your own products, etc. (30)

7. e-Commerce

e-Commerce sales are increasing rapidly every year. (31) Create a dropshipping site, and you can get a piece of that e-commerce pie without ever handling inventory at all. Pick a specific niche that’s not over-saturated…real specific, like horoscope tee shirts or mom mugs.

The awesome thing about Facebook ads is you can hone in on really specific target audiences – like people born in March. If you’re doing horoscope mugs, create a different ad for each astrological sign, and then target the ad at an audience based on their birthday.

6. T-shirt campaign

Dropshipping with T-shirts is how every new internet entrepreneur thinks they’re going to make it. It is incredibly easy, but it is saturated. You’ll have to come up with a super original, niche idea.

If you do, you can use TeeSpring to design shirts for free. (32) You promote and sell, they print and ship. Shirts are not printed until you hit a sales goal, and the higher your sales goal, the lower your tee shirt cost and the bigger your profit.

5. Advertise a fanpage

It’s totally possible to grow a page into 1,000 likes with just $20 on Facebook ads. With a baseline of 1,000 likes, you can go places. Create shareable content to increase your reach for free and host some giveaways. Then, you can advertise your products and services to your fanpage audience for free.

4. Sell fanpage posts

If you have at least 1,000 likes on a FB fan page, you can sell posts on websites like Shop Something. (33)

Similar to sponsored posts on Instagram, brands will pay you to post their content/ads to your Facebook audience. You have to be careful with this though, because if you start posting sponsored ads all the time you will lose followers. That being said, it’s easy money, as long as you’re judicious with your ad postings.

3. Sell a fanpage

If you’d rather opt for a more hands-off method, you can just sell your fanpage altogether. This is akin to flipping websites, but with much less work and no coding involved.

No fake followers – you need to have legit engagement. Websites like FanPageCash will tell you how much your page is worth, but it’s best to do a private deal, as selling fanpages is actually against the Facebook T&C. (34)

2. Facebook groups

You can’t promote groups but you can start a fanpage and promote a post that links to your group. While Facebook fanpages have pitiful organic reach (around 10%) after the new algorithm, Facebook groups have huge reach and engagement rates without making you pay to promote and advertise. Groups are one of the most underrated methods for building an active, organic following. Once you’ve got that, your monetization options are endless.

1. Capture leads for local businesses

Honestly, you could go through the steps of building out optimized landing pages, lead magnets, email lists, and e-commerce sites, create your Facebook ads, capture leads, convert those leads, and then turn them into returning customers, all while managing a set of services or products…but that’s a lot of work for one person.

The fact is, you can make just as much money (if not more) by cutting out all the pain points (managing inventory, converting customers) and simply focusing on doing one step really well: capturing leads. That’s the bread and butter of a business, anyway. If you can do that, local businesses will pay you good money to hand over those leads.

Once you get good at capturing them, you can automate and scale it, so hard work in the beginning leads to a business that runs itself. Nothing is more hands-off than letting 4-figure leads roll into your inbox while you sleep.

I’ll Paypal you $500 if you show me a better business to start than our method.

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