25 Easy & Free Ways to Make Money with Facebook (Ads, Apps, Pages & Likes)

If you have a Facebook account, then you can technically make money with Facebook.

Now, whether YOU actually can use Facebook to make money or not depends on a big factor.

What is that factor?

Your Facebook profile!

More importantly, how good your profile is. How active you are. The kind of post you share. The number of friends you have, etc. Basically, anything that makes people trust you and want to follow you and what you do and share.

Almost all Facebook money making options rely on the quality of your profile.

So how do you make sure you have that quality profile?

Start with the basics…

Make sure you have a few good current pictures of yourself. Include the city or town you live in. Add your contact info, etc. Basically, anything that tells people you are a real person and not a scammer trying to scam them out of their hard earned money.

Once you have that covered, you are well on your way to making money with your Facebook account.

Should I use my personal account?

It really depends on you and what method you want to use to make money.

If you are serious about this and aren’t looking at it as just a quick way to make a few bucks here and there, then I would highly recommend you create a totally separate account just for your Facebook business.

What you can and can not sell on Facebook?

You can sell pretty much whatever you want as long as they don’t fall into the following categories:

• Illicit drugs
• Firearms
• Certain healthcare products
• Alcohol
• Tobacco
• Animals
• Gambling related products

So what does that leave you with?

A lot actually!

You can sell your own eBooks, books, used stuff, handmade jewelry, DIY crafts,  even cars.

How to Make Money With Facebook

Alright, so now we know what we can and can not sell on Facebook. Let’s get to the meat and potato and find out what options you have to actually profit using the biggest social media network.

1. Make money on Facebook posting links!

Almost everybody shops online these days and I can say with 100% certainty that everyone likes getting cashback.

How does that make you money?

Referral bonus!

You see, cashback sites like eBates pay you for referring new users to the site.

Why?

Because the more people shop through their platform, they more money they make! That’s how eBates and other cashback sites make their money and can afford to give you cashback for every purchase.

So in order to entice more people to join, they offer referral bonuses. All you have to do is share your referral link on Facebook and for every friend that signs up with that link, you earn $5.

Refer 10 friends and you got an easy $50. Refer 20 and you got $100. And so on. It just can’t get any easier than that.

They also run special promotions from time to time where they pay you $25 for each referral instead of the standard $5. Imagine that!

Now, here is the best part – you are not just making money yourself. You are also helping your friends make money. They get to earn cashback every time they buy something online. eBates cashback portal includes hundreds of online stores. So no matter what you and your friends are trying to buy, you get cashback. It’s like getting free money.

Ready to get started?

1. Go here to create your free eBates account.
2. Go to “Refer A Friend” section to get your special referral link.
3. Create a short post on Facebook with some details about the site and how people can earn cashback and post your link.

You can also email your link to your friends and family, by the way. So this doesn’t have to be only on Facebook. You can share your link with anyone you like, in any way you want as long as you are not spamming people.

Enter contests and giveaways

Most companies run their contests and giveaways on social media these days. That gets them more attention. And of course, Facebook is the biggest place for contests.

In most cases, all you have to do is to enter a contest for a chance to win prizes is following the said company or liking g a post.

It’s an easy way to get free stuff on Facebook. You can win anything from cash to tickets, travel related prizes, books, gift cards and other prizes.

2. Look for bugs

Yes, Facebook will actually pay you to find bugs and security issues on their platform.

Why?

Because that gives them the chance to fix the problem before the hackers and bad guys find and exploit them.

This is actually very common among big companies. There are many companies that pay you to test their sites and find bugs.

3. Facebook Shop (by Storeya)

Wanna know how you can make money with Facebook apps?

Facebook Shop is an awesome app for those of us who sell stuff online. Whether you have an e-commerce store, a small website, a storefront on sites like Zazzle and Cafepress, you can use this app to import your entire store and all its products to your Facebook page under a “Store” tab.

So yes, you’ll basically have a store on Facebook.

The app has free and paid versions. The free version is limited, of course, but it does enough to get you familiar with it and see if you like it enough to upgrade.

4. Magic Moments (by Cafepress)

Magic Moments was created by Cafepress (the site that lets you create and sell customizes t-shirts, mugs, hats, etc) to help users take pictures and videos of their products and sell ’em on the platform easily.

If you have an artistic side, this may be a great way to make some cash creating works of art.

5. Garage Sale

GarageSale app is connected to Buy.com. It’s a virtual garage sale that makes it easy to sell your used stuff and make some extra money.

6. Zazzle

Zazzle app has a very neat feature – using its “My Merch Store” feature, you can market items you create not only on Zazzle.com but also on your Facebook page.

7. eBay

The eBay Facebook app allows you to promote your eBay listings on your Facebook page.

8. Sell stuff through local groups

We all have extra stuff we can get rid of. Before Facebook and apps came around, there was Craigslist and a few classified sites like Craigslist. If you wanted to buy and sell anything locally, you would go to Craigslist.

Although Craigslist is a still a great option, local Buy & Sell groups on Facebook is the best option, especially if you have safety concerns. Here, you can at least check out the profile of the people you are dealing with and get a sense of whether or not you can trust them.

There are local Buy & Sell groups in almost every city. All you have to do is join them and start selling your stuff.

Don’t have a group in your town?

Create one!

It only takes a few minutes. You can invite friends, family, neighbors, co-workers to get things going. Once the word gets out, other people will start joining and before you know it you have a great local Buy & Sell group that’s thriving.

9. Post an ad on your Facebook page

If you want to sell stuff only to your Facebook friends, this is an easy option for selling stuff that doesn’t require anything but posting a quick ad.

Think of it as posting an ad on Craigslist.

All you have to do is a create a post about the item(s) you want to sell, add a few pictures and wait for offers.

10. Sell stuff on Facebook’s Marketplace

When looking for an online marketplace to sell stuff, people immediately think of eBay and Craigslist. But Facebook market place is one of the most underrated and underutilized platforms for selling goods.

You can sell a variety of items, from books and baby products to clothing and even furniture, on Facebook’s Marketplace.

11. Do Affiliate Marketing

You can promote products as an affiliate on Facebook as well.

This can be a little tricky. You don’t want to spam your friends and family by dumping affiliate links every time you post on Facebook. You have to strike a balance.

More importantly, you have to find and promote something that is relevant. For example, around the Halloween, you could promote Halloween customs for an online store.

Here is how you can get this started:

1. Sign up (it’s always free) for an affiliate marketing site like CommissionJunction or Shareasale.
2. Search their marketplace for a product/service to promote
3. Grab your unique affiliate link (They’ll give you a unique link that identifies you as the source whenever someone uses it to buy that product/service.)
4. Post on Facebook periodically about the product while including your unique affiliate link in it.
5. Every time someone clicks that link and buys the product, you earn a commission.

The best part about this whole thing is that once that post/link is up, it can generate commission for you for as long as that product is available. It becomes a sort of passive income source.

12. Publish a Facebook Kindle eBook

It’s a new and very unfamiliar landscape for grandma. She wants to keep in touch with the kids. They all seem to be on that Facebook thingy all day long. Only if grandma knew how to use the damn thing!

If you know a lot about using Facebook and all its functions, you can help grandma by creating a simple Facebook guide eBook.

To those of us who use Facebook every day, it may seem crazy that anyone would need (and pay for) a guide for using it.

But people do. Think of the elderly and the less tech-savvy folks. Amazon’s Kindle library is full of eBooks with Facebook guides for seniors.

13. Blog about it

Just like creating an eBook, blogging about Facebook could also make you money.

Think of it as an eBook with new chapters published daily or weekly.

And to make money, you could display ads, sell sponsored posts, and even offer Facebook-related services (setting up fan pages, custom profile page designs, etc.)

14. Develop your own Facebook related app

If you can code, creating a Facebook related app is a great way to not only make money but also help users with various functions.

But what if you don’t know how to make apps?

There is another way. Although it requires a little investment. You can hire freelance developers on just about any freelancing site to design and develop the app for you.

You come up with the idea (what the app will do) and the rest is done by the developer.

If you need inspirations, check out the story of Facebook app student millionaires who after being encouraged by their Stanford professor, B.J. Fogg, to create apps for homework assignments, created apps that were making them thousands of dollars a day!

15. Do Sponsored Likes & Shares

Although I am not particularly fond of this one, hundreds of thousands of people do use this method for extra money.

Basically, if you have a large number of friends on Facebook you could go on micro job sites like Fiverr offering to like or share a page, website, picture, etc for a fee.

Obviously, the bigger is the number of friends you have, the more people are willing to pay you to essentially advertise their stuff on your Facebook page.

Some people are actually making a living with this on Fiverr.

16. Become a Facebook marketing expert

Some marketers are still trying to catch up on how to effectively use social networks as a marketing tool.

If you know the ins and outs of marketing tactics and strategies on Facebook like the back of your hand, you could sell your services as a Facebook marketing specialist.

Help small business promote and grow their Facebook pages so they can reach more potential customers.

Just like Google revolutionized search advertising, Facebook has a similar effect on social media advertising, so use your knowledge to help companies make use of this potential.

17. Sell Likes & Shares

This is another method I don’t particularly like, but it’s out there.

Some people, on sites like Fiverr, offer a service where they get thousands of likes or shares for a Facebook page you specify. There are even some companies now that specialize in doing that.

While usually, people selling on Fiverr seem to be using a bot to generate thousands of fake accounts, thus getting you thousands of fake likes and shares, there are a few companies that insist they deliver shares and likes from real accounts with real individuals behind them.

People pay for these fake (or real, but useless since they are not genuine) likes because it’s much easier to get new customers/visitors to like you when they see a big number of people who’ve already liked you. It’s the herd mentality.

That said, Facebook doesn’t like that and if they catch you, they will ban you. As I said, I don’t like this option, but just sharing what’s out there.

18. Sell Fan Pages

You can actually make good money by offering customized fan pages to businesses.

Depending on the customer and their needs, it can be as simple as writing a few sentences about the company and putting a nice header picture together, or as specialized as creating custom graphics and images to create a truly amazing Facebook page.

HubSpot has a great list of 15 beautiful Facebook fan pages that can give you some ideas and inspirations on how to create great looking fan pages.

Again, take a look at Fiverr. There are tons of people who make money doing exactly that.

In fact, I hired one guy to do a fan page for my paid survey reviews site SurveySatrap.com. He did an OK job. And for $5 I can’t complain.

Other ways to directly or indirectly make money using Facebook

As you can see, there are a lot of options. You just have to be willing to try them out.

Here are a few more ideas to get you thinking:

19. Invest in Facebook
20. Host a fundraiser
21. Create Facebook ads to promote products and services
22. Apply for a job
23. Manage social media accounts for individuals and companies
24. Join Facebook Groups to help other people with your expertise and knowledge
25. Create Facebook Live videos to promote your brand or products of other brands

Once you start thinking of Facebook as a marketing platform and not just a place where you share pictures of your dogs and cats, you begin to see the true potential it has for making you money.

Final Words

What I personally like about Facebook marketing, in general, is that there are options for everybody. There are some methods that will help you earn a little pocket change, while others will enable you to actually make decent money from Facebook. So give some of these options a try.

And don’t forget to let us know how you make money on Facebook by commenting below.