How to Earn Money from Facebook Page Using Instant Articles

We’ve all been witnesses of how much growth Facebook has gotten since Mark Zuckerberg and his colleagues decided to launch a small project that they didn’t even think would become so successful. It all started as a website that was planned for the students of the University of Harvard to communicate easier among themselves and also share content.

For a few years, many publishers have used Facebook and other social networks in order to drive traffic to their blogs and website and monetize the traffic with platforms such as Adsense, CPA and CPM Networks.

Now Facebook expands the scope of Audience Network to display their own ads along with Facebook Instant Articles, which is a platform that allows publishers to optimize their articles in a way that they can be displayed immediately after you click on them. As we all know, no matter how well we optimize our blogs and websites, there’s always been a problem with the time it takes for the articles to load on mobile devices, so this comes into the action and solves that problem.

Now that we talked a little bit about how things have occurred, let’s talk about the reason that made you visit this post. 

How to make money with Facebook Instant Articles

Facebook Audience Network pays its publishers an eCPM rate based on the countries and also the volume of traffic each publisher gets, but I can certainly tell you that it pays more than any other CPM network I’ve ever worked with. Here is a screen capture of my performance report so that you can know what I am talking about.

This report is from 03/19/2017 to 04/25/2017 and you have to admit that it’s not too bad, right?

Average eCPM is $1.45 and most of the traffic I get on this site is traffic from Hispanic countries such as Mexico, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Argentina, etc. When I look at the performance report filtered by countries, I can see an eCPM as high as $4.58 for countries like the United States. Not bad at all! 

The best part of all this is the fact that you don’t need to worry about ad placements, whether you need use text or image banners, no worries about clicks and no worries about CTR%.

I mean, I’ve been able to make a lot of money with Google Adsense, but this one makes it so simple that I’m making money without moving a tip of my fingers. Google Adsense it’s even one of my favorite Networks and the way I have my articles setup allows the visitors who are not coming from Facebook to also see my Adsense banners, which means that I am monetizing my traffic with both. You can read more about increasing your earnings with Google Adsense in the following guide:

But now let’s go ahead and dive into what you really care about…   

How to get Started with Facebook Instant Articles

The first thing you need in order to start making money with Facebook Audience and instant articles is a Facebook Fan page.

1. Sign up for Instant Articles

Here’s the link for you to sign up for instant articles.

You will be prompted to select which page you want to sign up with, in case you have multiple fan pages, just select the one you want to use, accept the terms and conditions and click on the green button that says “Access to Instant Articles Tools”.

2. Set up Instant Articles and Connect to your site

For this step you to go to the main page of your fan page and click on the option that says “Publishing Tools”. 

Once you’ve done that, you will see the options for instant articles enabled for your fan page now. [1] You need to click on the option that says ” Configuration” and then [2] scroll down until you see the option that says “Tools“, which also has a different list of options. [3] You need to click on the option that says “Connect to your site“.

In this step [4] you’ll see an HTML tag that needs to be placed into the header of your WordPress site before you can claim your site.

Once you’ve added the code to your WordPress site header, you’ll probably need to clear the cache if you use a caching plugin, then you only need to [5]add your site’s URL into the corresponding field and [6]click on claim URL.

3. Customize your Articles Styles

What we will do in this step is to customize the way your articles will be displayed to people whenever they click on the instant article version from the Facebook Application.

The first thing you need to do here is to go back to your Facebook Fan Page, then you’ll go to “Publishing Tools” and then from the instant articles section, you will click on “Configuration“. Now scroll down and you’ll see the option that says “Styles“.

Now this is very simple so I will not get into many details, just click on “Add Style“, look at the options that you have the for the typographies and stuff and also make sure that you “Upload you logo“, that’s the most important part here and it’s also required for you to be able to publish Instant Articles. Make sure your logo is a PNG file with dimensions of at least 1200 x 140 and you will not have a hard time with this step.

So far we’re good, and now we need to head over to our WordPress Dashboard in order to perform some actions there, let’s see…

4. Install Plugin and Setup the Plugin

In order to take advantage of Facebook Audience and also use the instant articles feature, you need to be registered as a developer, if you aren’t registered yet, don’t worry, we’ll take care of that also during this step.

Now you need to download and install the following plugin: Instant Articles for WP.

Once you’ve installed and activated the plugin, let’s go to the plugin and add your “Facebook Page ID“, this information can be easily found in the about section of your Fan page.

Right after you’ve done that, then go ahead and place the name you selected for your style configuration on step #3 of this guide and scroll down to make sure you mark these following options.

Select “Audience Network” for the ad type and 300×250 for ad dimensions.

5. Sign up for an account as a Facebook Developer

Follow this URL in order to register as a Facebook Developer, another screen will pop up and then you’ll have to fill out some information and then hit “Create App ID”

Once you’ve finished registering your new developer’s account you should be able to see your dashboard, from there you need to copy two pieces of information. One is your ” App ID ” and the other one is the “App Secret“, which you’ll need to click on the “Show Button” .

Now on that same screen, you need to go where it says “Settings“, right at the top left corner. Select “Basic” and then scroll down a little bit and you’ll also see a button that says “Add Platform“, you need to select “Website” and then enter your URL in the corresponding field and then click on “Save  Changes“:

We are almost done here… We’re just a couple of steps away from making money with Facebook Audience. 

6. Submit Articles for Review

By now, every new article you post should also have its own version for Instant Articles, but before your articles can be published as Instant Articles on Facebook you need to be approved. Don’t worry, this process only takes about 72 hours, that’s not too long.

In order to get your articles reviewed and approved, I recommend making sure that you always have the cleanest possible format for each article, this means that you should avoid using anything other than text, images, and video as much as you can. Examples of this are plugins that you use to add elements to your WordPress Articles.

In my case, the only plugin that I use to insert other elements to my articles is a plugin named “Quick Adsense“, this is because I want all users who don’t see come to my site from Facebook to still see my Adsense banners, this way I can still monetize both sources of traffic.

Let’s get started!

Here you need to edit at least 5 articles and make sure that these 5 work fine on Facebook Instant Articles. Go ahead and edit your articles one by one, scroll down to the bottom on each article, and you will see and new tab there indicating whether your article was successfully converted or not.

If you already edited your article and you made sure it complies with what I mentioned in the previous paragraph, then go ahead and publish your changes on your WordPress. You should see a message saying that your article was successfully submitted.

Once you’ve done this with at least five articles, then it’s time to head over Facebook Instant Articles and Configuration, you should already know how to do this.

You should be able to see the blue button “Submit for Review“.

Once you submit your articles for review it takes from 24 to 72 hours for it to be approved, after that, every time you publish a new article on your WordPress it also generates a version for instant articles which you only need to copy the URL and paste it anywhere on Facebook, it will show the instant article automatically.

7. Sign Up for Facebook Audience and insert your Ad Placement

The last step before you can start monetizing your blog or website with Facebook Audience is to sign up and get your ad code. In order to get this done, from your Facebook Fan Page panel, you need to go to “Publishing Tools“, “Instant Articles Configuration” and then click on “Audience Network“.

You will be prompted to accept the terms and conditions of the service and then “Submit” your request. This will immediately send the request and also create a new Facebook App for you, now you’ll see the following options, here you need to click on “Dashboard“.

This will take you over to your new Facebook App, which offers you a dashboard with all the analytics for your articles and your earnings.

Once you have your Facebook Audience Dashboard opened then you’ll click on the option that says “Placements” and you’ll also click on the option that says “Get Code“, which you’ll be able to see immediately.

After this, select the option for banners and save it. You can just close that window afterward, there is no need to copy the code. Instead, go ahead and copy the “Placement ID“.

Now go back to the “Instant Article Plugin“, open your advanced settings and paste your ad placement into the Audience Network Placement ID.

Now it’s just a matter of waiting until your application gets approved and you’ll be able to start making money with Facebook audience.

8. How to setup the payments

Last but not least, I know you also want to know how to get paid the earnings you generate. Facebook Audience offers two different methods of payments, Direct Deposit and PayPal. The payments are made every month by the 21st, just like Google Adsense, which means that whatever you earn until the last day of the month will be paid on the 21st of the following month.

In order to set up your payments, you need to go to your “Publishing Tools“, “Instant Articles Configuration” and then click on “Your Dashboard“. Once you do that, you should be able to see the option “Audience Network” which is located on the left side, you need to click on “Payout” and “Create/Select Payout“.

Once you’ve completed setting up your payment method, you also need to complete the Tax Form, in order to do this just go back to the payout section and you’ll be to see it. Just download, complete and upload the corresponding form depending on whether you are inside or outside of the United States.

And that’s it! All you need to do from here it’s to create your articles as you always do and share them on your fan page or anywhere within Facebook. The more traffic you have, the more impressions your ads will get, and you’ll be able to make more money.