facebook video – Alan Spicer – YouTube Certified Expert

Facebook remains something of an untapped resource for many when it comes to making money from your video content. YouTube is obviously the most well-known option for regular video content, Twitch might be your go-to if you’re a streamer, and there’s a myriad of other places to check out, like Vimeo, Instagram, and more. But Facebook has an understandable reputation as a platform for keeping in touch with your friends and family.

And Facebook is great for that. But there’s a lot more you can do with it.

Facebook has been making serious inroads into the video content space and a natural part of becoming a platform for releasing video content is giving content creators a reason to put content out on their platform. The main incentive, of course, is the ability to generate revenue from your content.

Can You Make Money on Facebook Videos? – Facebook has a monetization system that will run adverts on videos and offer branded content on pages. There are multiple levels and various requirements to qualify.

Let’s dive in.

Video Content on Facebook

There are a few ways to get video content on Facebook, and each one has very different use-cases. There is, of course, the standard method of posting a video to your wall or page. Facebook supports video files up to 10 GB in size with a maximum length of 240 minutes, so it should be sufficient for the vast majority of content creators. Video resolutions are limited to 1080p at the time of writing, however, so if you are looking to put 4K content out, you will need to look at other platforms. In most cases, however, even 4K content producers will be able to put a 1080p version of their videos on Facebook without it negatively affecting things.

Another way to get video content on Facebook is by using Facebook Live. This is Facebook’s live broadcasting solution and allows users to instantly start streaming to their followers (and other Facebook users) with hardly any setup needed. Facebook Live is heavily geared towards people switching on their phone camera and holding what could be termed as intimate live streams with their followers, but it is certainly suitable for more traditional live streams. Facebook is even taking steps to make this side of things more accessible for a wider range of live streamers, such as their Facebook Gaming push.

There are also Facebook Stories, which are Facebook’s answer to Snapchat—short videos that only exist for a brief period before disappearing off into the ether.

Monetising Video Content on Facebook

There are many ways to monetise your Facebook video content, and we’re going to start with Facebook’s own mechanisms. As with any platform, Facebook’s monetisation has certain criteria that you will need to meet, but don’t worry, we’ll give you all the information you need.

In-Stream Ads

In-stream ads are probably the most recognisable way to monetise video content, so it makes sense that Facebook would offer this on their platform. These ads can show up in a number of ways, including before the video (pre-roll), and during the video (mid-roll).

For the most part, these ads will work exactly how you’d expect them to, though mid-roll ads work slightly differently for Facebook Live videos. As Facebook want to cause as little disruption to the live viewing experience as possible (but, obviously, still show the ads) these ads will take over the main video window, but the live stream will continue playing in a smaller floating window, so the viewers don’t miss any of the action.

As per Facebook, these types of ads are suitable for longer content and content that is “suitable for advertisers”, meaning you’ll probably miss out on that ad revenue if you are making content about controversial topics. Facebook will automatically look for natural breaks in the content to insert ads, and your pay is determined by things like how many views the video gets, and who is advertising on it.

Fan Subscriptions

If you are familiar with services like Patreon, or features like YouTube Membership, you will understand Facebook Fan Subscriptions. This feature allows Facebook users to support you by contributing recurring monthly payments. In exchange for these payments, as well as supporting content they like, these users will get a special badge, as well as other perks and discounts.

This option is not limited to video content, of course, as anyone on Facebook with a big enough following can enable fan subscriptions, but if you are producing video content on Facebook, this is certainly a way to monetise that content, as well as any other content you happen to produce.

Branded Content (Brand Deals)

Branded content is Facebook’s version of what you might call a brand deal in other places. Essentially, you, the content creator, strikes a deal with a brand where they will pay you to promote them. These are different from sponsored videos in that they will typically cover a period of time, or set a number of videos.

Facebook facilitates these deals for eligible channels, aiming to bring suitable brands and content creators together… and taking their cut of the deal, of course. That being said, there is nothing to stop you from striking up brand deals yourself. This can be a little trickier, as you will need to be able to market yourself to the brand, and any legalities will have to be taken care of, but for those that can do it, it will often mean more money than going through Facebook.

Subscription Groups

Subscription groups are essentially a group version of fan subscriptions, and allow fans to join smaller, more exclusive groups with the creators they want to support. Like fans subscriptions, subscriber group members will get special perks.

Selling Merchandise

Moving away from Facebook specifically, there will always be ways to monetise your content if there is a big enough following, whether that content is on Facebook, YouTube, your personal website, or anywhere else. One such method is selling merchandise.

Granted, this doesn’t work for every type of content creator, as not every niche lends itself well to merchandise. If you are a content creator in a niche that does lend itself well to merchandising, however, you can certainly monetise your content this way.

Third-Party Subscriptions

Facebook may offer fan subscriptions, but you are in no way obligated to use them if you want to offer this kind of option to your viewers. Indeed, with Facebook’s eligibility criteria (more on that below), many content creators don’t even have the choice in the first place.

Services like Patreon do not have any eligibility criteria regarding the number of views you get, how much watch time you have over a given period, or how long you have been on the platform.

Now, we’re not saying that signing up for a Patreon account will automatically lead to the money rolling in. You still need to have a decent following to take advantage of this kind of service, and in most cases, people who don’t meet Facebook’s eligibility criteria probably aren’t missing out on much in the way of revenue. But there are always exceptions, and if you are such an exception, don’t feel like Facebook’s monetisation solutions are your only options.

Promoting a Product or Service

In this day and age, many content creators have other things on the go. This might be the aforementioned merchandise line, some kind of product or endorsement, an online course, or even public appearances, such as professional speaking, stand up comedy, or music gigs.

If this applies to you, try not to see your video content as a single entity that has to be worth your time in its own right. Consider how many of your viewers might become customers or fans of your other ventures as a result of your videos, and don’t discount that value.

Of course, you will need to take steps to make sure your viewers know about your other ventures.

Facebook Eligibility

Eligibility for the various Facebook monetisation options we have mentioned varies a little depending on the specific type of monetisation you are going for, but, for the most part, you should expect to have to meet the following criteria if you want to take advantage of Facebook’s native monetisation;

Adhere to Facebook rules, standards, and guidelines
Have at least 600,000 watch-minutes over the previous 60 days
Have at least five active videos
Have at least 10,000 page followers
Reside in an eligible country

Other criteria include at least 60,000 of the 600,000 watch minutes being live video minutes if you want to monetise live videos.

Final Thoughts

Facebook seems committed to making it as easy as possible for content creators to monetise their video content on the platform. And it makes sense—the more money you make, the more they make. That being said, you should never feel as though Facebook’s monetisation solutions are your only option. As long as you have an engaged following for your videos, there will always be ways of monetising that content.

Facebook has proven itself to be a powerful marketing tool over the years, with many people using Facebook—rather than Google or other search engines—to get search for things online and generally consume content. And, of course, with over 2.5 billion monthly users in 2020, the sheer number of eyeballs on the site makes it an invaluable resource for advertisers.

The more instances there are of your content online, the less value each individual instance has. However, when it comes to Facebook ads specifically, just make sure your video doesn’t violate Facebook’s policies regarding ads, make your ad engaging, and you should be fine.

Being a primarily YouTube-centric blog, we’re obviously going to be taking a YouTube angle on this, specifically whether or not you can use YouTube videos for your Facebook ads. On the face of it, this should seem like a no brainer, but, if you’ve read this blog before, you’ll know that there are always little wrinkles to make matters more complicated.

Using YouTube Videos for Facebook Ads

Now, there are a few different ways in which using YouTube videos for Facebook ads can be taken, so let’s cover each separately to avoid any confusion.

Advertising a YouTube Video Link

It’s stretching the definition of “using” a YouTube video, granted, but advertising your YouTube content on Facebook is one way in which you are using YouTube videos for Facebook ads.

The answer to this one is short and sweet; yes you can.

As long as the content of the video does not violate any of Facebook’s advertising guidelines, you can pretty much advertise whatever you like, including YouTube videos. There are question marks over the effectiveness of this strategy, however, but we’ll talk about that in a little more detail below.

Using YouTube Videos In Facebook Ads

There is a bit of mystery surrounding this aspect of YouTube videos as Facebook ads. Technically speaking, using a YouTube video wholesale would count as duplicate content, which Facebook isn’t entirely keen on. Like most platforms, Facebook would rather have content that you can only access on Facebook because it gives users an added incentive to go there.

Now, advertisements would, you would think, be exempt from any kind of duplicate content policy on Facebook, but the truth is we simply don’t know. It could be that Facebook ads that are directly ripped from YouTube have poorer performance, or that they get taken down if they are found out.

In any case, it’s probably worth not putting a YouTube video in your Facebook ads without some kind of modifications to make it unique. Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to do this. For example, many Facebook ads incorporate subtitles baked into the actual video. This allows people who are scrolling through their feed somewhere where it would be inappropriate to play sound to follow along with what is happening in the video.

Another trick you can use is to change the aspect ratio of the video. Most users viewing Facebook are doing so on their phones, and that typically means portrait mode. Cropping your video to suit portrait viewing (assuming it wasn’t already a portrait video) is another way to alter the content so that it is not just an identical copy of your original YouTube video.

Using Other People’s YouTube Content in Facebook Ads

From Facebook’s side of things, the case for using other people’s YouTube videos in your Facebook ads is pretty much the same as using your own. Facebook may look poorly on direct duplicate content, but there’s no explicit rule against it.

Where you might run into problems, however, is with the person whose content you have used without permission.

We’ve talked at length about what you can do with other people’s videos on this very blog, but as a general refresher, you should always assume you need permission from the creator unless they have explicitly said permission is not needed, or they have published their video under a public domain license.

Content creators whose content you use in your ads without their permission will be able to get your ad taken down via a copyright claim, and then your ad won’t be achieving anything! In reality, if you have a relatively small online presence, you probably won’t get noticed by any copyright holders, but the fact that you might not get caught is rarely a good reason to do something you’re not supposed to.

Are Facebook Ads a Good Way to Promote YouTube Videos

Things get a little messy when discussing this topic. Facebook is undoubtedly an excellent way to promote things, however, it has been shown that native Facebook video outperforms links to YouTube videos almost all of the time. Of course, if your ad is a native video of the content you want to promote, why would a viewer click through to YouTube? They can watch the content right there on Facebook.

One of the more effective ways to go about this is to use Facebook as a kind of showreel, much like you would with Instagram or TikTok. Select highlights from your content that are entertaining and stand well on their own and use those for your Facebook ads, with the aim being to drive the viewers to your channel for the “full fat” experience.

Final Thoughts

While this post has been specifically about using YouTube videos for Facebook ads, it is generally a good idea to avoid duplicate content regardless of the context. The more instances there are of your content online, the less value each individual instance has.

This does not mean never re-using content—the highlight reel method we mentioned above is a great way to find new viewers from other platforms—but taking a video you have uploaded to YouTube and putting it out unchanged in other places around the web will always have a diminishing effect on the original video, since viewers will have several places they can view it, reducing the incentive to head to your channel.

When it comes to Facebook ads specifically, just make sure your video doesn’t violate Facebook’s policies regarding ads, make your ad engaging, and you should be fine. If you can do that without using a YouTube video completely unchanged from its original state, all the better!

Top 5 Tools To Get You Started on YouTube

Very quickly before you go here are 5 amazing tools I have used every day to grow my YouTube channel from 0 to 30K subscribers in the last 12 months that I could not live without.

1. VidIQ helps boost my views and get found in search

I almost exclusively switched to VidIQ from a rival in 2020.

Within 12 months I tripled the size of my channel and very quickly learnt the power of thumbnails, click through rate and proper search optimization. Best of all, they are FREE!

2. Adobe Creative Suite helps me craft amazing looking thumbnails and eye-catching videos

I have been making youtube videos on and off since 2013.

When I first started I threw things together in Window Movie Maker, cringed at how it looked but thought “that’s the best I can do so it’ll have to do”.

Big mistake!

I soon realized the move time you put into your editing and the more engaging your thumbnails are the more views you will get and the more people will trust you enough to subscribe.

That is why I took the plunge and invested in my editing and design process with Adobe Creative Suite. They offer a WIDE range of tools to help make amazing videos, simple to use tools for overlays, graphics, one click tools to fix your audio and the very powerful Photoshop graphics program to make eye-catching thumbnails.

Best of all you can get a free trial for 30 days on their website, a discount if you are a student and if you are a regular human being it starts from as little as £9 per month if you want to commit to a plan.

3. Rev.com helps people read my videos

You can’t always listen to a video.

Maybe you’re on a bus, a train or sat in a living room with a 5 year old singing baby shark on loop… for HOURS. Or, you are trying to make as little noise as possible while your new born is FINALLY sleeping.

This is where Rev can help you or your audience consume your content on the go, in silence or in a language not native to the video.

Rev.com can help you translate your videos, transcribe your videos, add subtitles and even convert those subtitles into other languages – all from just $1.50 per minute.

A GREAT way to find an audience and keep them hooked no matter where they are watching your content.

4. PlaceIT can help you STAND OUT on YouTube

I SUCK at making anything flashy or arty.

I have every intention in the world to make something that looks cool but im about as artistic as a dropped ice-cream cone on the web windy day.

That is why I could not live on YouTube without someone like PlaceIT. They offer custom YouTube Banners, Avatars, YouTube Video Intros and YouTube End Screen Templates that are easy to edit with simple click, upload wizard to help you make amazing professional graphics in minutes.

Best of all, some of their templates are FREE! or you can pay a small fee if you want to go for their slightly more premium designs (pst – I always used the free ones).

5. StoryBlocks helps me add amazing video b-roll cutaways

I mainly make tutorials and talking head videos.

And in this modern world this can be a little boring if you don’t see something funky every once in a while.

I try with overlays, jump cuts and being funny but my secret weapon is b-roll overlay content.

I can talk about skydiving, food, money, kids, cats – ANYTHING I WANT – with a quick search on the StoryBlocks website I can find a great looking clip to overlay on my videos, keeping them entertained and watching for longer.

They have a wide library of videos, graphics, images and even a video maker tool and it wont break the bank with plans starting from as little as £8.25 ($9) per month.