\n<\/p>\n
\n\tAfter neglecting his Facebook page for years, dismissing it as a relic for older people, creator Anwar Jibawi started to notice a surprising change \u2014 the checks he received from the social media site were getting bigger and bigger.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThat was enough to make Jibawi pay more attention. Shortly thereafter, he hired a new team member to keep up with his tempo of posting comedy sketch videos 10 times a day. Facebook has since become one of his biggest income sources. \u201cIt\u2019s not unusual for it to hit six figures a month,\u201d says Jibawi, who has 20\u202fmillion followers on the platform.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThe shift, noticed by many other creators, was the effect of a change in the social media site\u2019s monetization policy last fall: Facebook now pays creators based on the performance of their posts rather than through a share of ad revenue. The move has creators now treating the platform as a top income source.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThe goal of the new program is to incentivize creators to make more original and compelling content and keep users coming amid competition from younger-skewing platforms and concerns about a stalling albeit still very large user base.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWhat we\u2019re trying to do is make that a little less well-kept secret and get the word out. Because we do believe the opportunity here for creators is very, very large,\u201d says Yair Livne, senior director of Facebook Creator Product.<\/p>\n
\n\tMore than 60\u202fpercent of users\u2019 time on Facebook is spent watching videos on the newsfeed, Reels and Stories, with the majority coming from creators, but the site also pays for photo and text posts, which Jibawi calls \u201ca game-changer.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tFacebook currently has millions of creators in the program, which is invite-only. Payment is based on views and engagement with the posts as well as the quality of the content, prioritizing originality and disincentivizing clickbait. The best\u202fperforming videos tend to fall into the how-to category, like cooking videos or parenting tips.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tMaggie McGaugh, who has 1.9\u202fmillion followers for her DIY content and scam reveals, says she reliably makes $20,000 to $30,000 a month on Facebook. \u201cUnless I get a huge brand deal, it\u2019s my biggest source of income,\u201d McGaugh says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tYouTube used to be Jibawi\u2019s biggest source of income, but he found his share of ad revenue decreased as more content flooded the platform with the site\u2019s introduction of short videos. TikTok and Instagram also have funds from which they pay creators, based on similar metrics to Facebook, but Jibawi estimates he gets $5 from TikTok for every $1,000 he makes on Facebook.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u00a0Not every post is a winner, as Facebook\u2019s often-impenetrable algorithm determines what takes off, and the payment program itself has variances (McGaugh notes she\u2019s had a single photo make thousands of dollars, while another viral photo made $13). The shift in monetization also means that many creators have to break away from old strategies of posting longer videos that allow for more ad breaks to focus on shorter videos that hold users\u2019 attention.<\/p>\n
\n\tWhile she had initially eschewed Facebook as a platform for older people, McGaugh says she\u2019s seen pretty wide engagement across age groups for her content. Her posts about scams perform well with an elderly audience, but she\u2019s also found an appetite across the board for other topics.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThey\u2019ve been eating up undelivered mail, like, when I buy bulk packages of lost mail, that kind of stuff does super well across the board,\u201d McGaugh says. \u201cPeople just want to watch you open things.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThis story appeared in the Oct. 15 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After neglecting his Facebook page for years, dismissing it as a relic for older people, creator Anwar Jibawi started to notice a surprising change \u2014 the checks he received from the social media site were getting bigger and bigger.\u00a0 That was enough to make Jibawi pay more attention. Shortly thereafter, he hired a new team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28246,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[6756,10469,16791,1253,7171],"class_list":{"0":"post-28245","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-creators","9":"tag-facebook","10":"tag-joke","11":"tag-love","12":"tag-suddenly"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28245\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}