Facebook announced a way for small businesses, local businesses, creators and others to monetize events on Facebook. Facebook also announced that they would not collect any fees from the events held on Facebook.

Promote and Monetize Events In One Frictionless Platform

What makes Facebook’s offer unique is that all of the promotion, payments, and hosting is done in Facebook. That means that if a local type business wants to monetize an event via Facebook, they can target Facebook users with advertising that are local to them. Or the business can take advantage of word of mouth by announcing the event to all of the followers of their page.

People can then pay for the event via Facebook and watch it online.

Because of Covid-19, many live events can no longer be held. Because so many have become accustomed to working from home and zooming into work events online, perhaps now is the moment when online events gain more acceptance.

If your business is a band, you can host an online live concert and sell tickets to the event. It’s even possible to hold three concerts on consecutive evenings, one for each time zone in the United States.

Local business can conduct their events online and charge for them. Now exercise classes, yoga classes, business training, hobby classes, birthing classes and any number of seminars can be held online.

According to Facebook:

“Pages can host events on Facebook Live to reach broad audiences, and we’re testing paid events with Messenger Rooms for more personal and interactive gatherings.

In testing, we’ve seen businesses use Facebook to host expert talks, trivia events, podcast recordings, boxing matches, cooking classes, intimate meet-and-greets, fitness classes and more.”

Facebook Will Not Collect Fees

Facebook stated that they will not collect fees. However Apple will still collect their standard App Store tax of 30%. Facebook asked Apple to reduce or not collect their fees but Apple declined to give small businesses a break.

However, in areas where Facebook Pay is available, all payments made on the web or on Android devices will result in 100% of the revenue reaching the small business.

What Kind of Content is Eligible for Paid Facebook Events?

Business owners wishing to host monetized events on Facebook will need to abide by Facebook’s Partner Monetization Policies.

Among the policies to abide by are the Community Standards policy that prohibits things like hate speech, calling for violence and “sexualized content.”

In addition to having to abide by the Partner Monetization Policies, businesses hosting paid events also must abide by Facebook’s more stringent Content Monetization Policies.

These policies feature additional prohibited content:

And prohibited behaviors:

Restricted Content Categories

Facebook also outlines categories of content that may experience reduced or restricted monetization.

The restricted categories are:

Business Opportunity with Facebook

Facebook’s Paid Online Events program offers businesses a creative new way to earn income providing services and events online, as well as connecting with consumers in a meaningful way.