Facebook is making it easier for aspiring “influencers” to monetize their profiles with a new “professional mode.”
The company says it previously restricted various revenue-generating features to Pages, which are supposed to be set up for businesses rather than people, but now it’s expanding some of those tools to user profiles.
Facebook highlights the ability to join the Reels Play bonus program, which “allows eligible creators to earn up to $35,000 a month based on the views of their qualifying reels,” as professional mode’s first revenue stream.
Users still have to be invited to participate in Reels Play, however, which means monetizing the assorted #content someone posts to Facebook will require more than simply enabling professional mode in the profile settings.
“Professional mode also opens up access to post, audience and profile insights—similar to what you can find on Pages today,” Facebook says. “For example, you can see the total number of shares, reactions and comments that posts have and review your follower growth over time.”
The company also notes that after professional mode is enabled “anyone can follow you and see your public content in their feed, but you’ll still be in control of who sees what content you share” using its existing tools.
Professional mode is currently limited to small group of Facebook users in the US. Facebook says in its announcement that it will “expand to more people in the US soon, more countries in the coming months and add more tools and capabilities over time, including access to more monetization options and other platform tools.”
It provides an ever-so-slightly more detailed timeline in the announcement for Facebook users in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, where professional mode will be released to users in the region “next year.”
Facebook is also updating Pages with a Professional Dashboard that “serves as a central destination for admins to review their Page’s performance and access professional tools and insights” and a “two-step post composer that gives creators using Pages the ability to easily schedule posts and cross-post into a group in the Facebook app.”
The company says those features were previously limited to Facebook Business Suite and Meta Creator Studio, so it seems monetization options are trickling down from established businesses to wannabe social media stars.
