Affiliate Marketing With Facebook Groups Can You Actually Make Money?

You are always told that if you have a business then you need to set up a Facebook Page but have you been told correctly or are you wasting your time! Well, although Facebook pages will give you a presence on Facebook you will have to work extremely hard to build your brand that way.

I would recommend you have a page but also create a Facebook group. Groups get more reach, engagement, and loyal followers, so a group is definitely the way to go even if you have zero marketing appearance on Facebook.

There are millions of people that use Facebook groups on a daily basis, some even say that’s the only reason now for logging into the platform.

Before you start reading more you may want to check out a recent post I have done about Facebook Affiliate Marketing Rules and How to avoid breaking them this will give dome food for thought as you go through this post.

Now we have discovered that groups perform better than pages, it’s now time to show you how to set up your own FB group.

Why A Facebook Group

Before I show you how to create your own FB group let’s just get one thing straight. It’s not about building the largest group of people wins it’s more about working with a small group of followers, building trust, helping and guiding them, and sharing information with them. In time they will then buy from you simple as!

100 engaged, and loyal followers are far better than 1,000,000 members that are silent by their absence.

People love to be part of a community, and by giving them a direct link to you the business owner you are no longer a business without a face. This is time will be massive trust

How to Create a Group

The first thing you will need is an actual Facebook account, this is simple and free to do taking just a few seconds to complete. And before you ask no you don’t have to use your profile once it is set up.

From your personal profile click on the More tab and then choose groups, this will bring up all the groups you are a member of and your own groups. If you are new to FB there will not be anything here. In the top right-hand corner you can create a new group.

Click on create a group and then add your group name a good tip here is to use keywords that people might be searching for on social media, this way people should easily discover your group. I have created a brand new group for this post and named it Making Money With Affiliate Marketing so I have two great keywords in the title “Making Money” and “Affiliate Marketing” both get loads of searches.

Public, Secret or Closed

The next decision you will need to make is whether to have your group Public, Secret or Closed.

•  Public means anyone can find the group and view the members, owner and the content being posted.
• Closed means anyone can find the group and see who runs it, but they can’t see what is posted, and who the members are.
• Secret means only members can see the group and what is posted in it.

I normally choose Closed but don’t panic as this can be changed at any time.

If you already have some connections on FB then you can invite them to be part of your group as you create it.

You can then add a cover image I would make this a simple design or photo that depicts your brand. I created a quick image with Canva incorporating the colors of my online branding.

Canva is a free tool but you would need to create a custom size image for it to fit correctly the size is 1640px x 856px. The following shows you how easy Canva is.

Creation of Rules

You can create rules for your group if you can down this route and I recommend you do then be sure to abide by them otherwise you could lose credibility. You can use their examples or create your own.

Don’t forget to customize your facebook page link by adding this in the edit settings section under the more tab.

You can also set questions that people will have to answer to pre-qualify if they are the sort of member you wish to have in your community.

There are other settings you can configure in this section too, but you can do this at any time and change your preference too so don’t worry. These are the sort of things you can set…

• Group Type
• Location (ideal if you want to target a particular town or city)
• Apps
• Linked Pages
• Color
• Custom Link
• Membership Approval
• Chat Creation Permission
• Membership Pre Approval
• Posting Permission
• Post Approval
• Story Posting Permission and Approval

These can all be left as the default, to begin with.

Right so now you have set up your Facebook group now you need to get some members. In the next section, I will show you how.

Building Your Group Membership

Like I have mentioned before you are looking for quality over quantity, a few hundred engaged targeted people are far better than 10,000 that will never show up, engage or buy anything.

The secret is to start small and let it grow at a pace you can handle. Share with friends and family if its something they would be interested in.

Start talking about your group on other social platforms and communities both online and offline. Especially if these are niche related.

If you have a bit more time you could always search similar groups and pages on Facebook itself and then message some of the active members with an invite to your group. Take care of this method as you could come across as a spammer in Facebook’s eyes and have your account suspended.

Remember you are looking for highly targeted people.

Linking Out

As well as having a Facebook page and group it is still a great idea to have your own website especially as an affiliate marketer (I will explain why shortly).

If you don’t have a blog (website) yet then don’t worry you can build a free blog very quickly and easily. If you need any help I am always happy to give feedback and advice.

Anyway I digress, back to FB

There are three main places where you can place your blog link here they are.

• Page Description – Your description can be set up in the settings tab. You can also give a call to action too.
• Header Image – Once you add a header image to your group you can then click on it and add your website link into the description there too, you will need to do this every time you renew the image of course.
• Pinned Post – The final place is in a pinned post. This s a normal post of which you have then pinned to the top of your feed.

 

 

 

Affiliate Links

Now the reason why I say to have a blog is that if you are doing affiliate marketing just posting links directly to sales pages and offer may not work as Facebook is pretty hot on that and has tightened up on this sort of posting. But to get around this you can write a post about a problem and then offer the affiliate product as your reader’s solution.

This also builds trust with your members.

So you have your group set up, members are starting to flock to it what next?

What To Post And When

Well, you will need to create some content for your members. There are many ways to deliver content, video, images, text, infographics, polls, questions are just a few. I personally think video and images work best but do some testing and see what works best for your niche. Live video is really exploding now on Facebook maybe try that.

It wouldn’t be long before you are a content creation expert 🙂

Scheduling Posts

We all lead busy lives these days, so it is quite acceptable to use scheduling tools to help with the day to day running of your Facebook group, but that said if you want this to be successful then you will need to log into the group a couple of times a day even in the beginning. 

As the group grows you will automatically be drawn in for longer periods but the rewards will be showing by then so you can justify your time.

I have used many different tools for scheduling out and I must admit Buffer is probably one of the best around and it even has a free version to get you started.

Facebook also allows you to schedule your post when you are creating them, use this feature to keep a constant stream of content coming through.

Engaging

I recently read a blog saying that Facebook no longer gave the like button as much of an engagement factor than they do for a heart or person laughing, so bear this in mind when you and asking for engagement in other words out goes be sure to hit the like button and is replaced by give me some loving.

Leveraging Other Groups and Pages

One of the best ways to build trust and gain more members to your group is to join other related groups. Liking relevant pages will also give you even more choice. You can even link your own page to your group this will help get more exposure.

Although sharing great content is always a plus, this is where having blog posts can come in really handle, don’t just post your content, but offer help to others too. This will make sure that you are seen as an expert in your niche.

Be friendly, after all, nobody likes an arse.

Show up regularly popping in twice a month just will not gain you any following at all. I would join and participate in about 6 groups that way you can visit them daily or every other day and check-in.

This can be a very powerful method if worked well.

Making Money From Your Facebook Group

There are various ways in which you can make money from your Facebook group some directly and som indirectly.

The best to earn directly is, of course, to add affiliate links to posts and comments. You will be limited by the companies that are allowed on Facebook.

You could also add training within your group and have reports, pdf’s cheatsheets that members can download and use, within these you may be able to add affiliate links to recommended products or services.

Taking this one a step further you can also set up a separate landing page and direct people to download the training, report, pdf etc there. Again you can recommend affiliate products.

This would be a more indirect approach as would directing people to your blog posts, within your article or advertised on your blog would be affiliate promotions. This could also work if you have a YouTube channel where you have relevant training videos.

Once you have captured your members’ details from the external landing page you can then use email marketing to promote affiliate offers, as well as giving more valuable content too. Building an email list is a valuable asset when it comes to your affiliate business.

Wrapping Up

There are a few things to bear in mind with starting a Facebook group but as you can see here, with some hard work and consistancy there is no reason at all that you couldn’t make a healthy sum.

Remember your main aim with any online business is to go to help others and in return, you will eventually you will be rewarded.

Disclosure:- Affiliate links may be used within this post. This means that if you purchase
through my site after clicking a link when I get a small commission, at NO extra charge to yourself. This helps me to continue giving great free content. Thanks