Facebook Instant Articles – Do You Need It?

This blog post teaches you how to increase your blog’s income using Facebook instant articles. If you are wondering how this is relevant to you, keep reading, to find out.

For any blogger, the main concern is always related to their blog’s monetization statistics.

I am not saying that everyone develops a blog just to earn money. Some may also do it for passion but nobody is particularly allergic to more money right? Some extra money always helps and what better way than to earn money from your passion.

There are numerous ways in which you can monetize your blog and earn a good income.

One of the newest ways that every blogger is now after is the Facebook Instant Article feature. Since it is not too old, the developers are constantly adding to its features and profitability for both publishers and advertisers. In fact, some publishers are making more than $20,000 a month with just this feature.

So, what are Facebook Instant Articles, and how can you earn from them? Keep reading.

Facebook Instant Articles

In 2015, Facebook released a feature called ‘Facebook Instant Articles’ which was somewhat similar to Google’s AMP articles. These articles are basically faster loading pages with an enhanced visual display to give your readers a better experience overall.

In simpler words, these are optimized web articles which you publish directly on Facebook. An instant article is an HTML5 display with 10 times the loading speed of normal feed articles.

If you use this feature, then your audience gets a much better reading experience as the articles load within seconds and look visually appealing with their storytelling capabilities and the design. As per statistics, users are much less prone to leave reading an instant article midway than a normal article.

Please note that this feature is available only on the Facebook mobile app right now and not on the website. However, Facebook will eventually roll out this feature for website view as well, depending on the feedback.

What are instant articles

Another great feature of these articles is that you don’t have to worry about the correct ad placements or CTR so you are basically earning a passive income without any efforts. You have the option to choose ad placements manually or let Facebook decide the location.

Most publishers have said that the placements done by Facebook convert much better than those done manually.

Facebook has shared that ads displayed in the Instant Articles get 20% more clicks than other mobile web articles. They also get much more social shares than usual articles because sharing is just one click away on these articles with the easily accessible share button. Your readers are now getting the best reading experience that you can offer with the help of the Instant articles.

How to make money using Facebook instant articles

1. Sign up for Instant articles on Facebook and connect your site using the step by step instructions.

2. Once you are done with the set-up, you can submit the articles for review. Facebook takes around 3 days or so to review your site and approve your Instant Articles request. You have to submit a minimum of 5 articles and format them for submission. This is just a onetime procedure and you do not have to do it for every new article.

3. Once you get approved, you can use Facebook Instant Articles feature to display your content to the traffic you get from Facebook.

4. Facebook allows you to display ads from the Facebook Audience Network which has over 3 million advertisers. Facebook also places those ads strategically to maximize your earnings. It supports many other ad networks like the Adsense and Media.net etc but it is better not to use Adsense with this feature as it displays ads in an IFRAME which is against the Adsense guidelines. Most publishers use the Facebook Audience Network to serve ads and are quite happy with the results.

5. Your regular visitors will continue to see Google Adsense ads on your website if they are coming from somewhere other than Facebook.

Submitting your facebook instant articles

There are three ways to submit your articles to Instant Articles: 1) API, 2) RSS Feed, and 3) CMS plugins developed by developers.

The simplest option is the API.

Avoid using CMS plugins as you will have to wait for the developers to update the plugin in case Facebook changes any guidelines or updates the feature, which it will eventually do, as this feature is comparatively new and needs constant updates to make it better.

Growing your email list

Recently, Facebook has also added an option to add “Call-To-Action” buttons to your articles with Email Sign-up and Facebook Page-Like options. These action buttons will make this feature even more profitable for publishers as more people will subscribe to their blog and follow their FB page.

This is a sign that Facebook is going to launch many more features in the coming years for Instant Articles. It will also work on bridging a few gaps as some publishers have complained of reduced video and image quality. Reduction in the video and image quality has been necessary in order to reduce the loading time.

Traffic and monetization

Recommended reading: Tips to get targeted traffic from social media platforms

If you are wondering how Facebook drives traffic to these articles, it is very simple.

These instant articles show up on your newsfeed in the same way as any other normal story would show. Facebook prioritizes the articles based on the time that your readers spend on them and the number of times people interact with your article.

Instant Articles pay on eCPM (effective Cost Per Million impressions) basis which means you get some amount of money for every thousand impressions.

The eCPM which Facebook pays is higher than most networks. So, if your traffic is great and your posts are engaging, using this feature on your articles can turn your earnings around significantly.

You can get approximately 1.5$ to 4$ CPM depending on the country from which you get the traffic. Earning 10-100 dollars a day is very much possible if you have a decent amount of traffic.

You get the payment directly into your PayPal account or your bank account depending on the option you have chosen as the payment page. Update your tax forms and you are ready to receive your payment from Facebook Instant Articles. Make sure that you provide rich content which is loved by readers to make the most out of this feature.

One thing you have to remember is that since these articles enable your readers to read your content within the confines of Facebook, they are not going to your website. If the cons resulting from this point are much more important than what you are going to earn from the Instant articles, you might want to reconsider adding this feature.

So now that you know all about the Facebook Instant Articles and how to earn from them, are you ready to monetize your blog and earn a significant passive income?

Have you tried Facebook Instant Articles? How was your experience?

Image source: Instantarticles.fb.com