Facebook Rolls Out Paid Online Events for Small Business Recovery

Facebook recently launched Paid Online Events, a way for small businesses, local businesses, creators, educators, and media publishers to monetize online events held on Facebook. What’s more exciting is that the social media giant announced that they would not collect any fees from the events held on their platform.

Paid Online Events

With the current pandemic situation and social distancing orders still in place, many small businesses are struggling all over the world right now. Many live events can no longer be held because most of the businesses have adopted working from home facilities and zooming into work events online. To cope with the scenario, businesses and creators are bringing their events and services online as it helps them connect with existing customers and reach new ones. Also, as physical interaction is very less these days, many people are relying on these online events and live video more. According to Facebook’s official blog post, in June, FB witnessed double live broadcasts from Pages compared to the same time last year, largely attributed to broadcasts since March.

By combining all the attributes -marketing, payment, and live video- Facebook launched paid online events to meet the end-to-end needs of small businesses. Fidji Simo, the Vice President and Head of Facebook App, notes that Facebook has created Paid Online Events feature in order to help small business recovery. This feature was initially designed for in-person events, but with the pandemic and the social distancing practices, the company “really quickly pivoted” to supporting online events.

Pages can host events on FB Live to reach broad audiences, and people can pay for the event via Facebook and watch it online. 

During the feature testing, the company notes that businesses use their platform to host events such as – expert talks, trivia events, podcast recordings, boxing matches, cooking classes, intimate meet-and-greets, fitness classes and more. With this new feature on board, local businesses can conduct their events online and charge for them.

If you are a Facebook page owner, all you have to do is to create an online event, set a price, promote the event, collect payment and host the event, all in one place. That is, for example, if your business is a band, you are now allowed to host an online live concert and sell tickets to the event. You can also conduct three concerts on consecutive evenings, one for each time zone in the United States.

Waiving Fees on Paid Online Events

To support small businesses, Facebook decided not to charge any fees from paid online events for at least the next year.

Facebook also had a word with Apple to reduce its 30% App Store tax or allow them to offer Facebook Pay so that Facebook could help businesses that are struggling during this current pandemic. But unfortunately, Apple dismissed both FB’s requests, and small businesses will only be paid 70% of their hard-earned revenue. 

Currently, pages in 20 countries around the world that meet Facebook’s partner monetization policies are allowed to charge for online events.

Facebook’s this feature is a unique offer as the promotion, payments, and hosting is done completely on the platform itself – that means, if a small business wants to monetize an event via FB, they can target FB users with advertising that are local to them, or they can take advantage of word-of-mouth marketing by announcing the event to all of the followers of their page.

The social media platform is also currently testing paid events with Messenger Rooms for an added layer of personal and interactive gatherings.

Content Eligibility for Paid Online Events

Facebook Page owners who wish to host monetized online events on Facebook will need to abide by Facebook’s Partner Monetization Policies such as Community Standards Policies – that prohibits things like hate speech, calling for violence and “sexualized content” -, Partner Monetization Policies and Facebook’s more stringent Content Monetization Policies. These policies feature additional prohibited content – such as static videos, static image polls, slideshows of images, looping videos, text montages and embedded ads- and prohibited behaviors – that includes engagement bait and soliciting engagement.

Apart from policies, the company also outlines categories of content that may experience reduced or restricted monetization – such as debated social issues, tragedy or conflict, objectionable activity, sexual or suggestive activity, strong language, explicit content, misinformation, misleading medical information, politics and government.

If you are a small business owner, take advantage of this new feature, Paid Online Events program quickly to earn an income and to connect with your consumers in a meaningful way.